Orientalism, gender and class in Lady Mary Wortley Montagu’s Turkish Embassy Letters: to persons of distinction, men of letters & c

Abstract

In 1717, Lady Mary Wortley Montagu accompanied her husband, Edward Wortley Montagu, on his ambassadorial mission to the Ottoman court. During their sojourn, Montagu composed what would become her most famous writings: the collection of edited letters which constitute the Turkish Embassy Letters. The reading of the Letters presented in this paper situates Montagu’s text, including her famous claim that Turkish women have more liberty than British women, within the material and discursive context of eighteenth-century England and the geopolitical relations of the day. I argue that Montagu’s travel narrative reproduces dominant discourses which naturalize class relations of her times, even and especially in moments when gendered or Orientalist expectations are subverted. I conclude that though class has been relatively neglected in recent readings of travel narratives, class-based discourses play an important role in the construction of difference and should be accorded greater attention in the literature.