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Respect, Postcolonialism and the Travel Writing of Freya Stark

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Respect, Postcolonialism and the Travel Writing of Freya Stark RESPECT, POSTCOLONIALISM AND THE TRAVEL WRITING OF FREYA STARK By CYNTHIA YOUNG Integrated Studies Project submitted to Dr. Carolyn Redl in partial fulfillment of the requirements for the degree of Master of Arts – Integrated Studies Athabasca, Alberta March 20, 2014 Abstract In recent years colonial travel writing has come to the attention of postcolonial theorists. Because colonial travel writing describes the colonized from the colonizer’s perspective, it can be used to illustrate the construction of the Other through the discourse of West- ern imperialism. However, not all travel writing is the same. Freya Stark was a staunch believer in the ideology of British imperialism, but came to realize that imperialism could not work because of a lack of cultural understanding of the indigenous peoples. This paper examines the travel writing of Freya Stark focusing on the years 1928-1933 when she travelled extensively through Iraq, Iran and Syria and will illustrate how these works transcend the gender divisions of travel writing and anticipate the concerns of contem- porary postcolonial theory. Table of Contents Background and Introduction…………………………………………………….4 Methodology……………………………………………………………………….9 Baghdad Sketches and Postcolonialism………………………………………10 The Valleys of the Assassins and Travel Writing……………………………..18 Conclusion…………………………………………………………………………29 Works Cited………………………………………………………………………..32 Cynthia Young 2750807 Dr. Carolyn Redl MAIS 701 March 20, 14 Respect, Postcolonialism and the Travel Writing of Freya Stark Background and Introduction A prolific writer, Freya Stark published 30 volumes of travel writing, autobiog- raphies, and collections of essays during her lifetime (1893-1993) and many of these have been recently re-published. She was the recipient of several awards and grants from the Royal Geographical Society and was known as ‘the poet of travel’. In 1972 she was awarded an O.B.E. and became Dame Freya Stark. In recent years she has been the subject of three biographies: Freya Stark. A Biography by Molly Izzard (1993), Freya Stark by Caroline Moorehead (1985), and Passionate Nomad. The Life of Freya Stark by Jane Fletcher Geniesse (1999). Several of Stark’s books are included in lists of the best travel literature of the 20th century. Travel editor Thomas Swick chose Beyond Eu- phrates. Conde Nast Traveler selected The Lycian Shore and smithsonian.com chose The Valleys of the Assassins. Colin Thubron preferred Ionia: A Quest, while Sara Wheeler chose A Winter in Arabia. Stark’s unorthodox upbringing seems to have prepared her for a lifetime of travel. She was born in Paris to British parents and spent most of her life in Italy. Aside from a few years during her early childhood and brief intervals pursuing her studies, Stark spent very little time in England. From 1929 to 1946 Stark travelled extensively through- out the Middle East not only for her own pleasure, but also to aid in the British war effort during WWII. After the war, her travels focused mainly on Turkey. Her last expedition was to Afghanistan in 1970. In between her travels, home for Stark was Asolo, Italy. Stark suffered from a facial disfigurement, the result of a childhood industrial accident producing a self-consciousness in Stark that may have given her impetus to travel to distant places where her scar would be unnoticed and irrelevant. She suffered from a myriad of physical ailments (arguably both real and imagined) that often had an impact on her travels. In contrast to many of her contemporary British travel writers, Stark was largely self-educated, poor, and without political and diplomatic connections. Most re- markably, she travelled into areas where no other Europeans, male or female, had ven- tured without an entourage, simply with native guides and a couple of donkeys. She re- lied upon the hospitality of the Arab people she encountered as she travelled through remote regions of Syria, Lebanon, Yemen, Iraq and Iran. This, and her Arabic and Per- sian language skills, enabled her to interact with Arabs on a very personal level and she recorded these interactions as well as her impressions. She often associated cultural disparity with an adaptation to the mostly harsh environment and difficult living condi- tions. Although travel writing is one of the oldest and most popular forms of literature, it did not achieve much notice from literary critics until relatively recently. 