Ottoman-Turkish Women's Travel Literature and the Language of Sexuality

Ottoman-Turkish women writers/travelers, from Zeynep Hanoum to Halide Edib have written widely on their travels. In fact, a few of the works were produced originally in english. In this paper, I explore how sexuality is represented in such works, particularly in the confrontation with Europe and with European men and women. I will discuss Zeynep Hanoum’s A Turkish Woman’s European Impressions and Selma Ekrem’s Unveiled: The Autobiography of a Turkish Girl in comparison with Halide Edib’s Inside India (1937). Halide Edib wrote the latter work during a time-period when India was constructed as the Oriental Other of Turkey. I will pose the following questions: Has the change of language of writing from turkish to english had an emancipatory potential in exploring sexuality? Has the change of the target-audience from Turkish to Anglo-Saxon readers had any impact on the writing of these women literati? Further, how do the women otherize the European, the Indian and other subjects they encounter during their travels? What do they as such convey about themselves? In the case of women writers writing simultaneously in turkish (e.g. Halide Edib), how are the works in English different from those written in Turkish? Ultimately, does travel writing offer emancipatory potential for representations of sexualized bodies or does it duplicate the desexualized Republican women stereotype that some of the women writers during the 1920s and 1930s produced in their literary works?