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This title in other formats:Dreaming of East: Western Women and the Exotic Allure of the Orientby Barbara Hodgson
Synopses & ReviewsPublisher Comments: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. Book News Annotation:Clad in corsets, sturdy travel suits, and overwhelming cultural
expectations, women of means of the eighteenth and nineteenth
centuries traveled in droves to see the exotic east. They found
themselves living in tents, conversing with scholarly sheiks, writing
reams of reports and letters, observing (and emulating) the habits of
the harems. In the process they found themselves making their own
decisions and forming their own opinions. In this extremely well-
illustrated account of how the image of the Middle East, if not the
reality, informed the idea of female independence, Hodgson describes
how Western women reconciled their various and often incorrect and
contradictory perceptions of about the cultures of the region with
their own desperate need to gain some control over their own legal
and social situations.
Annotation ©2006 Book News, Inc., Portland, OR (booknews.com) Book News Annotation:Clad in corsets, sturdy travel suits, and overwhelming cultural
expectations, women of means of the eighteenth and nineteenth
centuries traveled in droves to see the exotic east. They found
themselves living in tents, conversing with scholarly sheiks, writing
reams of reports and letters, observing (and emulating) the habits of
the harems. In the process they found themselves making their own
decisions and forming their own opinions. In this extremely well-
illustrated account of how the image of the Middle East, if not the
reality, informed the idea of female independence, Hodgson describes
how Western women reconciled their various and often incorrect and
contradictory perceptions of about the cultures of the region with
their own desperate need to gain some control over their own legal
and social situations.
Annotation ©2006 Book News, Inc., Portland, OR (booknews.com) What Our Readers Are SayingBe the first to add a comment for a chance to win!Product Details
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