Fanny Bullock Workman

Fanny Bullock Workman (January 8, 1859 – January 22, 1925) was an American mountaineer, explorer, cartographer, and travel writer known for her expeditions in the Himalayas and the Karakoram. One of the first women to pursue mountaineering as a professional career, she combined exploration with scientific observation and published detailed accounts of her journeys. During the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries she set several women's altitude records and advocated for women's suffrage and women's participation in exploration and science.

Workman was born in Worcester, Massachusetts, into a wealthy and politically prominent family. After receiving an extensive education and traveling widely in Europe, she married physician William Hunter Workman in 1882. She developed an interest in climbing in the White Mountains of New Hampshire, and the couple later undertook long-distance bicycle tours across Europe, North Africa, and Asia. These journeys established Workman as a travel writer and led to a series of expedition narratives describing both the landscapes she encountered and the position of women in the societies she visited.

Beginning in the late 1890s, Workman turned to high-altitude mountaineering in the western Himalayas and the Karakoram. Over the next fourteen years she participated in eight expeditions to the region, exploring glaciers, surveying previously unmapped terrain, and climbing several peaks. In 1906 she climbed Pinnacle Peak in the Nun Kun massif to an altitude of about , setting a women's altitude record at the time. After these expeditions she lectured widely in Europe and North America, becoming the first American woman to lecture at the Sorbonne and the second woman to address the Royal Geographical Society. Her climbing achievements and public advocacy helped challenge gender barriers in exploration and mountaineering.

Biography

Early life Fanny Bullock Workman was born on 8 January 1859 in Worcester, Massachusetts, to Elvira Hazard Bullock and Alexander H. Bullock, a prominent businessman and Republican politician who later served as Governor of Massachusetts. She was the youngest of three children, with an elder sister, Grace Bullock, and a brother, Alexander H. Bullock Jr.

Raised in a politically influential and well-connected New England family, she grew up in an environment that emphasized education, travel, and intellectual engagement, shaping the independence and ambition that would later define her career.

Education

Workman was educated at home by governesses before attending Miss Graham's Finishing School in New York City. She later studied in Paris and Dresden, where she became fluent in French and German and grew familiar with European culture. Her education combined formal schooling with extended travel, providing her with the language skills and cultural familiarity that later supported her work as a travel writer and explorer.

Early interests and writing

Thomas Pauly writes in his short biography of Workman that "early on Fanny chafed at the constraints of her privilege". A small number of her stories from this time survive, describing her interest in adventure. In one, "A Vacation Episode", she describes a beautiful and aristocratic English girl who is contemptuous of society. She runs away to Grindelwald, becoming an excellent alpinist and marrying an American. The story encapsulates much of Fanny's own life: wanderlust, a love of the mountains, and a commitment to women's rights. In 1886, she published a short story, set during the First Indian War, in New York Magazine about "the capture and rescue of a white girl"; a reviewer of the story stated that it was "told in a very pleasant and infatuating style".

Marriage and family In 1879, Workman returned to the United States. On 16 June 1882, at the age of 23, she married William Hunter Workman. Twelve years her senior, William was a physician educated at Yale and Harvard universities.

The couple shared an interest in travel and physical activity and they spent extended periods cycling through Europe. These journeys later shaped their work as explorers and travel writers.

In 1884, their only child, a daughter named Rachel, was born. Over the following years, Workman and her husband spent long periods traveling abroad. Their daughter did not accompany them on most of these journeys and instead remained in the care of others.left Fanny Workman learned her love of climbing on Mount Washington.

Introduction to climbing William introduced Fanny to climbing after their marriage, and together they spent many summers in the White Mountains in New Hampshire; here she summited Mount Washington several times. Climbing in the Northeastern United States allowed Fanny to develop her abilities together with other women. Unlike European clubs, American climbing clubs in the White Mountains allowed women members and encouraged women to climb. They promoted a new vision of the American woman, one who was both domestic and athletic, and Workman took to this image with enthusiasm.

