Category: gender

Posted on

Touching on A Woman in Arabia: “The Person”, “The Lover”, & “The Courtier”

As we have spent a lot of time talking about Bell’s perception and how influential her actions have been towards both the Arabs and the British, we were unable to truly dive in deeper at specific chapters within A Woman in Arabia, so to provide some insight into why looking at “The ‘Person”, “The Lover”, and “The Courtier” is important to give us a holistic and deeper understanding of Bell and her beliefs/what she did in her life. As a recap: A Woman in Arabia was a recollection of Bell’s historical letters, military dispatches, diary entries, and travel writings to offer an intimate look at this woman who shaped nations.

The “Person”

Bell’s “antifeminism” wasn’t simple opposition to women’s rights, it was classed, contextual, and pragmatic. She came from an elite industrial family who believed in John Stuart Mill’s idea of women as rational “Persons”, but within a paternalist system. She shared her family’s view that suffrage required education and civic competence, and that women’s property laws had to change first. For her, it was a matter of readiness, not essence. Bell plays a double-coded role: too male for women, too female for men. She’s simultaneously insider and outsider, using her gender strategically in diplomacy. She’s performing masculinity to access power, while retaining femininity to humanize herself within male hierarchies. Her addressing the British wives of friends from Baghdad degradationally as in saying “A little woman” reaffirms how fractured she can also be as a woman in a predominantly male situated circumstances. Yet she also founded schools, hospitals, and women’s clubs in Baghdad and admired those who defied patriarchal restrictions. Always between categories Bell saw herself as a “Person” in the fullest Millian sense: self-directed, rational, and morally sovereign. Her feminism was paradoxical, personal rather than political, elitist yet emancipatory, compassionate but paternalistic.

The Lover

When Bell took up her post as “Major Miss Bell”, her work at the Intelligence Bureau was kept secret, much was omitted but letters was consistent. However there were a period of three days and three days in November 1915 where no letters came by aka love affair. Bell’s voice across diaries and letters is vivid, commanding, and self-scrutinizing: she organizes camps, nurses aides like Fattuh, curates social worlds, and narrates herself with both ironic wit and romantic candor. When soldier-diplomat Charles “Dick” Doughty-Wylie departs for Albania and secrecy tightens (destroyed letters, evasions to family), she chooses renunciation through motion, “the road and the dawn”, turning heartbreak into purpose as she heads back to the desert, converting private longing into a travel/work manifesto: if politics and society deny fulfillment, she will sublimate desire into maps, monuments, and manuscript pages addressed to him in everything but name.

This brings up the discussion where despite Bell’s likening towards the Arabs and taking their input and often defending them at times, wanting to unite them, as much a game or a way for her to move others around as a pawn for her own unfulfilled desires? Her espionage? Bell’s affection towards married men slowly turns her into an unreliable narrator, despite the plentitude of accounts of others writing on behalf of her and even through her own documented letters and words.

The Courtier

In her later Baghdad years, Gertrude Bell’s story becomes a meditation on power, gender, and the gaze of empire. Once central to Britain’s rule, her authority shrank with Iraq’s new constitution, and she redirected her energy toward archaeology (where she truly embraced becoming an archaeologist) writing the Law of Excavations, founding the Iraq Museum, and thus transforming personal loss of influence into cultural legacy. Her letters reveal both the intimacy and imbalance of her relationship with King Faisal: political dialogue shaded by affection, a romanticized vision of Arab nationhood melting into frustration at his “veering” character. Bell’s prose stages herself as both participant and observer, painting scenes of white robes, whirring fans, and emotional candor, asserting narrative control even as official control slipped away. Through her management of Faisal’s court, choosing Ghazi’s European suits, hiring an English governess, and instructing the queen’s household, she enacted a Western gaze that sought to civilize while sincerely admiring. Her “court-making” blended maternal guidance with imperial authority, a feminine performance of governance within male-dominated politics. As Stykes had once insulted her by calling her “A man woman”. Illness and financial worry “humanized” her final years, but she remained indomitable, writing, organizing, and advising until her health gave way. Within her letters, the commanding tone, vivid self-dramatization, and moral certitude construct a woman who, denied political freedom, found her version of “escape” and meaning in shaping memory of her devotion to the foundation of Iraq.

