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THOSE EYES KOHL BLACKENED ENFLAME

Re-reading the Feminine in Gertrude Bells
Early Travel Writing
Emma Short
Newcastle University

Abstract
In May 1892, Gertrude Bell embarked on her first major non-European voyage to
Persia, a journey that not only inspired her first published piece of travel writing,
Persian Pictures (1894) and her translation of a selection of poems by the
medieval Sufi poet, Hafiz (1897), but which also informed Bells lesser-known,
fictional writing. This article reads Bells Persian Pictures alongside her unpublished short story, The Talisman, or, the Wiles of Women (c. 18921893) in
order to consider the ways in which the feminine functions in her representations of the areas to which she traveled. Through this comparative reading, this
article demonstrates howthrough her use of the feminineBell subverts the
constitutive tropes of Orientalist discourse of the East as sexualized, seductive,
and dangerous (Yegenoglu 1998: 73), and instead positions it as an active and
informed agent that knowingly challenges and resists Western colonial attempts
at penetration and/or domination.
Keywords: Gertrude Bell, femininity, gender, Orientalism, Persian Pictures, veil

In his highly influential work, Orientalism (1978), Edward Said highlighted

the feminization of the East in travel writing of the nineteenth century,
demonstrating how the East/Orient is othered and set up in opposition to
the West/Occident. In his critique of Orientalist writings, Said included the
work of Gertrude Bell, the British female traveler who is most well known
today for her involvement in the creation of modern Iraq. Bell repeatedly figured the East as feminine in her travel writings and letters, but I maintain
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doi:10.3167/jys.2015.160102

Volume 16, Issue 1: 828 Berghahn Books 2015

ISSN 1465-2609 (print), ISSN 1752-2358 (online)

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Emma Short

that the complexity of Bells negotiations with the politics of gender and
space in her writing has been overlooked. Here I read two pieces of work by
Bell: her first published piece of travel writing, Persian Pictures ([1894]
2005) and an unpublished and previously unknown short story, The Talisman, or the Wiles of Women (c. 18921893), in order to shed light on the
ways in which the feminine functions in her representations of the areas to
which she traveled. Beginning with an interrogation of the critical response
to Persian Pictures, and its uneasy relationship with Orientalism, I draw on
feminist postcolonial criticism to examine Bells position within late nineteenth-century discourses of gender and imperialism, and consider the ways
in which she negotiates such discourses in her travel writing. I then move
to read Persian Pictures alongside The Talisman beginning with a close
examination of that short story. I widen this reading to a comparative analysis of the two texts in order to demonstrate the ways in which, through her
use of the feminine, Bell subverts Orientalist rhetorical strategies and challenges Western colonialist attitudes toward the East.
Born on 14 July 1868 at Washington New Hall in County Durham,
Gertrude Bell was the daughter of Sir Hugh Bell and Mary Shield, and the
granddaughter of eminent industrialist, Sir Isaac Lowthian Bell. Elected
Lord Mayor of Newcastle in 1875, Sir Isaac was an innovative metallurgist
who owned several iron, steel, and aluminum works and factories throughout the country, and was also the director of the North Eastern Railway and
the Forth Bridge Company. His success meant that the Bells were, as Liora
Lukitz points out, one of the richest and most enlightened families of
[their] time ([2006] 2013: 6). As a result of this, Gertrude Bell had at her disposal not only the ability to travel with relative ease that such wealth
brought with it, but also an education that, for a young woman in the late
nineteenth century, was extremely privileged. Between the ages of fifteen
and seventeen, Bell attended the exclusive Queens College School for girls
in Londons Harley Street, established in 1848, and the first institution in
Britain to offer the opportunity for girls to gain academic qualifications. In
1886, shortly before turning eighteen, Bell became one of the first women to
be admitted to Oxford University and, just two years later in June 1888, she
became the first woman to gain a first class honors in Modern History from
Oxford. In May 1892, Bell embarked on her first major voyage to Persia,1
beginning a lifetime of travel that encompassed two round-the-world trips
in 189798 and 19023, and numerous journeys to the Middle East, which
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continued until her death in Baghdad in 1926.2 Despite her skills as an

archaeologist, cartographer, and photographer, Bell is perhaps best known
today for her involvement in the politics of the Middle East. Appointed Oriental Secretary in 1917, Bells expertise in the geography of the Middle East
led to her involvement in the 1921 Cairo Conference, in which she played
a central role in the formation of Iraq. Although it was a journey to Jerusalem
in 1900 that is generally acknowledged to be the primary inspiration for
Bells subsequent interest in and passion for the Middle East, her 1892 journey to Persia was no less formative. I argue further that Persian Pictures,
her published account of this journey, displays an emerging feminine consciousness in its response to and engagement with the areas to which she
traveled, and the people she encountered.

