Fiona Reilly Thesis
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Journeys in kitchens: Travel writing and the possibilities of new encounters with women, food and domestic life in Islamic cultures Dr Fiona Jane Reilly MBBS FACEM Submitted in fulfilment of the requirement for the degree of: Master of Fine Arts (Research) KK70 School of Creative Practice Creative Industries Faculty Queensland University of Technology 2019 1 Statement of Authorship The work contained in this thesis has not been previously submitted to meet requirements for an award at this or any other higher education institution. To the best of my knowledge and belief, the thesis contains no material previously published or written by another person except where due reference is made. Signature QUT Verified Signature June, 2019 2 Thesis Statement This thesis explores the hypothesis that there might be something of value and cultural nuance in domestic narratives and the view of domestic female space as a form of travel writing. The exegesis examines the works of Freya Stark (1893-1993) and Ella Maillart (1903-1997) side by side, and considers where their work might be placed in the overall body of travel literature about the East, and travel literature written by women. It also examines how their portrayals of the East offered an alternate perspective to that written by men and examines their influence on my own creative work, “The Kitchen of Joy”. The creative component of this thesis comprises the first two sections of a novel-length work of creative non-fiction. The first section of 25,000 words is included as part of the examinable creative component of this thesis, while the second section, also of 25,000 words, is included as an appendix. Keywords: travel literature, travel writing, travel writers, female travel writers, literary studies, gender, women, women travellers, Freya Stark, Ella Maillart, Orientalism, Muslim women, kitchens, culinary literature, domestic spaces, homes 3 Acknowledgements I would like to acknowledge the enormous support and assistance provided by my principal supervisor, Associate Professor Kári Gislason of the Faculty of Creative Industries. Always clear-headed and infinitely knowledgeable, he was able to patiently transform an undergraduate of medicine into a postgraduate of literary studies, a task infinitely more difficult than it might sound. Donna Hancox provided valuable guidance and advice in the early stage of this thesis development. I would also like to thank the staff of the Creative Industries Higher Degree Research office who were always on hand for practical and logistic support, and the staff of the QUT Library for their assistance and expertise in locating sources. The QUT Ethics Advisors, particularly Dr Mirko Guaralda, were patient and helpful in securing ethical clearance for this project’s field research (Ethics Approval Number 1500000983). My heartfelt thanks go to the women and men I met in Kashgar and Shiraz, who gave generously of their time and believed there was something valuable to be learned in their kitchens. 4 Table of Contents Page Statement of Authorship 2 Thesis Statement 3 Keywords 3 Acknowledgements 4 Exegesis 7 Journeys in kitchens: Travel writing and the possibilities of new encounters with women, food and domestic life in Islamic cultures 1 Introduction 8 2 Key Terms 11 3 Methodology 13 3.1 Field Research Methodology 13 3.2 Textual Analysis Methodology 15 4 Literature Review 17 4.1 The History of Women Travel Writers in the East 17 4.2 The Reception of Women’s Travel Writing 20 4.3 Domestic Ethnography, Food and Women’s Travel Writing 22 5 Textual Analysis 24 5.1 Turkestan Solo 24 5.2 The Valleys of the Assassins 29 5.3 The Kitchen of Joy 33 5 6 Reflexive Section 37 7 Conclusion 40 8 References 42 Creative Work 47 The Kitchen of Joy – Section 1 Kashgar End of Examinable Component 119 Appendix: The Kitchen of Joy – Section 2 Shiraz 120 References: The Kitchen of Joy 174 6 Exegesis Journeys in kitchens: Travel writing and the possibilities of new encounters with women, food and domestic life in Islamic cultures 7 1. Introduction As a rule, I don’t condone the theft of library books. But it was a stolen book that led me, in a roundabout way, to this research question: namely, what is the nature of writing about domestic encounters and domestic spaces used by female travel writers, and how does this work suggest the possibility of an alternative relationship between the author, the observer, and the subject, the observed? I had been reading a mountain of works by male travel writers from the early twentieth century. In those travel narratives, the writer often referred to the travels or writings of those who had gone before him, invariably another man. These writers cross-referenced one another’s work—Newby referred to Fleming, who mentioned Lawrence, who referred to Twain, and so on. I loved all of them, with their swagger and misadventures. But after