Muslim Women's Representations in Romanian Transylvanian Culture of the Nineteenth Century

Muslim Women's Representations in Romanian Transylvanian Culture of the Nineteenth Century In the 19th century Transylvanian publications an exotic presence captures the eye of the Romanian reader: the Muslim woman. Her charm, her discreet and mysterious appearance have given rise to many cliches and stereotypes. Most of them, however, place her as a victim in a society dominated by masculine values. The married woman, deprived of freedom and often mistakened for a slave, the woman as mother as the only status that ensures her the respect of her husband and the adulterous woman who pays with her life for the sin she committed, are situations which, together with representations of the oriental harems, depict the general image of Muslim women that remains in the collective mentality of Transylyanian Romanians. The present study is not only a descriptive analysis of this image, but also an attempt to clarify the aspects that have created such an image.