Miss Bells Little Book: The Critical Response to

Persian Pictures
In April 1892, Bell traveled with her aunt and cousin, Mary and Florence
Lascelleswife and daughter of Sir Frank Lascelles, the then British
Ambassador to Tehranto Persia (now Iran). Bells biographer, H.V.F. Winstone, gives details of their journey, noting that the group arrived in Tehran
in the spring of 1892 by the long trail route through Germany and Austria to Constantinople and on to Tiflis, Balen and the Caspian Sea [1978]
(2004: 69). Bells initial residence in Persia was the British Legation in
Tehran, home to her uncle and his family, though the group moved to Gulahekthe summer quarters of the British Legation, approximately six miles
from Tehranshortly after Bells arrival. She spent a great deal of time
enjoying the gardens of the colonial resort in which she was staying and
taking Persian lessons from a local Sheikh. She also took the opportunity
to explore the surrounding areas, frequently making excursions on horseback. Persian Pictures, Bells account of her travels in Persia was originally
published anonymously under the title Safar Nameh: Persian Pictures in
1894. The book consisted of diary entries made during her time in Persia,
with an additional six chapters added after her return to England at the
publishers request. Bell initially had serious doubts over the publication
of Persian Pictures, writing privately to her close friend Flora Russell in
December 1892 that:
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I would vastly prefer them to remain unpublished. I wrote them you see
to amuse myself and I have got all the fun out of them I ever expect to
have, for modesty apart they are extraordinarily feeble. Moreover I do so
loathe people who rush into print and fill the world with their cheap
and nasty workand now I am going to be one of them. At first I refused,
then my mother thought me mistaken and my father was disappointed
and as they are generally right I have given way. But in my heart I hold
very firmly to my first opinion. Dont speak of this. I wish them not to be
read. (Bell 1927: I, 24)
At first glance, it would seem that Bells initial resistance to publishing her
Persian sketches was due to little more than a lack of self confidence in her
writing, and an embarrassment, perhaps, that her book might be associated
with the cheap and nasty work of those who rush into print, and therefore thought of as unconsidered and uninformed. Any such fears, at least
initially, proved to have been unfounded, and the book received largely
favorable reviews. The Scotsman referred to the sketches as picturesque
and vivid in colouring, and yet in no respect overdrawn (Safar Nameh
1894: 3), while the Saturday Review commented that: The anonymous
author of Safar Nameh, who is apparently a lady, also blends poetry with
her prose, and her pictures are pleasantly suggestive, if there is no great
originality in them. She evidently knows Persia well, and she must have
had the entre to the best Persian society (Safar Nameh 1894: 711). As
evidenced by these reviews, the reception to the initial publication of Persian Pictures was, if not wildly enthusiastic, at least not overly critical.
There was a shift in tone in the critical response to Persian Pictures,
which occurred after Bells death in Baghdad in 1926, and began, oddly
enough, with the preface to the 1928 second edition of the work, written by
Orientalist Sir Edward Denison Ross. In his preface, Ross compares Persian
Pictures unfavorably to Edward G. Brownes A Year Amongst the Persians,
first published a year before Bells work in 1893.3 Ross writes: Miss Bells
little book is of course slight in comparison with Brownes, and whereas
Browne took with him to Persia a first-class knowledge of the language and
literature of that country, Miss Bell had only studied Persian for a few
months previously (1928: 6).
Rosss dismissive tone here is compounded not only by his direct comparison of Brownes linguistic excellence with Bells skills as a beginner,
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but also by his insistent and somewhat patronizing employment of the

diminutive in reference to Bells volume. This is repeated in the following
paragraph, in which Ross claims that this little book is free from all details
of geographical discovery or antiquarian research, from all political disquisition and from all useful statistics (1928: 7; emphasis added). Qualities
such as those listed here, which derive from a more analytic approach, are
evidently highly regarded by Ross, and works such as Bells that do not possess these are effectively relegated to the status of travelogue, consigned to
the same class as that choice group of English works of popular travel
writing (1928: 7), which, for Ross, includes George Borrows immensely successful The Bible in Spain (1842).4 Rosss estimationor rather lack of estimationof Bells work is distinctly gendered, and bound up in early
twentieth-century discourses of masculine and feminine, or academic and
populist, travel writing. For Ross, Bells little book falls short, or is even
incapable, of addressing any serious issues, and in particular those issues
which might aid the Western imperial effort. For Ross, the most valuable
things that such a book, as opposed to Bells, can offer are political disquisitions and useful statistics, the latter particularly vague and potentially sinister in nature, suggestive of data collected for future (colonial) use.
Bells work here is, for Ross, too populist and too emotional, concerned not
with statistics but with the spirit of romance of the East, and regarding the
inhabitants of the places to which she travels as little more than picturesque and romantic denizens of Oriental towns and deserts, rather than
as ordinary mortals (Ross 1928: 11). As Farah Ghaderi and Wan Roselezam Wan Yahya observe, Bells Persian travel account has been similarly
dismissed by later critics such as Denis Wright, who sees the work as conveying little more than the youthful sentiment of her first encounter with
the Middle East (1980: 13), or Pallavi Pandit Laisram, who describes Persian Pictures as a romanticism of the East as an escape world (2006: 178).
This association of Bells work with romance implies an inherent exoticism
in her writing, an inability on Bells part to understand the areas to which
she traveled realistically as forming part of the everyday, and to see their
inhabitants as, in Rosss words, ordinary mortals.
Such readings are echoed in Saids Orientalism, which features what has
since become one of the most well known critiques of Bells work. Referring
to Bell as one of a long line of Orientalists-cum-imperial agents,5 Said criticizes the subjective way in which these agents approached and under12 Journeys, Volume 16, Issue 1

