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

Janet Collins is a freelance writer in Sechelt, British Columbia.

Since the release of her first illustrated novel, The Tattooed Map
(1995), Hodgson has presented a lush and exotic glimpse into the Middle
East. While some of her titles continue to be works of fiction, she has
increasingly turned her pen to non-fiction that examines various aspects
of life in faraway lands.

In Dreaming of East, Hodgson recounts the extraordinary tales of
several intrepid Western women of the 18th to 20th centuries who
discovered a rare and precious commodity while visiting the Middle
East—freedom. For example, Lady Mary Wortley Montagu visited the baths
in Turkey in 1717—the first European woman on record ever to have done
so. She was so tightly corseted that the Turkish women bathing there
were convinced her husband had locked her into some kind of devious
machine. Montagu not only envied the free and luxurious nudity of the
bathers, but was drawn to the apparent liberty of other facets of their
lives. Other women Hodgson writes about include Lady Hester Stanhope,
Rosita Forbes, and Isabel Burton. Although the backgrounds of the women
varied, as did their reasons for travelling to such exotic locales, they
did have one thing in common—at home they suffered from being women in
a male-dominated society.

Conditioned at home to defer to men, the women travellers were suddenly
free to make their own choices and form their own opinions, which were
respected by all people, including men. For a woman all too used to
inferior status, this venture into quasi-equality—and latent
sexuality—was exhilarating. When she eventually returned to her own
society and found herself again relegated to second place, she would
never be content there again. Her overseas experience would change not
only her, but the lives of subsequent generations of Western women.

Dreaming of East is sumptuously illustrated with paintings, engravings,
and photographs of these intrepid travellers and the exotic places they
visited. This book is a must-read for anyone interested in women’s
studies, women’s history, or the Middle East from a European
perspective.