Department of English
Writing the Journey: June 1999
"Gertrude Bell's The Desert and the Sown: The British Lady Travels to the Middle East to become a Person"
Anne Lockwood
English Department, U.N.C. Greensboro
amlockwo@uncg.edu
Gertrude Bell, the first woman to win a first in history at Oxford, also became the first woman traveler to work for the British government officially and participate intimately in the formulation of British policy in the Middle East. The Desert and the Sown (1907), written prior to Bell's political work, and two volumes of her letters demonstrate both a keen nationalistic/ imperialistic commitment and a genuine interest in people and places in Iraq, Jordan and Arabia. The deserts of the Middle East energized Bell, although she resisted the lure of cross-cultural dressing indulged in by many European travelers seduced by the East's exotic appeal. With clothes sent from home to whatever far-flung spot she travelled, Bell herself wore dresses, pearls and feathered hats. As a representative of Imperial Britain, she respected local customs and mores but adhered strictly to her sense of Britishness, since "a woman can never disguise herself effectually" and believed she would impress others most by letting it be known that she came "of a great and honoured stock, whose customs are inviolable." Bell's own body served as an embodiment of imperial Britain in the Orient as she worked to map out and help govern the body of modern Iraq.
From a meticulous mapmaker and expert on the location and political alliances and conflicts among various bedouin tribes in the deserts of Arabia, Syria and Iraq, Gertrude Bell went on to become a key architect of British imperial policy in the Middle East, helping to craft the body of the modern state of Iraq, excavating castles and setting up the national museum of Iraq. In becoming an expert on Oriental affairs Bell crafted herself into a "Person," an identity she felt was unavailable to her as a woman in Britain. Intensely lonely as the sole woman in a man's diplomatic world, Bell also found intense satisfaction in being involved in the governing of the British Empire and the protection of British interests in the oil-rich Middle East.
In joining Britain's project of political body-building in the Middle East, Bell helped to create a model of a kinder and gentler imperialism which combined an ability to act decisively in the public sphere (the masculine tradition) with sensitivity and affiliation (the feminine tradition) to people of the Middle East, who sought political independence through the Arab nationalist movement after the break-up of the Ottoman Empire at the end of WWI.
Anne Lockwood
English Department,
University of North Carolina, Greensboro
P.O. Box 26170
Greensboro, NC 27402-6170
(336) 334-5311 or 4697
amlockwo@uncg.edu
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Updated May 23, 1999