British Women's History - Book Report/Review Example

British Women's History What Insights Does Representation Horse Riding in Anne Blunt's Bedouin Tribes of the Euphrates (1879) Give Into The Understanding of Different Feminities and White British Womanhood Abstract This study examines Bedouin Tribes of the Euphrates (1879) of Anne Blunt, British woman who travelled in, lived in, and wrote about the Middle East. It examines and critiques this woman's representations of self and nation in the Middle Eastern countries where she lived and travelled. It traces a tradition of British women's writing about the Middle East and demonstrates how discourse by British woman traveller, who clearly represented herself as affiliated to the peoples of the Middle East nonetheless participated in the imperialist project. The desert and the bedouins, as symbolised by their horses, clearly represent personal freedom from restraint, as well as from the degeneracy of modern Western civilisation. Anne Blunt travelled to the Middle East as one of a married couple. In noticeable ways, her writing shows evidence of the constraints imposed by her husband's presence. Wilfrid Blunt had been in the diplomatic service but he left it in 1869,1 several years before he and his wife Anne travelled to Mesopotamia in 1877. The Blunts did not travel for health or professional reasons. Because of their wealth and social status, they were able to travel for pleasure and adventure. Wilfrid Blunt felt the romantic attraction to the bedouins, and he introduced his wife Anne to the beauty and freedom of desert travel on horseback. Their times together on these desert trips were the best times in their marriage. The Blunts loved horses and embarked on rigorous journeys. The Blunts rode thousands of miles on horseback across the inhospitable stretches of the Syrian, Iraqi and Arabian deserts.2 Anne Blunt's life (1837-1917) and writing career extended into the twentieth century. In fact, her death near the end of the First World War coincided fairly closely with the death of the Ottoman Empire, that "sick man of Europe" whose remains the European nations were waiting to carve up, and did carve up in the wake of the war. By the terms of the post-war Mandate system, Britain occupied Palestine, Iraq, and Transjordan. France took over Syria and Lebanon. The British had already been in possession of Egypt since 1882, and the French had invaded Algeria in 1834. Because Anne Blunt lived to see the outbreak of the First World War, she also witnessed the beginnings of the struggle of the Arab peoples for self-rule. Her husband was an outspoken advocate of Arab nationalism who argued for Egyptian independence. Anne Blunt usually lived part of each year in Egypt after the British takeover in 1882, and she continued to breed Arabian horses both in England and Egypt while Egypt began to transform itself into a twentieth-century nation. As the granddaughter of Lord Byron, Anne Blunt had intimate family connections to the literary heritage of the Romantic era. She also lived through the Victorian period and witnessed its end. Anne Blunt was an accomplished horsewoman, but unlike English horsewomen riding to literary fame in the Middle East, she made a gentlewoman's profession out of her love for horses by breeding and raising them.3 She pointed the way for the British and American women who followed her into the Middle East in the twentieth century and who were able to combine a professional interest with their love for the Middle East. Anne Blunt's literary attention to topographical detail, her careful drawings and maps which illustrate her texts, and her scientific, low-key narrative style joined with an obvious emotional attachment to the desert and desert Arabs provided a bridge to the styles of later women travel writers in the Arab world, such as Geitrude Bell, Freya Stark, and Elizabeth Warnock Fernea.4 For the reader, one of the problems with the texts of Anne Blunt is that they were often written in conjunction with her husband. The prefaces to both Bedouin Tribes of The Euphrates were written by Wilfrid Scawen Blunt, as are the last one hundred twenty-two pages of the second volume of Bedouin Tribes. Anne did the translation work, but Wilfrid, the poet, turned her prose into verse. Finally in 1913, after separating from her husband, Anne Blunt refused to let him co-author a book she was writing on the Arabian horse5. It took most of her life for her to assert herself. In many complex ways, although he encouraged Anne to write, Wilfrid Blunt seemed to exhibit a compulsion to appropriate her literary work. This may account for the self-effacing style Anne Blunt displays in Bedouin Tribes. She rarely foregrounds herself, allowing others, especially Wilfrid, to take centre stage. She is, however, an excellent observer and listener. As a reader, one wishes that her own personality, feelings, and opinions emerged more often in her text. Anne Blunt's horseback riding