 

Furthermore, Bell’s letters and diaries (her life overall) reveal loneliness, yearning, and a fierce need to belong somewhere, neither accepted fully by the British establishment nor by the Arab world she loved. Faisal and others trusted her sincerity, even though her loyalty lay with Britain. She wrote about tribes and leaders with both fascination and condescension. Her letters often express admiration for Arab culture, yet they also reveal a belief that Arabs needed British guidance to “civilize” and govern themselves.

Zooming out–> is Bell truly the most “truthful” in her accounts of her life and life generally in Persia as well as with her travels and the founding of Iraq? Bell’s strategic elitism and anxiety about democracy leading to theocracy and also her imperial paternalism in balancing sects AND also being called “Enti Iraqiyah, enti badawiyah—you’re a Mesopotamian, a Beduin.” by King Faisal which was defining for her: a reassignment of identity, accepted as both insider and foreigner. However, not always is a reassignment of identity a positive concept, especially as a spy, whose job essentially is to balance both the “false” and the “truth” or their true beliefs/morals/values with the overall end game and goal of a alrger overarching empire. Bell also “archived” her present days through her photography and her documenting. Her gaze suspending the imperial colonialism, still seen true to this day in the Middle East through her choices, her actions, and her words.

At the very end, did Gertrude Bell die a hero of empire (a queen) or a victim of its contradictions?

Notes and post curated by: Nabiha

Posted on

Reflections on Isabella Eberhardt

I must say, I love a good adventure, Isabella Eberhardt’s adventure however, while wild and exciting, left a confused and hyper romanticized legacy that left a bad taste in my mouth. In looking back at the readings and discussion notes for writing this post, I noticed two major themes along which our study of Isabella Eberhardt fell.  The first theme was intentions and loyalties. Discussion of this theme revolved mostly around Eberhardt’s relationships with different people she came across, particularly, her relationship with the people of Algeria and her relationship with general Lyautey. While there is no definitive evidence which speaks to Eberhardt’s absolute allegiance to anyone but herself and the road, I believe that insight may be gained into her allegiances by analyzing two things. The first is Eberhardt’s own writings about topics surrounding the French and North African populations in both [INSERT TEXT} and [INSERT TEXT]. In [INSERT TEXT] she says “INSERT QUOTE”. Now, while this may have simply been an implication of Eberhardt’s personal admiration for Lyautey rather than her admiration for France’s colonial project, other evidence, such as her saying “INSERT QUOTE” on page [insert pg number] of [INSERT TEXT], suggests that she did, at least somewhat, buy into the French vision of North Africa, even if unintentionally.

The second thing that must be analyzed when attempting to decipher Eberhardt’s loyalties is her biographer’s outlooks on her journey. Now here, opinions do diverge, with some biographers, such as [THAT ONE COUPLE], who in my opinion were more so admirers than experts, claiming that Eberhardt’s allegiances were shifty, and that she was simply trying to survive wherever she went. [AUTHORS’ NAMES] appear to relay that Eberhardt was truly just a writer, a good one, and that if she was looped into French colonial projects, it was unintentional and cause by people taking advantage of her writings. For instance, on [insert pg] of their introduction, they say that Eberhardt “insert quote,” suggesting that Eberhardt was simply an innocent young adventurer trying to live out what she thought to be her purpose. These authors go on to build an what is, in my opinion, an overromanticized or maybe a glorified version of Isabella Eberhardt that focuses more on her allure as an adventurer than about the political motivations and implications of her adventure.

On the other end of the spectrum and just as essential to analyze when studying Eberhardt is [AUTHOR NAME]. [AUTHOR NAME] hints that Eberhardt was indeed mal-intentioned, saying things such as “quote” (cite) and “quote” (cite). These analyses, unlike those that came before, seem to build a more pragmatic version of Eberhardt that adopted the French cause intentionally, regardless of the reason. Since neither side presents definitive evidence, it is difficult to attach labels to Eberhardt, I find it difficult to believe however that someone with that many question marks around them and who has drawn so much attention across time is completely innocent of political involvement. Eberhardt was young, but she was mature and frankly, selfish, her decisions may not have been made in favor of any ideology, but in the pursuit of self-preservation, which for her may have meant walking on the edge between colonist and colonized. 