a time they began to sound similar, their narratives missing an element that I could not put my finger on. It made me wonder if there was a different approach to explore in travel writing, particularly in the way travel writers represent domestic spaces. On my shelves I found a forgotten work of travel writing, a long overdue library book belonging to the Brisbane City Council Library. The book was Turkestan Solo by the little-known Swiss writer Ella Maillart. I had no recollection of borrowing it, which probably explained why it had never been returned. It read as fresh and compelling, despite having been written in 1934. Maillart wrote with a different viewpoint from her male counterparts, with an independent set of interests and focus. As I will discuss in more detail below, as a woman she was outside the recognized body of Swiss literature of the time, and as a Swiss writer she lay well outside the mainstream of travel writing. At the same time, I became absorbed with the work of the English travel writer Freya Stark. I read Stark’s travel writing while researching for a trip to Iran I hoped to make for the creative component of this thesis. In particular, I became interested in The Valleys of the Assassins, published in the same year as Turkestan Solo, as it detailed an area I planned to visit, and Stark’s writing shared a similarly fresh perspective on domestic spaces and the women she met on her travels. 8 In contrast to their male counterparts, who often wrote as explorers, cartographers, merchants or archeologists, in the writings of these two women, in The Valleys of the Assassins (Stark, 1934) and Turkestan Solo (Maillart, 1934), I discovered an alternate emphasis, a focus on people and relationships, everyday life and domestic detail, particularly as it related to other women. These two female writers had access to spaces that were off-limits to men, like harems, bath houses and kitchens. This allowed them to observe rich ethnographic details unavailable to male travel writers, and produce a body of work notable for its attention to everyday life and everyday women. As such, these works offered a different perspective on the places and peoples they encountered, one which has much to add to travel literature in terms of point of view and the nature of the relationship between the observer and the other. I had long felt there was something of interest to be gained as a travel writer by focusing on domestic spaces and interiors. I myself had begun spending time in kitchens around the world and noticing the contrast between the relationships I established with women in their own kitchens, which tended to have an easy intimacy, and those encounters with women in public spaces, which were more formal. The kitchen door was like a secret back door into the intimate life of another, with the resulting tension between interior and exterior, both physical and personal. The stiffness and formality of the women’s public, exterior lives often gave way to a closeness and familiarity inside the kitchen. These travels and writings became the kernel of an idea about what might be gained by immersing myself more fully in the foreign and yet entirely familiar environment of a woman’s kitchen. In this project, I am testing the hypothesis that there might be something of value and cultural nuance in domestic narratives and the view of domestic female space as a form of travel writing. The exegesis examines the works of Freya Stark (1893- 1993) and Ella Maillart (1903-1997) side by side, and considers where their work might be placed in the overall body of travel literature about the East, and travel literature written by women. It also examines how their portrayals of the East offered an alternate perspective to that written by men and examines their influence on my own creative work, “The Kitchen of Joy”. From this examination, I hope to contribute to the discourse around our representations of those we write about, and how travel writing that emphasises the domestic space, namely the kitchen, can act 9 as an entry point into a broader commentary about culture. Specifically, I hope to demonstrate how the creative writing techniques of point of view and close description reveal the potential for a different kind of relationship between the writer and subject, one in which there is, as described by Barbara Cooke, an interplay between the two, rather than simply “observer and observed” (Cooke, 2015, p. 60). 10 2. Key Terms In this exegesis, I have used a number of terms which are well-established in literary studies. The definitions below are offered for clarity in their usage here. Travel Writing I adopt the definition of travel writing used by academic Carl Thompson, as “an encounter between self and other that is brought about by movement through space…at some level a record or product of this encounter, and of the negotiation between similarity and difference that it entailed.” (Thompson, 2011, p.