in the deserts of the Middle East provided her with a means of creating and maintaining a relationship with her husband, fulfilling intensely personal emotional needs. Wilfrid Blunt admitted that he felt no need for infidelity in the desert: "My pleasures in the East were not those of the flesh"6; however, whenever he returned to England, the "European aspect" of his marriage (i.e., his chronic infidelity) surfaced again. It is no wonder that Anne Blunt treasured the journeys she was able to take alone with her husband: "I have been almost too happy, I suppose in our being aloneand if we never make another journey I shall never be happy any more (in that way)"7. Perhaps because horseback riding in the desert was so deeply associated with love in Anne Blunt's mind, it became a more meaningfully symbolic practice for her as her life progressed. On horseback with Wilfrid in the desert, Anne Blunt was not in a harem, and yet, paradoxically and metaphorically, she was, sealed off with her beloved, the veil of the tent enclosing them in a special space. Riding horses also symbolised for Anne Blunt Euro-empowerment in the Middle East and served to juxtapose her with local women she met on her travels through the desert and especially in urban harems. She repeatedly expressed her sympathy for the plight of such women, but really wanted little to do with them. As a European woman on a horse in the desert in the company of her husband, Anne Blunt was free to join the masculine world and enjoy her husband's company in ways, which were impossible for local women. Her ability to ride long hours across vast stretches of territory helped define her identity as a woman writer in the Middle East. The Englishwoman in her riding habit is a by-now-familiar figure in the drama of the woman writer in the Middle East. Mounted on a horse, she rides onto the stage of the desert as a woman who can act like a man, or in Blunts case, go where her man goes and be his love but still remain a proper lady. In Britain, horseback riding had traditionally been an activity open to women of the upper classes, one of the few means by which they interacted with men on a fairly equal footing. They joined the hunt, riding to hounds, and taking fences just as the men did, even though they rode side-saddle.8 In the Middle East, where women did not possess riding skills or the opportunity to ride, European women who could ride well had definite social advantages. The bedouins greatly respected anyone who displayed good horsemanship. Adding to Anne Blunt's status in the desert was her possession of a revolver. Like Hester Stanhope and Isabel Burton, Anne Blunt carried a weapon on her desert journeys, and, when someone she met wanted her revolver as a gift, "I only replied that I could not spare it" (2: 93). Anne Blunt continued to ride in a ladylike manner (side-saddle) for most of her life, but on a horse in the Middle East, even riding side-saddle, she was, unlike the women she met on her travels, freed from the confinement she saw as defining the experience of the women around her. She despised the inconvenient methods by which local women had to travel because of their sequestered status. In one scene in Bedouin Tribes, Anne Blunt describes "two Turkish ladies" travelling in "panniers" slung between camels or horses, They are the wife and mother-in-law of a major of regulars at Baghdad, and have undertaken this very serious journey, I am sure without the least suspicion of what they were doing; for it is impossible to suppose that any amount of devotion to the major, could have faced the thought of a four weeks' journey, penned up in this way like fowls in a coop, and looking out from a pannier, lurching all day long like a ship at sea on a world darkened by a thick cotton veil. (1:136) Anne Blunt herself abhorred travel by ship; her husband claimed it was the one thing of which she was afraid.9 The sense of imprisonment she emphasises in this passage is something from which she, by way of contrast, is entirely freed because she rides her horse. No veil, no ship, and no darkened world for her. She lives in the open in the hot sun, her face tanned by long hours without a veil. Travelling in a caravan with these same women all the way to Baghdad, Anne Blunt remarks on them several times. Since she knows only Arabic, and they only Turkish, she is unable to converse much with them but is keenly aware of their presence. Later in the trip, she observes, They seem, as far as I can gather, to have got used to their journey, and I expect will be rather sorry to go back to the stupid life of the harem in Baghdad. They may even some day regret the old mule and the pannier which helped them to see something at least of the world. (1:175) Set off against these women, Anne Blunt rides out in the fresh air, directing her horse in whatever direction she pleases and writing about her travels. Horses are a metaphor for freedom, skill, action, and independence. These