Rivers, freedom and constraint in some of Stevenson’s autobiographical writing
Résumé
This chapter examines the various ways in which Robert Louis Stevenson, in a selection of essays from the 1880s, expresses the idea of freedom and its contrary notably through the image of rivers and their flow. The freedoms in question are multiple — the freedom to move forwards professionally, to travel unfettered, to explore the world. The constraints are just as varied — the feeling of being hemmed in geographically, of being locked into the logic of family heredity, of being condemned to long periods of convalescence and subject to the constraints of family life.