This dissertation looks at female perspectives of major discourses of the 19th century, such as national identity, modernization, religion, and education and dismantles the preconceptions that feminine writing contains itself in the private sphere and on topics of domesticity. It addresses the travel narratives of female writers from three Latin American countries: Mexico, Chile, and Argentina. Their works show the multiple ways female travelers appropriated the literary genre and created authority and legitimacy for themselves. In Chapter one, I explore the discourse of modernity and analyze the Argentine writer Eduarda Mansilla’s travel book Recuerdos de viaje and compare it to her contemporary countryman Domingo F. Sarmiento’s Viajes por Europa, Africa i América 1845-1847. They were two public figures that traveled to the United States a decade apart from each other and took two distinct approaches to their observations and analysis of modernization and democracy. In the second Chapter, I consider Viajes a varias partes de Europa by Enriqueta and Ernestina Larrainzar into the national corpus and analyze the multiple representations of Mexico and national identity that occur in their narrative. I highlight their use of modern and romantic discourses to create two images of Mexico. Lastly, in Chapter three, I examine the importance of religious discourse in Mis impresiones y mis vicisitudes en mi viaje a Europa pasando por el estrecho de Magallanes y en mi escursión a Buenos Aires pasando por la cordillera de los Andes by the Chilean Maipina de la Barra. I discuss how she strategically uses religion for authority to represent herself as a pilgrim, her journeys as pilgrimages, her travel book as a moral guidebook, and finally how it is used to advocate female education. In sum, I demonstrate the complex relationships women had with the nation and writing by examining how they destabilized these concepts and strategies they used to legitimize their participation and knowledge in a male dominated genre and at the same time maintain their acceptable feminine authority. The study of their travel books will give insight on women as creative writers in a versatile genre and as historical subjects.