same Turkish women remain objects of Blunts pity throughout her journey to Baghdad. Just before the Blunts' caravan reaches Baghdad, the travellers must pass through a flooded lake area, where deep mud has made the footing for the animals treacherous. One of the mules carrying the Turkish ladies refuses to move: So the poor women, who had put on their best clothes to come smartly into Baghdad with, were bundled out into the mud, and had to trudge in their beautiful European boots across the slush, and then sit in the rain till the mule could be persuaded to follow. We had no time to wait to see how they got out of their difficulties, and I have a forlorn recollection of them huddled up under the mud bank, -clumsy and absurd figures, a pitiful sight, with their wretched bedabbled silk gowns clinging to them. (1:183) The desert and the horses Anne Blunt loved that were bred to thrive in the desert provided her with a place that very much mattered to her definition of herself. For Anne Blunt, horses represented nobility of breeding as well as freedom of movement. In many ways, well-bred horses became metaphors for the Blunts as well-bred people. In Aleppo the Blunts purchased a mare of excellent breeding large enough (fifteen hands) to serve as a mount for Wilfrid, who was tall. They named the horse Hagar, after the mother of Ismail (Ishmael). In Arab legend, Ismail was the forefather of all nomadic desert Arabs, the archetypal "first horse tamer" (2: 265). After being expelled with his mother from his father's tent (Abraham in Arabic is "Ibrahim"), Ismail "captured a mare from among a herd which he found running wild" (2: 265). In her description of the horse they name Hagar, Anne Blunt reveals why Arabian horses were so prised in England and used to develop the English Thoroughbred: She was not remarkably handsome, being ewe-necked, and having a strange wild head; but her depth of girth and her long muscular hindquarters gave promise of what she really possessed in a wonderful degree, speed and staying power. These we might find very necessary in our adventures. Endurance of fatigue on the road and hardiness under want of food are qualities that may always be reckoned on in buying an Arab horse, no matter what his looks or what his pedigree; but speed is exceptional, and confined to the best strains of blood. Hagar, as we called her, was of the Kehilan-Ajuz breed, the fastest, the stoutest, and the most English-looking of them all. (1:58) This description of Hagar could well be used as a description of Anne Blunt herself: not particularly beautiful, but courageous and tough. Even in later years, after Anne and Wilfrid had separated in 190610, Wilfrid said of Anne, "There was never anybody so courageous as she was"11. Her texts reveal that Anne Blunt was "physically resilient, level-headed in crises, immensely brave, self-assured, resourceful, adaptable, unsentimental and scholarly".12 All these adjectives describe what Anne Blunt admired about Arabian horses too, except of course the purely human traits of "unsentimental and scholarly." Also Hagar's double, Anne Blunt was eventually sent away from her husband's tent. Anne Blunt's texts project the feeling that truly noble Englishwomen like herself can bond with the nobility of the Arab horse. Anne Blunt herself travelled to bedouin lands, appropriated the beauty, chivalry, and poetry of the Arab horse as a symbol of what the Blunts perceived of as the poetry and nobility inherent in the independent bedouin way of life, and transported this construct home to England where it could become even more truly hers. In both England and Egypt, she could "own" those aspects of the Arab life she needed to define her own subjectivity. In buying Arab horses and setting up the Crabbet Arabian Stud, Anne Blunt appropriated the "Orient" as surely as Mary Wortley Montagu did in having her portrait painted in Turkish dress, or Hester Stanhope did in riding in a triumphal procession through the ruins of Palmyra, or in establishing a home on top of a little mountain in Lebanon.13 In their ubiquitous riding habits, whether exposed or hidden under Arab cloaks, British women writers ended up by riding off with the Middle East. Through their travel books, the countries and people of the Middle East became commodities that a British audience found eminently fascinating. But although women writers exploited a literary market, and participated in the structures of imperialism, oftentimes unknowingly and unwillingly, they also demonstrated a deeply felt affection for the people among whom they lived, as well as an appreciation for their culture. Not always "others," Fatima in Mary Wortley Montagu's text, Sheikh Yussef in Lucie Duff Gordon's letters, and Fans in Anne Blunt's text were people too, at least within the constraints of the cultural constructions which these authors adopted in their writing and thinking.14 The case of Anne Blunt is a good example of the way a woman's experience