Climbing culture and gender By 1886, women sometimes outnumbered men on hiking expeditions in New England. In her paper on the gender dynamics of climbing in the region, Jenny Ernie-Steighner states that this formative experience shaped Workman's commitment to women's rights, pointing out that "no other well-known international mountaineers of the time, male or female, spoke as openly and fervently about women's rights". However, both of the Workmans disliked the provincial nature of life in Worcester, where they resided, and yearned to live in Europe. After both Fanny's and William's fathers died, leaving them enormous estates, the couple embarked on their first major European trip, a tour of Scandinavia and Germany.

Move to Europe and cycling tours

Relocation to Europe and the turn to travel In 1889 the Workman family relocated to Germany citing William's health, although Pauly speculates that this may have been merely a pretext, for he recovered surprisingly quickly.

The couple's second child, Siegfried, was born shortly after they arrived in Dresden. Fanny chose not to conform to the traditionally circumscribed roles of wife and mother, and became an author and adventurer. while exploring in the Karakoram.

Travel writing and themes Together, the Workmans explored the world and co-wrote eight travel books that describe the people, art, and architecture of the areas they journeyed through, however she always did most of the writing. Fanny opted not to write a book about her journey to Egypt, likely because she recognised that she could not rely on her bicycle to spark curiosity in the country's saturated tourist attractions.

The Workmans were aware of their contribution to the genre of travel writing, as they commented on other writers in their own works. Their mountaineering narratives said little about the culture of those remote and sparsely inhabited regions; they included both lyrical descriptions of the sunset, for example, for their popular audience and detailed explanations of geographical features, such as glaciers, for their scientific readership. Fanny and William added scientific elements to their writings to appeal to authoritative organizations such as the Royal Geographical Society; Fanny also believed the science would make her more legitimate in the eyes of the climbing community, but it cost her readers.

In general, their bicycling tour narratives were better received than those about their mountaineering exploits. Fanny wrote the majority of these travel books herself, and in them she commented extensively on the plight of women wherever she traveled.

Labor issues The Workmans struggled with labor problems continually, needing local porters to carry gear for them because they could not carry a sufficient amount for themselves for a multi-month expedition. They had to transport Mummery tents, eider sleeping bags, camera equipment, scientific instruments, and a large supply of food. The porters were skeptical of the entire venture. The locals rarely climbed mountains and were not used to taking orders from a woman, which made Fanny's position difficult.

During the summer of 1898, the couple decided to escape the heat and explore the western Himalaya and Karakoram. After that, they intended to explore the area around Kanchenjunga in Sikkim, and then finally travel to the mountains bordering Bhutan on the east.

The most serious problems concerned labor. They hired 45 porters, outfitted them for basic mountain travel, and bought provisions, but costs skyrocketed as news of wealthy Americans circulated in the villages. They could not leave until October 3 and by then cold weather was approaching.

The Workmans complain in their writings about the porters they hired, who were difficult to work with and refused to trek more than per day. Three days into their journey the Workmans reached snow and the porters rebelled; they refused to work in such cold conditions and forced the entire party to return to Darjeeling.

Bureaucratic difficulties and weather problems abounded and impeded their plans.

The Workmans tried to solve these problems with condescension and high-handedness. Kenneth Mason maintains in his history of Himalayan mountaineering, written in 1955, that "The Workmans were, on their journeys, the victims of their own faults. They were too impatient and rarely tried to understand the mentality of the porters and so did not get the best out of them."

Labor problems beset all of their expeditions because, as Miller puts it, "Almost alone of Victorian travellers, the Workmans had absolutely no sympathy or even common-sense understanding of the local people, into whose poor and remote villages they burst with trains of followers demanding service and supplies."

In her chapter on Workman, Miller argues that the couple, being American, did not have the same sense of caste or class that British explorers had: "the Workmans, like most of their countrymen, plunged in their enterprises headlong, expecting their enormous energy to overcome all obstacles. They were justifiably criticized by the British for their callous, incompetent behavior toward the Indians."

Mountaineering in the Himalayas

Himalayan expeditions (1899–1903) After travelling to the Himalaya the first time, the Workmans became entranced with climbing and mountaineering. Over a span of 14 years, they traveled eight times to the area, which at the time was almost completely unexplored and unmapped. Admiring the view of a far-off mountain, they commented on the grand view: they were looking at K2, the second-highest mountain in the world. Fanny Workman may have been the first woman recorded to have seen it.

