Victorian Ladies in the Ottoman Empire: Lifting the Veil

by Elisabetta Marino

Focusing on prominent accounts by 10 distinguished women writers, who travelled to the Ottoman Empire (in particular, to modern-day Turkey, Egypt, and Cyprus) during the reign of Queen Victoria, this volume analyzes the multi-faceted, often ambivalent and conflicting ways their encounters with Otherness articulated itself to the masses. Especially in Victorian times, a fair number of women perceived travelling as a liberating experience, enabling them to emancipate themselves by abandoning many of the spatial and social conventions enforced in their mother country. Consequently, travel literature often turned into an effective tool to acquire self-awareness, while achieving both personal and literary voices. It also provided an extraordinary opportunity to delve into supposedly unfeminine issues, namely religion, financial affairs, and complicated matters of international politics. The encounter with the Oriental Other also offered women writers the possibility to reflect on their own condition, considering the disturbingly similar state of segregation, commodification, and cultural starvation shared by odalisques, concubines, and the Victorian angel in the house. Yet, the majority of the time, British women travelers could not refrain from adopting an Orientalist gaze while relying on widespread misconceptions and stereotypes since they were not just colonized by gender. There were also racial colonizers.

250 pages, Hardcover

Expected publication September 7, 2027