Representations of the Oriental Woman in Lord Byron’s “Turkish Tales”

Abstract

This study deals with the representations of the oriental woman in the Western narrative on orient. The Western representations of oriental woman are products of specific moments and developments in culture. For their own rhetorical and political purposes, the Western writers employ a discourse representing an Eastern woman, whose Otherness is always subject to qualification and change. The concern of this study is to reveal how this narrative is revolved around certain concept that the oriental woman is victimized. Byron’s conception of the oriental woman is shaped by these Orientalist ideas. In “Turkish Tales,” Byron uses the figure of the Oriental woman and the harem system. What we find in these tales is oriental women who are both domestic and disobedient, and who try to resist their bounded existence; the harem. Byron often portrays the harem as a confined domestic space against which women may reasonably rebel. But their acts of rebellion almost always end in failure.