Oriental Feminotopias? Montagu's and Montesquieu's "Seraglios" Revisited

This article considers the extent to which depictions of the seraglio/serail in Lady Mary Wortley Montagu's Embassy Letters and Charles, Baron de Montesquieu's Lettres Persanes contain discourses of female emancipation or positive views of women in Middle Eastern societies. Situating these texts within the genealogies of 'orientalism', it teases out the intersecting agendas and multiple meanings to which the seraglio trope contributes. It compares the 'modern' intellectual concerns of the two authors, their use of existing images and ideas of the 'orient', and of fantasy, reportage and 'philosophy' in the making of their texts. Arguing that both texts present themselves primarily as contributions to the new field of social comparison and intellectual or 'witty' analysis, it suggests that Montagu's need to engage with the contested role of 'woman writer and thinker' and her greater reliance on reportage introduced a specific gendered discourse on seraglios which modifies the controlling and Eurocentric character of her text.