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stood the areas to which they traveled, maintaining that, [f]or them all the
Orient was their direct, peculiar experience of it ([1978] 2003: 196, 224).
Said argues further that each believed his version of things Oriental was
individual, self-created out of some intensely personal encounter with the
Orient, Islam, or the Arabs; each expressed general contempt for official
knowledge held about the East ([1978] 2003: 237). While Said later claims
that he wishes only to accentuate the major shift in Orientalism from an
academic to an instrumental attitude ([1978] 2003: 246), his rhetoric here
nevertheless recalls only too clearly Rosss dismissive remarks regarding
the lack of political disquisitions and useful statistics in Bells writing,
as well as the arguments of those aforementioned critics who claim that Bell
presents an overly romanticized version of the East. Again, this critique of
subjective attitudes is implicitly gendered, where the objective, rational and
detached viewpoint is aligned with the (masculine) endeavor of earlier nineteenth-century, academic Orientalists, such as Browne and Ross, and
where this is contrasted with the apparently less rigorous, more subjective,
involved and emotional (feminine) viewpoint of these new Orientalists (to
use Saids term), among whom Bell herself is very decisively placed.
Although Bells work is largely dismissed by Said for its lack of rational
(masculine) objectivity, gender also operates simultaneously in Orientalism
in a seemingly contradictory way to effectively efface Bells femininity. In his
repeated use of masculine pronouns, Saids statements are highly gendered,
and this is, Reina Lewis argues, telling: for Said, in Orientalism at least,
Orientalism is a homogenous discourse enunciated by a colonial subject that
is unified, intentional and irredeemably male (1996: 17). As noted above,
Bellthe only woman to whom Said refersis placed by Said in a list of
male figures, and is referred to along with these figures in purely masculine
terms: each believed his version of things Oriental was individual (Said
[1978] 2003: 237; emphasis added). In this sense, despite being accepted
into the pantheon of male new Orientalists (however damning such an
acceptance may be), Bells own gender is consistently overlooked and
ignored by Said. Despite the gendered associations implicit within Saids
reading of old versus new Orientalists, the subject position of these male
new Orientalistsincluding T.E. Lawrence, David Hogarth, and Charles
Doughtyis nevertheless distinctly and undeniably different to Bells own.
As Lewis observes, Said pays no attention to the possible effects of [Bells]
gendered position on her texts (1996: 18), as if her femininity had no bearJourneys, Volume 16, Issue 1 13

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ing on her response to and engagement with the places and people she
encountered when traveling, whereas in fact, as Lewis maintains,
womens differential access to the positionalities of imperial discourse
produced a gaze on the Orient and the Orientalized other that registered difference less pejoratively and less absolutely than was implied by
Saids original formulations. That is, the positionings within Orientalism
open to women cultural producers were always contingent on the other
shifting relational terms that structured the presumed superiority of the
Western Orientalist. (1996: 4)
What Said and many of Bells other critics fail to acknowledge, then, is the
way in which her positioning within Orientalism was contingent on late
nineteenth-century discourses of gender and imperialism, and, more crucially, the impact of these discourses upon her response to and subsequent
representation of the places to which she traveled.
Bells initial reluctance to publish, and her eventual decision to publish
anonymously, can thus perhaps be attributed to an anticipation of, if not
this specific critique regarding a lack of objectivity, then at least criticism
regarding the extent to which she was qualified to reflect upon Persia and
those who lived there. Indeed, in a letter written to her cousin Horace Marshall from Gulahek (dated 18 June 1892), Bell reveals not only the dramatic
effect of the surroundings upon her own subjectivity, but also an acute
awareness of the influence of British imperial attitudes upon her perception of Persia and its inhabitants:
Are we the same people I wonder when all our surroundings, associations, acquaintances are changed? Here that which is me, which womanlike is an empty jar that the passerby fills at pleasure, is filled with
such wine as in England I had never heard of, now the wine is more
important than the jar when one is thirsty, therefore I conclude, cousin
mine, that it is not the person who danced with you at Mansfield St that
writes to you today from PersiaYet there are dregs, English sediment
at the bottom of my sherbet, and perhaps they flavor it more than I think.
(Bell 1927: 25)
To begin with, the image of the womanlike empty jar employed by Bell
here to describe herself is not only explicitly gendered, but might be read in
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a number of ways. On the one hand, this gendering of the image of the jar
to be filled up implies a problematic reading of a passive femininityone
that is merely filled up with experience as opposed to actively engaging
with that experience. Further, this notion of the self as a womanlike jar to
be filled carries with it connotations of the womb, and prefigures Luce Irigarays reading of Aristotles Physics (Book IV). Irigaray argues that the
female body can be figured as a container, vessel or receptacle, but
she maintains that it only exists as such for both the man and the child, and
crucially not for the woman herself, as [s]he is assigned to be place without occupying a place. Through her, place would be set up for mans use but
not hers (Irigaray [1984] 1993: 52).6 In this sense, Bells depiction of herself as a jar or vessel to be filled up denotes the particular female placelessness to which Irigaray refers (Irigaray [1984] 1993: 52). On the other
hand, Bells image of the womanlike jar can be read as signifying a more
positive feminine receptivity to new ideas and experiences, and a willingness to absorb and engage with these experiences on a more immediate and
subjective level. Though such a reading is still potentially problematic, resting as it does on essentialist notions of femaleness, I maintain that Bells
choice of imagery here derives again, as Ghaderi and Wan Yahya acknowledge, from nineteenth-century discourses of genderthose same discourses
that, in a somewhat circular fashion, went on to shape the attitudes and
opinions of Ross and, to a large extent, of Said.
Equally if not more important to note in this letter is Bells image of the
experiences that fill her as wine, and her reference to the dregs, English
sediments at the bottom of my sherbet, which, she admits, perhaps flavour
it more than I think. Combined, these individual elementsthe wine, the
sediments and the flavoringconstruct a complex image, one which requires
careful dismantling in order for its meaning to be fully appreciated. Firstly, the
metaphor of Bells experiences in Persia as wineand indeed, as such wine
in England I had never before heard ofhints at their intoxicating nature,
and signals Bells awareness of the danger of being overcome by these experiences. Yet more intriguing is the idea of the English sediment that flavors
this experience, perhaps more than I think. Here, Bell acknowledges the
influence of Britishnessthe English sedimentupon her perception of
Persia, and thereby reveals, as Ghaderi and Wan Yahya point out, a high consciousness of the complexity of intercultural encounters and the dynamic
nature of the contact zone (2014: 123). This consciousnessthe awareness
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of the complexity of her encounter with the cultural otheris powerfully resonant throughout Persian Pictures. Reading Bells travel writing alongside
her unpublished short fiction, I here argue further that Bell not only acknowledges the influence of British imperial discourse, but that she subverts and
challenges this discourse through her positioning of the feminine.