The second, and in my opinion, equally important theme was Eberhardt’s nonconforming gender practices. Understanding how Eberhardt acted as a man and as a woman, what each gender meant to her and how and where each gender got her is crucial to understanding her person and positionality. One particularly odd thing that stands out about Eberhardt taking on a male persona in Algeria is that she is simply accepted! Even I did not expect that, I was pleasantly surprised but also wondered whether she was accepted because she was a traveller…would a local woman attempting to do the same thing be equally embraced? Both Eberhardt’s own texts and the films which we watched convey her complex understanding of herself as both man and woman. In many texts, including for instance [INSERT TEXT] she refers to herself using male pronouns. Additionally, not only is she addressed by others as Mahmoud, but she also has, as we discussed in class, a male gaze through which she looks upon other women! For example in [INSERT TEXT] she says “quote” (cite), indicating that she views Algerian women in what one might call a typical orientalist light (although to be fair it isn’t quite clear whether she feels this way about European women as well). The conception of herself as a male only in the public space and as female in private and sexual settings is fascinating and is actually a theme in feminist literature. By being male, she is able to access the inner circles of religious orders and society. She is able to freely engage in her hoodlum behaviour with little protest or outright shaming. I wonder however whether she loses a piece of herself in this way…

In the films, Eberhardt is also seen as both man and woman. In the documentary style reflection on her life, people, mostly men, reflect on her as a woman, but also seem to understand and respect the role she held as a man, reflecting the importance of both personas in her legacy. In the recreation of her adventures, she is seen as Mahmoud outside her home and Isabella inside (although the general still refers to her as Mahmoud). Her role as Mahmoud in the film reflects how she was able to form relationships her female existence would have otherwise prevented, specifically her odd relationship with general Lyautey and of course her relationship with many Sufi men.

Tying all of this together is Isabella’s existence as a writer. Through writing, or maybe for writing, she makes sense of herself and the world around her. Her relationships and her positionality, her goals and her past, and much more. We discussed the possibility of her writing being a production of information that categorizes her as a spy…I think that while this may be true, it was not her intention. I believe, because of the passion and colorful language with which she wrote about her travels, that Eberhardt genuinely had a love for the unknown. Whether she got taken advantage of or eventually served the French after losing purpose is a different story. Essentially, I don’t know whether she was a spy or not, and I don’t know that I particularly care…to me she was a woman who defied norms, which in some ways is “cool” but in other ways is genuinely stupid. She was the original Transcendentalist and I am not a huge fan of transcendentalism. She chose to live a difficult but eventful life, a selfish choice, but one that I suppose satisfied her craving for discovery.

 

Posted on

The Mirror Trick

The Mirror Trick

In Marie-Odele Delacour and Jean-René Hulue’s “Introduction: The Game of ‘I’”, they draw special attention to the rhetorical and thematic use of perspective in Eberhardt’s writing. In “The Mirror,” a short prelude to the rest of her short story collection, the first-person narrator is Mahmoud Saadi. He is a male wanderer who becomes the vessel for Isabel’s writing, though in the text he is not named, and without further inspection his role is mostly passive. The more active subject is Mohammed, who is described to be of “perfect masculine beauty.”. Mahmoud observes Mohammed looking at himself in a little penny mirror and speculates at his interiority — at the end Mohammed closes the mirror and smiles, and the reader is left unsure as to whether Mohammed was using the mirror to spy upon the spying on Mahmoud.

While reading this passage, I remembered a quote that’s been pinging itself around in my head recently. Margaret Atwood says: “Male fantasies, male fantasies, is everything run by male fantasies? Up on a pedestal or down on your knees, it’s all a male fantasy: that you’re strong enough to take what they dish out, or else too weak to do anything about it. Even pretending you aren’t catering to male fantasies is a male fantasy: pretending you’re unseen, pretending you have a life of your own, that you can wash your feet and comb your hair unconscious of the ever-present watcher peering through the keyhole, peering through the keyhole in your own head, if nowhere else. You are a woman with a man inside watching a woman. You are your own voyeur.” While this refers more to heterosexual objectification, it nevertheless provides an interesting perspective on Eberhart’s superfluous and intersectional identity as a woman who often disparages women, a woman who travels as a man, and a white person who claims a middle-Eastern identity and inheritance. 

In their reading of “The Mirror,” Delacour and Hulue claim Eberhardt as an incredibly active participant; through their description, it’s easy to mistake her as a character in the narration itself. With this supportive interpretation, the question that the Atwood reference then invokes is whether or not there is such a thing as an internal, uncorrupted female gaze. The fact that Eberhardt is the female puppeteer behind these two male figures is a significant reverse-power play considering the context of her time, but that logic is marred when taking into account the privilege of her whiteness in shaping ethnic stories. The infinite “spying” aspect of the mirror trick also relates to Atwood’s quote as it is unclear if Mohammed is reflecting internally within himself, if it is only Mahmoud is spying on Mohammed, if it is Mohammed is spying on Mahmoud spying on Mohammed, or, to get really rhetorical, if Mohammed is piercing the veil of Mahmoud to lay his eyes on Eberhardt; Atwood’s quote is less about separate male and female gazes, but and more that they are inevitably melded within a woman. Is Eberhardt, this double agent of politics and identity, just living an amped up version of this psychosis?

