Western Women as Subject in Orientalist Texts: An Example of Lady Montagu’s Turkish Embassy Letters
Western Women as Subject in Orientalist Texts: An Example of Lady Montagu’s Turkish Embassy Letters

Summary/Abstract: Orientalism, which includes the West's images or discourses about the East, is an area where we can see examples in many fields such as travel books, literary works, or scientific studies. One of the most used images in orientalist texts is the woman and harem, bathhouse, slave market. In Orientalist texts, mostly produced by European men, women and their places are symbolized in a way that responds to Western men's desires, and a collection of Eastern narratives drawn through the eyes of the Western male-subject emerges. The Western women later travel to the East, creating works that differ from the Western-male perspective and reflect the female-gaze. In this study, the book Turkish Embassy Letters by Lady Worthley Montagu, who was in Istanbul between 1717-1718, will be scrutinized and the similarities and differences between Western female and male subjects given Eastern women will be shown.

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