Gender, Modernity, and Liberty – Middle Eastern and Western Women’s Writings

Abstract

This book presents a dialogue between western and Middle Eastern women that is often presumed never to have happened. It supplies us with a collection of extracts fromOttoman, Egyptian, British, andAmericanwriters, each accompanied with a biography and literary introduction of its writer. The book covers 100 years, beginning with 1837, and focuses on writings by women from Istanbul and Cairo, key locations for the flowering of Middle Eastern feminism. As mentioned in the “Introduction,” the articulation of women’s views was particularly advanced in these two cities. The historical background of this period, as well as its effects upon women in both the Ottoman Empire (toward the establishment of the Turkish Republic) and Egypt (marked by Arab nationalism and the country’s move toward independence) is well explained in the editors’ introduction and photo essay, which displays the collection’s main theme. In a nutshell, this period witnessed the emergence of organized feminism in both theWest and the East and, at the same time, marked the start of a significant growth in the number of European visitors to both cities due to the increased availability of regular steamship travel. Based upon the information provided, it seems that Middle Eastern women followed the conditions and campaigns of western women with great interest, even though they proffered a cogent critique of western liberation’s limitations and adopted only select western feminist ideas. The writers’ very “staunch” feminism was strongly based on opinionated materials that are subversive even in our times. For example, Lady Anne Brassey (1839-87) is quoted as writing: “Turkey would never take its proper place till…the softening and purifying influence of women was allowed to be felt” (p. 128). Prior to that, she asserts: “It is a great mistake of the Turks to think that they ...