The Talisman, or the Wiles of Women: Subverting

Gendered Expectations
Bells unpublished short story, The Talisman, or the Wiles of Women,
exists only as a five-page annotated manuscript, and is held in the Gertrude
Bell Archives at Newcastle University. While the manuscript is undated,
the subject matter and setting of the story (the action takes place in a suburb of Tehran), and the nature of Bells handwriting (similar to that which
appears in letters and diary entries from her time in Persia), all strongly suggest that the story was written circa 18921893. The male protagonist of the
story is the white-bearded Mirza Ibrahim, who carries with him a talisman against the tricks and wiles of women, and the narrative opens on him
shoulder[ing] his way through the crowded streets, protecting himself
from what he sees as the attempted seductions of women, the deadly
scrutiny of arching eyebrows and the arrows of stolen glances (Bell n.d.: 1).
However, from this opening paragraph on, Mirza Ibrahim is constructed
as a comical and ridiculous figure, whose paranoia regarding womens
attempts to seduce him proves unfounded as the fair ladies scarcely paid
any heed to him (Bell n.d.: 1). His focus, and the focus of the narrative then
shifts to a conversation between Ali Agha, a merchant, and Peri Kharmun,
his charming young wife, in which the terms of a wager between the two
are laid out by Peri Kharmun:
whichever of us two either in giving anything to the other or in taking
anything from the others hands omits to say the words Thee I remember and myself forget loses the forfeit and must give the other a costly
present. If thou winnest I will smuggle your petition through the royal
Andarum until it reaches the Shahs hands but if I win you must give me
the beautiful Kaschmir shawl which the princess sold to thee the other
day. (Bell n.d.: 1)
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Having agreed to this wager, her husband departs to return two hours
before sunset. Upon his departure, Peri Kharmun immediately addresses
Mirza Ibrahim as a witness to the wager, at which point the narrator
describes how the sunbeam of her countenance broke through the curtains of the doorway, so that the old man was blinded with the brilliance
of her beauty (Bell n.d.: 1). Assuming imminent danger, the overly suspicious Mirza Ibrahim clutches his Talisman, and repeats the following
incantatory verse: Thine eyes kohl blackened would enflame / The angels,
though they gaze on heavens light / But over me no dominion can claim /
My Talisman protects me from their might (Bell n.d.: 1). The focus on eyes,
and specifically on the female gaze, is clear here. It is in the seductive power
of the female gaze that Mirza Ibrahims anxiety resides, and it is precisely
from this gazewhich he fears would enflame angels with its sexual
potencythat he hopes to protect himself with his talisman.
Unaware of Mirza Ibrahims paranoid delusions, Peri Kharmun is
intrigued by the talisman, and invites the old man into the womens chambers, where they can converse undisturbed. Once inside, Mirza Ibrahim
reveals the nature of the talismana small book, kept in a bag hung from
an embroidered ribbon around his neck, and in the book a description of
every feminine art conceivable (Bell n.d.: 2). Mirza Ibrahim recounts how
he has gathered together the information contained within the book from
his own experiences, having had many wives though never more than four
at once. He has also, he continues, drawn on
the examples of history, the speculations of the philosophers, the teachings of all literature both prose and verse, and now is the book complete.
999 wiles are here describedthere can be no more. Every art is but the
repetition of one of those which I have collected in this book. He who
possesses it, he who studies it is armed against all feminine arts; nary
more he espies her spiders web before she has finished the spinning of
it. Thus I with confidence and with courage enter your house experiencing neither fear nor anxiety. (Bell n.d.: 23)
In the number of examples (999) included in the book and in the process by
which it was compiledMirza Ibrahim having drawn on examples of history, the speculations of philosophers, [and] the teaching of all literature
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sand and One Nights, more commonly known as The Arabian Nights.
Indeed, Bell knew the book well, and references to The Arabian Nights
abound both in Persian Pictures, and in her letters and diaries of this time.
Bell would likely have been familiar with Edward William Lanes translation of the book, a final version of which was published in three volumes by
John Murray in 1859, and reprinted a number of times.7 In Lanes translation, Scheherazade (or Shahrazd) tells 1001 stories to the king in order to
escape execution. Scheherazade is well educated, having read various
books of histories and the lives of preceding kings, and stories of past generations; it is asserted that she had collected together a thousand books of
histories, relating to preceding generations and kings, and works of the
poets (Lane [1859] 1912: 10). As such, a comparison can be drawn here
between the extensive knowledge of Scheherazade and Bells Mirza
Ibrahim, and the sources on which they draw to construct their respective
narratives. However, in Bells short story, the gender politics of The Arabian Nights are subverted. Where Scheherazade uses her knowledge to tell
stories in order to save her own life from the very real threat of a king who
has beheaded all his previous wivesand her stories would thus be the
means of procuring deliverance (Lane [1859] 1912: 13)Mirza Ibrahim
employs his knowledge and experience to deliver himself from the (illusory) threat of feminine seduction.
The events that follow in Bells short story, however, reveal that the real
threat comes not from feminine seduction, as Mirza Ibrahim had previously
assumed, but instead derives once againas with the bloodthirsty king
from masculine violence. Any further explanation of his talisman is interrupted by knocks on the door delivered with extreme violence by Peri
Kharmuns jealous and furious husband, who threatens to put to
death both his wife and the lover he assumes her to be concealing (Bell
n.d.: 3). Frozen by fear, Mirza Ibrahim is unable to escape over the rooftops
as Peri Kharmun urges, and she is instead forced to hide him in a chest,
which she hastily locks. Her husband, upon entering the room, looks around
and immediately alights upon the chest within which Mirza Ibrahim is hidden. Ali Agha demands the key from his wife, which she hands to him with
the words Thee I remember and myself forget, thus winning the wager
(Bell n.d.: 5). Believing the entire episode to have been an ingenious trick
played by his wife to win the wager, Ali Agha relents, bemoans his stupidity, and departs, allowing Mirza Ibrahim to escape in safety.
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In its narrative conclusion, in which Mirza Ibrahim is saved from the

violence of another man by Peri Kharmun, Bells short story reveals the masculine anxiety toward an apparently predatory feminine sexuality to be misdirected. In this narrative, the Freudian threat of castration/death comes not
from women, but instead from the violence of other men, as it does in The
Arabian Nights. Drawing on her experiences and observations while traveling in Persia, as well as on her familiarity with literary representations of
the East such as The Arabian Nights, Bell locates her female protagonist as
an active and powerful agent, one who presents a decisive challenge to late
nineteenth-century British assumptions regarding womens role in Persian
society. As a written object, the talisman represents the efforts of patriarchal society to discursively construct female subjectivity, efforts that ultimately fail due to Peri Kharmuns resistance to the gendered norms and
spaces within which such discourses attempt to confine her.