1 According to Hulme and Youngs, “critical attention was lacking, perhaps because literary modernism valued fictional complexity over mimetic claims, however mediated” (7). Travel writing gained academic attention in 1979 with the publication of Edward Said’s Orientalism, “the first work of contemporary criticism…to take travel writing as a major part of its cor- pus, seeing it as a body of work which offered particular insight into the operation of co- lonial discourses” (Hulme and Youngs, 8). Because travel writers describe another cul- ture for an audience at home, travel writing has become fodder for postcolonial theorists examining cultural and colonial discourses. Culture is the baggage travellers and travel writers carry with them and influences the way in which they perceive another culture. Stark’s writing is distinguished by the non-judgemental way in which she describes the Arabian culture, striving to understand the Other point of view. Until the discovery by feminist critics, travel writing by women has been largely ignored. According to Carl Thompson, “men’s travel writing has been stereotypically as- sociated with intellectual seriousness and women’s travel with frivolity which influences the reception accorded male or female travel writers” (175). Sara Mills concurs with this stating, “the most striking difference often lies not so much in the writing itself (although differences may be found there) but rather in the way women’s writing is judged and processed” (30). The idea of a quest and journey of discovery or exploration has al- ways been considered to be a masculine domain. Thompson observes that, “a common 1 The exception to this is fictional travel literature. Books such as The Odyssey, Robinson Cru- soe, Heart of Darkness, and many others comprise a significant portion of the Western literary canon. yardstick for demonstrating and asserting masculinity in travel has been the degree of danger and discomfort involved in the journey” (176). There is little doubt that the dan- gers and discomfort of travelling through Arabia as an unaccompanied woman would only have been magnified for Stark, especially considering her physical frailty. The dif- ference may be is that she entrusts the Arabs with her well-being; there is nothing ad- versarial in her approach to the indigenous peoples. There is little in her writing to indi- cate that she is in dangerous territory and in fact she believes the opposite as she states in Baghdad Sketches, [t]here are ladies whose fascinations are a constant worry to them when they travel. The most unsophisticated savage appears to fall in love at first sight. The Desert Chief no sooner sees them than he wishes to carry them off. As for me, being small and plain and quite insignificant, such dangers do not trouble me: unflattering as it may be, I wander about the East with- out being incommoded at all (41). Despite the physical difficulties of her travel, Stark never sacrifices her femininity. She always had a proper English woman’s attire: a dress, a hat, usually a parasol and al- ways an appropriate night dress. The genesis for any of Stark’s travels was consistently a quest. Based on exten- sive and thorough research, Stark’s quests usually focused on some facet of ancient Arabic history. She attempted to re-trace historical spice routes or the search for rem- nants of ancient castles, cities and civilization. One adventure even consisted of a search for a hidden treasure. Like many travellers, male and female, she did not always accomplish the goal of her quest, but in her search for ancient Arabia she discovered and documented contemporary Arabs and their multifaceted culture. Stark’s writing requires some work from today’s reader on several levels. The Arabian lands she traversed now have some different names and border distinctions. She uses British and Arabic colloquialisms which might be unfamiliar. Her small-scale, hand-drawn maps are difficult to decipher or to place within a larger scale. The re- publication of her books would have been greatly enhanced by the addition of glossa- ries and more illustrative maps. In spite of this, Stark’s writing provides evocative de- scriptions of the landscapes, the Arab people and their culture as well as the coloni- al/imperial relationships that existed in that region from 1926-1946. Despite the continuing popularity of her works and the accolades they have gar- nered, there are virtually no critical assessments of Stark’s works. Any mention of Stark by academics refers to what she did rather than what she wrote. It seems that her larg- er-than-life persona has overshadowed her literary accomplishments. Youngs suggests that, “concentrating on individual actions ignores the reproduction of cultural forces and neglects the workings of discourse in white women’s texts” (133), and this appears to be the case with Stark. While rejecting the constraints of her own culture, she can explore the constraints of another culture. There are aspects of Stark’s writing that lend themselves to postcolonial analysis. Although Stark writes within the parameters of her own cultural discourse, she does ex- pand those parameters to expose the racist views of the European imperialists from an Arab perspective, all the while remaining a staunch imperialist herself. Not only does Stark give the Arabs a voice, she occasionally prioritizes that voice by silencing the voice of the imperialists, contrary to Edward Said’s concept of orientalism as well as re- cent postcolonial theory advocated by Gayatri Spivak and Homi Bhabha.
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