Dreaming of East: Western Women and the Exotic Allure of the Orient

By Barbara Hodgson

Book Overview

When Lady Mary Wortley Montagu visited the baths in Turkey in 1717 she was so tightly corseted that Turkish women were convinced her husband had locked her into some devious machine. Montagu's account of her journey helped bring the region into the Western world's consciousness, and by the 1800s, the vogue for Orientalia had overtaken a continent slowly sinking into the gloomy repressions of the Victorian era. Richly illustrated with color photos and sketches, "Dreaming of East" examines not just the exotic trappings of the Middle East but the heady freedoms it offered Western women. Conditions to defer to men, women travelers were suddenly free to make their own choices and form their own opinions, ones that were respected by all people, including men. For a woman all too used to her inferior status, this venture into quasi-equality - and latent sexuality - was exhilarating. When she returned home, and found herself again relegated to second place, she would never be content there again.

• Format: Hardcover
• Language: English
• ISBN: 1553651189
• ISBN13: 9781553651185
• Release Date: August 2005
• Publisher: Greystone Books
• Length: 192 Pages
• Weight: 1.30 lbs.
• Dimensions: 0.8" x 5.5" x 9.0"

Customer Reviews

Cloistered East a place of freedom for women!

For generations of Western women, Eastern travel has signified freedom. Yet in the more `liberal' West this does not compute. How can the cloistered East be a place of emancipation? Through a series of portraits of 18th to 20th century women who traveled to the eastern Ottoman empire - Egypt, Palestine, Syria, Iraq and Turkey - Hodgson demonstrates the calculus. Among Eastern liberties counted by women like Isabel Burton, the wife of adventurer Richard Burton: `the inconsequence of time' and the loose clothing. The Canadian author is a book designer, and the engravings, paintings, sketches and photographs make this book a jewel to behold.

Travelogues of early women explorers

What a fascinating book! While Westerners of today often imagine the Middle East as a place where women are oppressed, European ladies of the 18th to early 20th century went there for freedom from the restrictive Western culture. The book quickly acknowledges that many of these women saw only what they expected to see in the land of Arabian Nights. Most of these women would have been deemed Orientalists by Edward Said. Nevertheless, their journals provide an interesting perspective on European as well as North African/Middle Eastern culture. Many of these women were early feminists, cross-dressing as men to gain freedom, exploring where few other Westerners, let alone women, had before. This book paints a fascinating picture of these early female travellers to one of the most interesting areas of the world.