The East Sweeps Aside Her Curtains: Re-reading the

Feminine in Persian Pictures
As discussed earlier in this article, Saids Orientalism does not offer an
overtly gendered reading of imperialist discourse. Nevertheless, a number
of references are made throughout to the gendering of the East as feminine
in Orientalist writing of the nineteenth century. Throughout the work of
scholars such as Edgar Quinet (18031875), Ernest Renan (18231892) and
Grard de Nerval (18081855), Said traces a tendency to render the East as
passive, seminal, feminine, even silent and supine (Said [1978] 2003:
138). According to a logic of binary structures, as Said makes clear, the
West/Occident is effectively set up in opposition to the East/Orient,
whereby the East is figured as the passive, seminal, feminine, silent and
supine foil to the, consequently, active, developed, masculine, vocal and
dominant West. For Said, this gendering is unavoidably negative, and is
merely part of a wider Orientalist concern with setting up distinctions
between East and West. In itself, Saids observation cannot be criticized, as
this overwhelming tendency to feminize the East is undeniably present in
English and French Orientalist discourse of this period, and it is used, as
Said maintains, to distance East from West. Highly problematic from a feminist perspective, however, is the absence of any real critical attention to the
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consequences of such explicit gendering, in which to be positioned as feminine is necessarily to be characterized as lacking or lesser.
Saids failure to address the complexity of the relationship between gender and imperialism has since been highlighted by a movement in feminist
criticism that has not only, as Lewis observes, undercut the potentially unified, and paradigmatically male, colonial subject articulated in Saids Orientalism ([1978] 2003: 3), but which has also highlighted the phallocentric
nature of Orientalist and imperialist discourse.8 Meyda Yeenolu, for
example, argues that the discourse of Orientalism is mapped powerfully
onto the language of phallocentrism, and thus highlights the inextricable
link between representations of cultural and sexual difference (1998: 11).
For Yeenolu, fantasy and desire play a fundamental role in the colonial relation that is established with the colonized (1998: 2). In this sense,
the feminization of landscape can and should be understood in the context
of sexual desire. Indeed, as Sara Mills points out, in male-authored Orientalist texts, which construct the colonial landscape as feminine, metaphors
of virginity and penetration are frequently used (1991: 43), one particularly explicit example being Hogarths 1904 text, The Penetration of Arabia. Accordingly, Mills acknowledges the difficulties attendant on women
attempting to write within a colonial context, where the figure who generally writes about other countries is male and adventurous, supremely masculine, and where the land to be conquered is represented as feminine and
passive (1991: 44). However, she argues further that although womens
writing may differ slightly from male accounts, they still uphold the basic
metaphorical descriptions of landscape (Mills 1991:44), maintaining that
such difficulties does not necessarily lead to a dramatically different
approach in travel writing by women. Bells repeated feminization of the
East throughout her travel writing raises significant questions as to whether
or not she perpetuates the phallocentric language of Orientalism.
Throughout Persian Pictures, Bell consistently refers to the East using
feminine pronouns, beginning with this lengthy description in the third
chapter:
The East is full of secretsno one understands their value better than the
Oriental; and because she is full of secrets she is full of entrancing surprises. Many fine things there are upon the surface: brilliance of colour,
splendour of light, solemn loneliness, clamorous activity; these are only
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the patterns upon the curtain which floats forever before the recesses of
Eastern life: its essential charm is of more subtle quality. As it listeth, it
comes and goes; it flashes upon you through the open doorway of some
blank, windowless house you pass in the street, from under the lifted
veil of the beggar woman who lays her hand on your bridle, from the
dark, contemptuous eyes of a child; then the East sweeps aside her curtains, flashes a facet of her jewels into your dazzled eyes, and disappears
again with a mocking little laugh at your bewilderment; then for a
moment it seems to you that you are looking her in the face, but while
