Customer Reviews

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

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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.

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.