Seclusion versus Accessibility: The Harems of Constantinople as Aesthetic Worlds in Stories by Elsa Lindberg-Dovlette

Abstract

At the turn of the twentieth century, the harem was still a secluded and concealed space, unknown to most westerners and therefore arousing their curiosity. Novels about life in a harem, such as Pierre Loti's Les Désenchantées (1906), 1 set in cosmopolitan Constantinople, were bestsellers and widely translated in the early twentieth century. Likewise, for several decades, descriptions of visits to Turkish harems had been essential elements in travelogues about Constantinople by female writers such as the Englishwoman E. C. C. Baillie and the Danish Elisabeth Jerichau Baumann, 2 while motifs from harems, painted by such artists as

Haremslivet I Konstantinopel I Berättelser Av Elsa Lindberg-Dovlette

“…Utifrån Eric Hayots tankar i On Literary Worlds (2012) har jag i en annan artikel visat hur den estetiska värld som skapas i Lindberg-Dovlettes haremsberättelser beror av såväl avskildhet som tillgänglighet (Bodin, 2018). Samtidigt som den byggs upp av de begränsade och förvrängda synvinklar som åstadkoms genom haremslivets avskildhet står den i förbindelse med omvärlden.…”

“…Her stories offer a strong critique of the norms of harem life. The strength of her argument, however, does not lie primarily in the discussions and reflections that are explicitly articulated by the female characters, but rather in the aesthetic world as a whole (Hayot, 2012), which is constructed on the basis of limited and distorted views, and depends on both seclusion and accessibility (Bodin, 2018). By bringing together the lives and fates of both Turkish and Swedish women in the space of the harem, the author crosses the conventional boundaries between the Orient and the West -in the aesthetic world of her harem stories as well as in her own life.…”