you are wondering whether she be angel or devil, she is gone. (Bell
[1894] 2005: 14)
An initial reading would suggest that Bell is, as Mills predicts, adopting the
masculine colonialist rhetorical strategy of feminizing the landscape of the
East. Indeed, Avril Maddrell writes of Persian Pictures that it contains
many interpretations of Persian life consistent with the dominant British
orientalist discursive construction of the East as mysterious and fatalist
(2009: 94), and such interpretations are clearly evident in the above extract,
in its references to the secrets and entrancing surprises of the East. However, while Bells depiction of Persia does rely heavily on motifs of mystery
and secrecy, I argue that, contrary to male-authored Orientalist accounts,
the East is here feminized but never sexualized, and is thus not positioned,
in an eroticized manner, as seductive and as that which can be penetrated
byand indeed invites penetration byWestern colonialism. The East may
tease, in Bells account, but this teasing is not provocativeit does not
seduce or invite domination, colonization, or penetration, but instead
mocks the bewildered and ignorant Western onlooker.
Further, there is a distinct focus on the veil in the above extract, which
reappears throughout much of Persian Pictures. The image of the veil is one
that features heavily in Orientalist writing of the nineteenth century, and
Yeenolu observes that the figure of the veiled Oriental woman has a
particular place in these texts, not only as signifying Oriental woman as
mysterious and exotic but also as signifying the Orient as feminine, always
veiled, seductive and dangerous (1998: 11). The metaphors of penetration
are closely tied to this notion of the veil in male-authored Orientalist
accounts, with Yeenolu positing that this desire to penetrate the mysteries of the Orient and thereby to uncover hidden secretsusually
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expressed in the desire to lift the veil and enter the forbidden space of the
haremis one of the constitutive tropes of Orientalist discourse (1998: 73).
I argue that we can read Bells use of veil imagery as being influenced by her
reading and translation of the work of medieval Sufi poet, Hafiz, in which
the veil is variously figured as a metaphor for love, woe, and ignorance (Bell
1897: 102, 91, 109). This notion of ignorance, echoed in the mocking of
the bewildered onlooker discussed above, recalls Bells admission, in the
aforementioned letter to her cousin Horace Marshall, that she felt herself
unqualified to speak with any real authority about Persia and its inhabitants, writing that It seems to me incredibly presumptuous that I should
dare to carry my little personality half across [the world] and boldly attempt
to measure with it things for which it has no table of measurements that can
possibly apply (Bell 1927: 2526). In Persian Pictures, the veil (or curtain)
is that which decisively prevents the Western visitor from ever fully understanding the East, not because of some misplaced Orientalist idea of mysticism and seduction, but, as Bell acknowledges, because the Western visitor
simply has no table of measurements, and so will always remain behind
this veil of ignorance.
Yet as Yeenolus arguments insist, the meaning that the veil takes on
when considered in the context of the feminine, and of phallocentric attitudes within Orientalism, must be carefully unpacked. That Bells use of
veil imagery accompanies a figuration of the East as feminine again hints at
an adoption of masculine colonialist rhetorical strategy, which includes
metaphors of mystery, seduction, and penetration. In order to further
explore the way in which Bell uses these images to counter this strategy, I
here look to her unpublished short story, The Talisman, the opening of
which, I argue, shares clear parallels with the above extract from Persian
Pictures. In particular, the phrase the East sweeps aside her curtains,
flashes a facet of her jewels into your dazzled eyes (Bell [1894] 2005: 14;
emphasis added) is closely echoed in the storys description of the beautiful Persian woman who lifted a corner of her thin veil and flashed her
dark eyes upon Mirza Ibrahim (Bell n.d.: 1; emphasis added). The repetition of the word flashed is suggestive of a momentary, fleeting burst of
light, which dazzles the eyes of the onlooker. This imagery of light and its
effect on the onlooker reoccurs a few paragraphs later in the short story, in
the description of Peri Kharmun, the sunbeam of whose countenance
broke through the cloud of the curtains so that the old man was blinded by
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Emma Short

