Mapping the unknown: Gendered spaces and the oriental other in travelogues of Egypt by U.S. women, 1854-1914

The diaries and personal correspondence of U.S. women who travelled to Egypt as tourists, archaeologists and missionaries during the latter half of the nineteenth century both reflect and deviate from traditional Orientalist discursive patterns. Tourists who briefly visited Egypt to observe monuments and sites relied heavily upon conventional authority prescribed in guidebooks of the time. Women with careers in the nascent Orientalist sciences of Egyptology and archaeology often identified with male explorers and adopted the language of colonialism. However, women who spent a considerable tenure in Egypt, such as career missionaries, presented a more complex observation of indigenous peoples, partially because success in their careers depended upon a more intimate study of the host culture. Despite the use of Orientalist narrative devices and the tendency to obfuscate the real purpose of their writing, women travellers imparted gendered ways of seeing that drew on experience rather than conventional authority.