Finally, they climbed Koser Gunge , giving Fanny her third successive altitude record. It was very challenging: they had to hire new porters, establish a new base camp, and remain overnight at around . In the morning, they climbed a wall that measured , and were buffeted by winds. During the summit push, Fanny's fingers were so numb that she could no longer hold her ice ax and one of the porters abandoned them.

Pauly writes, "propelled to the summit by adrenalin and desperation, the foursome lingered only long enough for their instruments to assess that the temperature was ten degrees Fahrenheit [−12 °C] and their elevation was 21,000 feet." Fanny was a "slow, relentless, and intrepid" climber; "bearlike, she solidly planted one foot and then groped for another secure grip with the other". Climbing at the beginning of the 20th century, she did not have specialized equipment like pitons or carabiners. She was able to climb to such heights, Pauly argues, because of "her dauntless persistence and her immunity to altitude sickness".

Publications and reception As soon as she was able, Fanny Workman published accounts of her feats, such as an article in the Scottish Geographical Magazine. Writing about this trip at length in In the Ice World of the Himalayas, Fanny made efforts to include scientific information and experiments, touting her own modified barometer as superior, but scholarly critics were unimpressed and pointed out her lack of scientific knowledge. Popular reviewers, on the other hand, enjoyed the book, with one concluding, "We have no hesitation in saying that Dr. and Mrs. Workman have written one of the most remarkable books of travel of recent years."

Later expeditions and altitude records (1902–1906) Workman with climbing gear. As one commentator writes, "even though pantaloons were acceptable sporting women's dress at the time, Workman wore skirts – while cycling thousands of miles across Europe and Asia, climbing Himalayan peaks, and negotiating crevasses."

In 1902, the Workmans returned to the Himalaya and became the first Westerners to explore the Chogo Lungma Glacier, starting in Arandu. They hired 80 porters and took four tons of supplies, but their explorations were limited by near-constant snow and a 60-hour storm.

In 1903, they trekked to the Hoh Lumba Glacier with guide Cyprien Savoye. They also attempted to climb the nearby mountain they called Pyramid Peak (later renamed Spantik, as part of the Spantik-Sosbun Mountains).

They camped the first night at and the second at . An ailing porter forced them to camp the third night at rather than and they eventually left him behind.

They ascended a peak, giving Fanny a new altitude record. William and a porter climbed toward the needle-like spire that was the expedition's goal. However, he abandoned the summit attempt a few hundred feet from the top because he realized they could not have descended to a safe altitude before altitude sickness set in.

The Workmans returned to Kashmir in 1906, and were the first Westerners to explore the Nun Kun massif. For this trip, the couple hired six Italian porters from the Alps, 200 local porters, and Savoye returned as guide. As Isserman, Weaver and Molenaar explain in their history of Himalayan mountaineering, the Workmans despised the local porters but were forced to recruit them; "their otherwise invaluable books read like one long, anguished harangue against the lazy, lying, thieving, mutinous cheats on whom they unhappily depended for local support".

They planned a sequence of four camps from . Despite labor problems, the Workmans spent the night higher than any previous mountaineers — on top of Z1 on Nun Kun—at what they called "Camp America".

William wrote of Fanny:

The map the Workmans made during this trip was of low quality. According to Mason, the couple did not have a good sense of topographical direction, which meant that their measurements were inaccurate and unusable by the Survey of India.

Pinnacle Peak and altitude record

From , at the age of 47 in 1906, Workman climbed up to Pinnacle Peak (which she believed to be ), a subsidiary peak in the Nun Kun massif of the western Himalaya. It was her greatest mountaineering achievement.

She set an altitude record for women that would stand until Hetti Dhyrenfurth's 1934 ascent of Sia Kangri C . Believing that they had both climbed above the mark, Fanny and William now considered themselves the leading experts on climbing at altitude.

As Isserman, Weaver and Molenaar point out, the fact that she "climbed the mountain at all, without benefit of modern equipment and encumbered by her voluminous skirts, speaks to both her ability and resolve".

Workman vigorously defended her Pinnacle Peak altitude record against all other claimants, especially Annie Smith Peck. In 1908, Peck claimed a new record with her climb of Peru's Huascarán, which she believed to be . However, she was misinformed as to the peak's height and exaggerated distances she could not measure.