the brilliance of her beauty (Bell n.d.: 1; emphasis added). In each of these
examples, the feminine gaze is figured not just as a flash of light, but
crucially as an impenetrable light, one that dazzles and blinds the
onlooker, and prevents any attempt at dominion and/or mastery. Following
the Orientalist gendered positioning of the West as masculine and the East
as femininewhich Bell does, as I have argued, adopt in Persian Pictures
the onlooker, clearly figured as the Western visitor in Persian Pictures, is
thus gendered masculine. In its figuration as a blinding flash of light,
the impenetrable feminine gaze of the East thereby subverts and frustrates
the masculine (erotic) colonial gaze.
A careful reading of Bells short story can further illuminate the ways in
which Bell uses gender to think through the complexity of the intercultural encounter (Ghaderi and Wan Yahya 2014: 124). Given his role in the
narrative, and the fact that it is his gaze that is frustrated, I propose that
Mirza Ibrahim can be read here as the figuration of the masculine West,
whilst Peri Kharmun is figured, through her femininity, as the East. Read
in this way, Bells short story becomes an allegory of the foolishness and
absurdity of Western colonial attitudes. Mirza Ibrahim is depicted as a
ridiculous figure, whose fears over being seduced by women are undercut
not only by the fact that those same women paid scarcely any heed to
him (Bell n.d.: 1), but also by Peri Kharmuns distinct lack of interest in
anything other than his Talisman. Read as such, the narrative suggests,
firstly, that there exists a fundamental misunderstanding of the East in
Western colonial and Orientalist interpretations and representations. Mirza
Ibrahims fears concerning the wiles of women and dangerous feminine
sexuality here mirrors Western attitudes toward the East as that which
seductively invites penetration and/or domination. However, in locating
Peri Kharmun as an active and powerful agent, Bell subverts the notion
of the Orient as feminine, always veiled, seductive and dangerous
(Yeenolu 1998: 11), providing a decisive challenge to Western Orientalist assumptions regarding not only womens role in Persian society, but
also the East itself. Second, the conclusion of the story, in which it is
revealed that Mirza Ibrahim has misunderstood that real threat lies not with
femininity, but with masculine violence, as represented by Peri Kharmuns
enraged husband, suggests that Orientalist misunderstandings of the East
have resulted in the West failing to appreciate the danger that its own (masculine) society presents to itself.
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Those Eyes Kohl Blackened Enflame

Mirza Ibrahims prized talisman also plays a key role in this unraveling
of Western colonial attitudes toward the East. Compiled by Mirza Ibrahim
from examples of history, the speculations of philosophers, [and] the teaching of all literature both prose and verse (Bell n.d.: 2), this text can be read
in a number of ways. Firstly, as a written object, the talisman represents the
efforts of patriarchal society to discursively construct female subjectivity,
efforts which ultimately fail due to Peri Kharmuns resistance to the gendered norms and spaces within which such discourses attempt to confine
her. However, the talisman might also be read, in line with the above argument concerning Bells subversion of Western colonial attitudes toward the
East, as representative of nineteenth-century Orientalist discourse. As a
written list of the 999 wiles of women, the talisman figures as a text that
attempts to understand the feminine through the gathering of empirical
information, and in this sense recalls those Orientalist texts full of useful
statistics referred to and praised by Ross in his preface to Bells Persian
Pictures (1928: 7). That Mirza Ibrahims fears concerning the dangers posed
by feminine sexuality and seduction prove wholly unfounded in the story
suggests that the wiles detailed within the talisman are entirely illusory,
and offer no real understanding of the feminine. In this sense, the talisman
functions as a critique of Orientalist attempts to understand, and thereby
dominate, the East through the collection of data and information. Further,
Peri Kharmuns fascination with the talisman, indicated in her exclamation,
My eyes burn with the desire to see it! (Bell n.d.: 2), and her attempted
gentle criticism of its contents (It seems to me that the Talis is not quite
, to which Mirza Ibrahim angrily replies that My Talis is beyond criticism [Bell n.d.: 2]) indicates not only her own awareness of the incapacity
of the talisman to enable an understanding of women, but also figures the
(feminine) East as an active and vocal agent, alert to but disparaging of Western attempts to gather knowledge in the form of useful statistics.

