ABSTRACT
COMPARATIVE MODERNITIES: OTTOMAN WOMEN WRITERS AND WESTERN FEMINISM!
REINA LEWIS
For centuries, the image of the secluded, polygamous Oriental woman has fascinated the West. The masculinist vision of the harem as a sexualised realm of deviancy, cruelty and excess has animated some ofthe West's best known examples of dominant Orientalism from fine art paintings to popular literature, whilst for nineteenth-century feminists the plight of the harem inmate functioned as a metaphor for women's oppression in Britain (Zonana 1993; Lewis 1996). But the veiled, secluded Oriental woman was not always represented as a hapless victim.
