Women Travel Writings: A Comparative Journey

Abstract

Since the 18th century, Turkey increasingly played a significant role for women travel writers such as Lady Marry Montague, Elizabeth Craven, Julia Pardoe, Hester Donaldson Jenkins, Eliza Cheney Abbott Schneider, Mary Mills Patrick, Grace Ellison, who were in curiosity to discover the other: their cultures, customs, literatures, social, political and historical backgrounds and improvements, emancipation movements, sexualities and so on. Whereas some women writers including Zeyneb Hanım, Melek Hanım, Demetre Vaka and Halide Edib Adıvar penned impressions about both European and Turkey. In this study, the works named An Englishwoman in a Turkish Harem by Grace Ellison and A Turkish Woman’s European Impressions by Zeynep Hanım will be evaluated in regard to comparative literature and cultural studies. Additionally, I argue that comparative literature accepted as a most advantageous approach for literary and cultural studies can probably contribute much more than the other disciplines to cultural studies and cultural history, even feminist cultural history, comparative cultural perspectives to literature; and or cultural studies open a large umbrella for international cultures and literatures in the light of these two works focused on literary writings, experiments, representations of occidental and oriental women, and occidental and oriental perceptions.