چکیده:
Au 19e siècle, le nombre de femmes occidentales qui s’aventurent sur les routes du monde
ne cesse d’augmenter : l’amélioration des moyens de transport favorise le goût des voyages et les
femmes qui entreprennent de longs périples, seules ou avec leur époux, ne sont plus rares. Celles dont nous connaissons les aventures sont celles qui ont pris la plume pour écrire le récit de leur voyage et n’ont pas hésité à le publier. Parmi elles, et dans le cadre des récits de voyage en Perse, nous relèverons Adèle Hommaire de Hell et Carla Serena, auteures de récits qui eurent beaucoup de succès en leur temps.
A reprendre ces textes à la lumière des récits de voyage masculins, une question se pose, à laquelle
tentera de répondre cet article : ces récits de voyage ont-ils une spécificité, ou reprennent-ils les poncifs des récits masculins de l’époque ? Pour ce faire, nous analyserons brièvement et successivement les contenus des textes de ces deux auteures, dont l’un écrit sous le couvert du nom de son époux, tandis que l’autre signe hardiment de son nom.
در قرن نوزدهم میلادی، مدام به شمار زنان مغرب زمین که خطر سفر به اقصی نقاط جهان را به جان میخرند، افزوده میشود. بهبود و توسعه وسایل حمل و نقل سفر را تسهیل میکند و بر اشتیاق ان میافزاید. بنابراین، دیگر تعداد زنانی که به تنهایی و یا به همراه همسرانشان به سفرهای طولانی میروند، کم نیستند. زنانی که ما با داستانهایشان اشنا هستیم، انهایی هستند که برای نگارش سفرنامهشان قلم بدست گرفتند و از انتشار ان دریغ نکردند. در میان این زنان نویسنده، و با توجه به سفرنامههایی که درباره سفر به ایران نگاشته شده است، ما ادل اومر دو هل و کارلا سرنا را در نظر گرفتهایم؛ زیرا این دو، مولف سفرنامههایی هستند که در زمان خود موفقیتهای بسیاری را کسب نمودهاند. با بازخوانی این متون و با توجه به سفرنامههایی که توسط مردان به نگارش درامده است سوالی مطرح میشود که مقاله پیشرو سعی دارد به ان پاسخ دهد: ایا این سفرنامهها دارای ویژگی خاصی هستند، یا تقلیدی مبتذل از روایتهای مردانه زمان خود میباشند؟ به همین منظور، ما به اختصار و بطور متوالی متون نگارش شده توسط این دو مولف، که یکی مطالبش را به نام همسرش و دیگری جسورانه با امضای خودش منتشر میکند، را بررسی خواهیم کرد.
During the19th century, an increasing number of Western women travel around
the world: the improvement in transportation, due to steam engines, has a strong impact on traveling,
and women who are doing so are not as scarce as they should be a century ago. When they come back,
some of them publish their travelogue and become very well known. Regarding Persia, and French
travelogues, the authors Adele Hommaire of Hell and Carla Serena, got a high visibility when they
published respectively Travel to Turkey and Persia (1854) and Men and Things of Persia (1883).
The situation of the two writers is completely different, since Hommaire de Hell, of bourgeois social
origin, travels through Turkey, Russia and Georgia with her husband, a civil engineer, who conducts
geological prospects. Although she doesn't follow him in Persia where he dies in 1848, she entirely
writes his travelogues, basing her narration on her husband's notes and her own experience.
Carla Serena, the Belgian spouse of an Italian politician living in exile in London, travels alone for
her pleasure but, as a journalist "amateur", publishes her travelogues when back in France. Much more
than Hell's Hommaire, she experiences the sheer excitement of lonely adventures.
Reading these texts, published under two different political systems (Second Empire and Third
Republic) among many questions that rise about the specificity of these travelogues, the most important
would be to detect if, especially in theses Oriental travels, the female approach is different from the male
one and, if so, which are its characteristics? In other words, does their discourse deal with the imperialist
and colonialist speech, usual in that kind of writing, or do they have a gendered approach, feeling closer
to Oriental women, in a sympathetic point of view, than to Occidental men? The aim of our work would
be to detect an eventual gendered way of writing and describing the Persian realities, especially because
our travelers have a possibility to contact women in their own environment.
In fact, and chronogically beginning by the work of Hommaire de Hell, we see that Adele feels really
closer to Occidental men than to Oriental women. Describing their lifestyles, their dressing at home
(which astonishes this French “bourgeoise”), she hurls the disregard of the colonialist society the belongs
to. Is Carla more open-minded? She travels from London to Egypt, then to Constantinople, Caucasus
and finally Persia: on the way to Colchis, she is supported by the logistics of her social relationships in
the embassies that ensure her escorts and assistants of all kinds. In Georgia, she decides to free herself
from these too many companions, to try to live a solitary experience, in a relative independence. Her
journey continues with an expedition to Persia, from Rasht (where the plague is ongoing) to Tehran.
"Intrepid and courageous" (Audouard 283), she makes extensive use of her status as a socialite to display
Carnoy- Torabi D— Extended abstract: Adele Hommaire de Hell and Carla Serena in Persia Qajar … | 45
a so-called female weakness and the strength of a member of the high society, able to cope with any situation and proud to show this ability to the local populations.
As noticed by Isabelle Ernot, and following Bourdieu's theory, women travellers (as well as men) are unable to move beyond their social allegiance: they just cannot have any free sight over the society that they describe, since they are prisoners of the gendered criterias of their own social allegiance. They are also bounded by the point of view of growing imperialism. During the 19th century, some compilations recounting the lives of female European travelers (Cortambert, Dronsart, Chevalier, Audouard) definitely highlight the loyalty of these travelers to the criteria of their own civilization. Adele is described as a perfect traveler, a model of marital devotion (Dronsart 12); of high intelligence and energetic soul (Knight 70), "... her books are always those of a soul accessible to the most delicate impressions, to the highest feelings. (Cortambert 214).
Admittedly, this look is richer than the male gaze, in the sense that it opens up to places that men do not frequent, highly significant since they are those of the privacy “the mysterious darkness of harems, zennas, anderuns, tents and boxes”, but in a way of imperialist authority, to follow Dronsart who writes in 1909: “they lift the veils that hide the faces and souls of so many millions of human beings, to which we have yet to bring only faint rays of light”. These female travelers are, above all, Europeans, bearer of their civilization. The ambient colonialism, the construction of an imperialist norm fully justifies the vocabulary used by Dronsart: the West still believes in its "civilizing" and illuminating mission, (we will raise the militant vocabulary) and in this fight, the role of women writer-travelers is pervasive. Fully embodying the norms and myths of their civilization, they stand out only on rare occasions from Orientalist, racist and misogynistic cliches. Western women in the East, they are totally making their discourse of imperialist representation: contrary to what they can assume in their own country, they are more, in the East, on the side of men, by the condescension they express towards the Eastern women they meet. In fact, they don't have any kind of empathy towards their so-called "sisters" and they just strengthen the Western stereotypes of cultural domination.
In other words, we can give a negative answer to our initial question (is the female travelers' point of view gendered?). They systematically exclude themselves from the field of gaze. Far from any originality, they reinforce the colonialist discourse by the impact of their stories on the female audience.
Key words: Adele Hommaire de Hell, Carla Serena, Persia, qajar, travelogue, orientalism, woman writer, gender studies, feminism, imperialism.