in the Middle East provided the means of expanding opportunities for personal development. Both while she was married to Wilfrid Blunt, and after she separated from him, Anne Blunt often lived part of the year in Egypt and part in England. Egypt's warm dry winter climate was an ideal escape from dreary English winters, and the cool lush summers in the English countryside provided a pleasant respite from the intense heat of the Cairo summer. Anne Blunt planted extensive gardens in Egypt, bringing a little bit of England into Egypt. She also exported Arabian horses from Egypt to the Crabbet Stud in England, taking a bit of Arabia and Egypt to England with her. This is obviously a symbol of cultural exchange between civilisations. What does emerge in Bedouin Tribes of the Euphrates is Anne Blunts quiet competence. Anne Blunt had impeccable aristocratic connections, yet she remains an unassuming and low-key narrator throughout her texts, allowing her husband to assume the leading role in their "Oriental" drama. Her descriptive talents are considerable, and her careful drawings of scenes and figures along the route display a keen eye for detail and a dedication to accuracy. In this sense, although her journey is a romantic one, in search of the noble desert Arab and his horses, her style is not romantic. Anne Blunt's gives her a means of self-expression, however much that expression was compromised by the intrusiveness of her husband's voice into her writing. Because of her husband's more flamboyant and outgoing personality, quiet and reserved Anne Blunt tended to be overshadowed by her husband. Like the proper lady that she was, she rarely put herself forward. However, time proved that she was an excellent observer as an author, as meticulous and as dedicated to literary "authenticity" as she was to authenticity in breeding Arabian horses. Anne Blunt's text project the feeling that truly noble Englishwomen like herself can bond with the nobility of the Arab horse. Anne Blunt herself travelled to bedouin lands, appropriated the beauty, chivalry, and poetry of the Arab horse as a symbol of what the Blunts perceived of as the poetry and nobility inherent in the independent bedouin way of life, and transported this construct home to England where it could become even more truly hers. In both England and Egypt, she could "own" those aspects of the Arab life she needed to define her own subjectivity. The desert and the bedouins, as symbolised by their horses, clearly represent personal freedom from restraint and from the corruption and degeneracy of urban Turkish rule, as well as from the degeneracy of modern Western civilisation. Many of women travel writers ended up as cultural hybrids, and their experiences in the Middle East provided them with the means of exploring and expressing alternative subjectivities, a process often symbolised through the metaphor of cross-cultural and /or cross-gendered dressing. Aristocrats or middle-class domestic women, these British women writers seemed able to "put on" new identities which gave them greater freedom and empowerment as women. Being able to travel and ride off into the desert or mountains provided for many an escape from gender restrictions at home. It gave them the opportunity to prove themselves tough, resourceful, adaptable, energetic, and productive women.15 As well as being their career, the East also became the grave of several of English women writers. Lucie Duff Gordon was buried in Cairo. Anne Blunt was buried in the Catholic section of the Abbasieh Cemetery in Cairo.16 Hester Stanhope was buried in her garden in Lebanon. In 1989 her remains were removed from Djoun and reburied in the British cemetery not far away in the village of Abey.17 The Middle East gave much to all these women writers, most of all the opportunity to write themselves into a more culturally complex subjectivity outside the confines of their own British Harem. References Beddoe, D., (1998) Discovering Women's History: A Practical Guide to Researching the Lives of Women Since 1800, 3rd ed. London: Longman Lowenthal, Cynthia, (1994) Lady Mary Wortley Montagu and the Eighteenth-Century Familiar Letter. London: U of Georgia Press Lewis, Reina, (1996) Gendering Orientalism: Race. Femininity and Representation, London: Routledge Longford, Elizabeth, (1980) A Pilgrimage of Passion: The Life of Wilfrid Scawen Blunt. New York: Knopf Melman, Billie, (1992) Women's Orients: Englishwomen and the Middle East. 1718-1918. Ann Arbor: U of Michigan Press Murphy, Dervla, (1985) A Pilgrimage to Nejd: The Cradle of the Arab Race. By Lady Anne Blunt. London: Century Publishing Purvis, J., (1992) 'Using Primary Sources When Researching Women's History from a Feminist Perspective', Women's History Review, Vol. 1 pp. 273-303 Tosh, J., (2002) The Pursuit of History: Aims, Methods and New Directions in the Study of Modern History, 3rd ed. London: Longman Wheatcroft, Andrew, (1993) The Ottomans. London: Viking Read More