Conclusion
Thanks to her central role in the British political intervention in the
Middle East in the first part of the twentieth century, Bell cannot be wholly
extricated from the imperialist discourse in which she undeniably took part.
Further, any attempts to reclaim Bell as a feminist figure are frustrated by
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Emma Short

her staunch anti-suffragism.9 As such, Bells travel writing inevitably resists

a straightforward reading, particularly in terms of gender. However, this article does not attempt to deny the complexity of Bells position within these
debates, or to reposition her as an anti-imperialist. Rather, what I have
demonstrated through a close comparative reading of Persian Pictures and
her unpublished short fiction is the extent to which Bell interrogates not
only her own position, and perspective on the areas to which she traveled,
but how, through her use of the feminine, she thinks through and troubles
Orientalist Western colonial attitudes toward the Middle East. Contrary to
the majority of male-authored Orientalist accounts, in Bells writing, the feminine East functions not as the eroticized and passive other, but as that which
resists penetration. In Persian Pictures she explicitly employs this metaphor
of penetration to describe the life of the East as a life into which no European can penetrate, whose canons, are so different from his own that the
whole existence they rule seems to him misty and unreal, incomprehensible,
at any rate unfathomable (Bell [1894] 2005: 18; emphasis added). While the
East is undeniably feminized by Bell, and set up in opposition to the masculine West, this feminization by no means necessarily leads to submission.
What is found in Bells writing is not the passive, seminal, feminine, even
silent and supine East to which Said refers ([1978] 2003: 138). Rather, Bells
feminine East is active, developed, vocal, and full of agency.

Notes
1. The area known to Bell as Persia has become officially known, since 1935, as Iran. For
the purposes of this article, however, I use the terms Persia and Persians to correspond with the terms used in Europe at the time of Bells travels and writing.
2. I here use the term Middle East to denote the group of countries and territories
included in the current G8 definition of the Middle East.
3. Rather tellingly, Brownes work was republished in 1926 with a preface by none other
than Ross, who had, he reveals, for forty years enjoyed the intimate friendship of
the author (Ross 1926: vii).
4. Borrows The Bible in Spain is a travelogue of his journeys through Spain in the late
1830s as a representative of the Bible Society. Of his published travel writingswhich
also included Lavengro (1851), Romany Rye (1857), and Wild Wales (1862)The Bible

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5.
6.

7.

8.
9.

in Spain was by far the most popular, and was reprinted and reissued a number of
times. For further information, see Duncan (1998).
In this list, Said also includes T.E. Lawrence, Edward Henry Palmer, and D.G. Hogarth.
Also worth noting here is the fact that Bell was herself familiar with Aristotelian philosophy. She certainly read Benjamin Jowetts 1885 translation of Aristotles Politics,
as she asks her stepmother to send it to her at Oxford in a letter dated 18 January
1888: I have left in the drawing room I think the first volume of Jowetts Aristotle and
Maines Ancient Law. Would you have them sent to me please? (Bell 1937: 155). It
remains unclear whether or not Bell had read Aristotles Physics, as while Ancient
Greek philosophy was popular throughout the nineteenth century, only one translation of Physics was published in that centurythe version translated by Thomas
Taylor, published in 1806. As Frank M. Turner notes, [t]hroughout the century British
study of Aristotle addressed only parts of his philosophy, and most of those received
only minimal attention it was agreed that his science could not guide the modern
study of physical nature (1981: 322). Thanks to its place on the curriculum at Oxford
University, Aristotles Ethics was the most widely read of his works in translation,
and by the end of the century at Oxford, as Turner observes, for the first time in
Britain the Ethics and Politics were read in light of each other, though crucially not
Physics (1981: 326).
In this assumption, I concur with Barbara Cookes argument elsewhere in this issue
regarding the most popular version of The Arabian Nights for those who grew up in
the late nineteenth century.
See, for example, Sara Mills (1991); Nupur Chauduri and Margaret Strobel (1992);
Mary Louise Pratt ([1992] 2008); Lewis (1996); and Meyda Ye eno lu (1998).
Along with her father and stepmother, Bell was a keen supporter of the anti-suffrage
cause. In 1908, she became a founding member of the Womens Anti-Suffrage League,
chaired by Lady Jersey, and later became president of the northern branch.

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Bell, Gertrude. 1937. The Earlier Letters of Gertrude Bell. Ed. Elsa
Richmond. London: Ernest Benn.

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Bell, Gertrude. n.d. The Talisman, or the Wiles of Women, part 2,

Miscellaneous: Item 20 (Document 5). Gertrude Bell Archive.
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