Workman was so competitive that she paid a team of French surveyors from the Service Géographique de l'Armée US$13,000 to measure the elevation of the mountain, which was actually , confirming her record.

She also earned medals of honor from 10 European geographical societies and was eventually elected a member of the American Alpine Club, Royal Asiatic Society, Club Alpino Italiano, Deutscher und Österreichischer Alpenverein, and Club alpin français. Bryn Mawr established a Fanny Bullock Workman Traveling Fellowship, which is awarded to Ph.D. candidates in Archaeology or Art History when funds permit.

Women in climbing Along with Annie Smith Peck, Workman was recognized during the early 20th century as one of the most famous female climbers in the world. Their rivalry demonstrated that women could climb the most remote and difficult terrain on the planet.

Women had climbed regularly in the Alps since the 1850s, but in the Himalayas, mountaineering had been dominated by wealthy English men. No other women, however, climbed in the Himalaya until well after World War I, by which time improvements in equipment and organization had shifted that nature of risks and difficulties of expeditions.

Workman, herself an ardent feminist and a supporter of women's suffrage, wanted her readers to understand how her contributions and achievements reflected all women's potential. In her writings, Workman described herself as "questioning or violating the norms of Victorian female propriety".

She demonstrated that women were strong enough to thrive outside the home by showing how easy it was for her to endure strenuous physical activities like bicycling long distances in hot, humid places or mountaineering in cold temperatures and high altitudes.

Workman challenged a masculine realm; her obituary in the Alpine Journal alluded to the challenges she faced, saying that she "felt that she suffered from 'sex antagonism'". The author of the piece added: "it is possible that some unconscious feeling let us say of the novelty of a woman's intrusion into the domain of exploration so long reserved to man, may in some quarters have existed ... there tended to arise ... an atmosphere shall we say of aloofness?"

However, in her study of Victorian mountaineering, Ann Colley suggests that gender discrimination was more overt at lower elevations and in regular life than at higher elevations, such as in the Himalaya. Colley states, "Away from such petty opinion emanating from society pressures, up high, above the snow line or in distant regions, women climbers could more fully experience equality and power ... If they chose, they could be just as sportsmanlike or competitive as the men."

In her entry about Workman in the Dictionary of Literary Biography, Tingley sums Workman up as "an aggressive, determined, and uncompromising turn-of-the-century American woman traveler" and "one of the first women to work as a professional mountaineer and surveyor and to write about the expeditions she and her husband took to the most remote reaches of the Himalaya. She was an outspoken advocate of woman's suffrage and made it clear that she considered herself to be a role model for other women travelers and mountaineers."

Historical assessment of Himalayan exploration The many books and articles produced by the Workmans are "still useful" according to Mason, especially for their photographs and illustrations, but their maps are "deceptive and not always reliable". One assessment states that although the Workmans excelled at describing meteorological conditions, glaciology, and how high altitudes affected human health and fitness, they were poor topographers.

The Workmans were some of the first mountaineers to grasp that the Himalaya were the place for the ultimate climbing challenge and their explorations helped evolve mountaineering from strenuous recreation into a serious, regulated competitive sport.

According to Isserman, Weaver and Molenaar, "that the Workmans were intrepid explorers and climbers none could possibly doubt, but they were also aggressive self-promoters who in their eagerness for recognition and honors sometimes exaggerated the originality and significance of what they had done."

In their final assessment, Isserman, Weaver and Molenaar say "they had logged more miles and climbed more peaks than anyone to date; they had produced five sumptuously illustrated and widely read expedition volumes; and by simple virtue of her sex Fanny of course had set an invaluable Himalayan precedent. But the Workmans were not great mountaineers. At their best they were vigorous and competent patrons who followed capably in the hard-won steps of their Italian guides."

However, in his chapter on Workman, Pauly writes that "the few recent accounts of Fanny Workman have tended to slight or belittle her achievements, but contemporaries, unaware of the far greater accomplishments to come, held the Workmans in high regard."

They were the first Americans to explore the Himalaya in depth and break the British monopoly over Himalayan mountaineering.