 

Posted on

Isabelle Eberhardt: Radically un-Transgressive

As a Kabyle-American, I found all of Eberhardt’s journeys quite fascinating. In a lot of the ways I’ve experienced and understood Algeria, she is transgressive if understood as a woman. While I use the pronouns “she” and “her” for Eberhardt, this is done only for linguistic clarity. I think her gender was far more complicated than just being a woman traveler in drag. Is it fair to even consider her a woman when her gender/religious/cultural expressions were entirely male? If Eberhardt is understood as a man, then really, all she did was not very transgressive. I think I’m inclined to read her this way because the very few times she refers to herself in her daily journals, masculine pronouns are used. So, she is then a masculine European figure, trying to (quasi-)disguise herself as an Arab. Once again, this is very surface level transgressive, and instead further reinforces what Mohamed Boudhan calls “France’s Arabizing function.” 

Let me explain! “These Berber assemblies are tumultuous. Passions have free rein; violent, they often end in blood. However, the Berbers always remain protective of their collective rights. They defend themselves against autocracy by suppressing those who dare aspire to it. In Kenadsa the Arab theocratic spirit has triumphed over the republican confederative Berber spirit” (Eberhardt 307; Oranese South II). Essentially, Eberhardt establishes an ethnic hierarchy of her experiences in Algeria. The (often French-associated) Arabs act as enlightened Muslims, much better and more civilized than their primitive, Indigenous counterparts. While her fascination with Arab identity may be read as transgressive from a western lens, when Eberhardt is understood as someone in the lived reality of North Africa, she instead implicates herself with a fellow ruling, dominating class. She, as a native European, is understood as a qualified speaker on civilization, and she knows the Arabs have it where the Berbers don’t. It completely reinforces the French colonial tactic of dividing and conquering. Arabs and Berbers are SO different, and if you can’t be European, it’s much better to be a civilized Arab! 

Despite the interesting and somewhat controversial history of Amazigh marabouts, Eberhardt associates this caste of people with Arabo-Islamic civilization. “The marabouts’ influence on Kenadsa has been so profound that Berbers and Kharantine have forgotten their languages, no longer using anything but Arabic. Their behavior has softened and become civilized” (Eberhardt 308; Oranese South II). Eberhardt then believes in a cultural/linguistic homogeneity, a precursor to the aftereffects of French colonialism on North Africa. While Eberhardt claims to be a neutral passerby on her journey to self-discovery in the exotic east, she claims to have “never played any kind of political role” (Bowles 87; Eberhardt’s letter to the editors of La petite Gironde). Yet, just a few sentences later, she admits, “whenever possible, I make a point of trying to explain to my native friends exact and reasonable ideas, explaining to them that French domination is far preferable to having the Turks here again, or for that matter, any other foreigners. It is completely unjust to accuse me of anti-French activities” (Bowles 87; Eberhardt’s letter to the editors of La petite Gironde).

Overall, Eberhardt is an incredibly interesting character, but perhaps for the exact opposite reasons western media lauds her as a transgressive, anti-racial, proto-feminist. To me, she is the perfect example of Europe’s ability to separate, class, and racialize their colonial subjects, as well as setting the stage for the postcolonial Arabization of North Africa. Eberhardt’s views were perhaps more progressive than the average European of the era, however, it wasn’t anything particularly revolutionary, despite how impressive her story was. Like Kabani says, “[Eberhardt] became a mouthpiece for patriarchy, voicing traditional male views on sex, culture, religion and politics” (Kabani ix). It’s like the kids say: fork was found in kitchen! 

Posted on

Hello world!

Hello Students of Spies of Empire!

Lets have some fun interrogating the machinery of Empire as it reveals itself through the shenanigans of some of its more famous–or infamous!—writer-spies-archeologists-travelers: spies one and all!

We will think about what “spying” means” and whose interests it serves–and ask when it can be a force for good or evil, control or being controlled.

More to follow….for now, welcome to the course!