The Sultan and the Slave: Feminist Orientalism and the Structure of "Jane Eyre"

Abstract

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Anglo‐Muslim relations in 18th‐century literature and culture

“…The challenge of religious toleration refracted through the Trinitarian Controversy lasted throughout the century and, as Orr (2020) But, perhaps even more pertinent to our contemporary era, the claim to value women and to want to protect them from the perceived despotism of Islam was deployed-in the 18th century, as it was after 9/11-as part of a rhetorical tradition that evolved from the refraction of Islam through the Trinitarian Controversy and the early modern association of Islam with despotism, lasciviousness, and barbarity. Zonana's (1993) concept of "feminist orientalism"-the displacement of critiques of Western patriarchy onto a demonized Muslim "other"-is useful in parsing admiring and denigrating representations of Muslims and Muslim spaces by women in 18th-century England. Andrea is the leading scholar of early modern and early 18th-century feminist orientalism and has, moreover, made signal contributions to the study of early 18th-century women playwrights (including those who Andrea, 2007;Beach, 2017;Montagu et al, 1994;Garcia, 2012;Heffernan & O'Quinn, 2012;Melman, 1992) and, while useful in analyzing an early, positive representation of the Ottomans by a woman, it has the vulnerability of centering an elite perspective.…”

Mary Wollstonecraft revisited

“…54 As Joyce Zonana suggests, Wollstonecraft is asking England to rid itself of Oriental ways and to become more rational, enlightened and reasonable. 55 In this Vindication, Wollstonecraft also makes many references to slavery-more than 80, according to Moira Ferguson. 56 Some of these are direct references to the African slave trade and the movement for its abolition then under way, while others are metaphorical references comparing women's subjected state with a state of slavery.…”

Scenes in the writing of ‘constance lytton and jane warton, spinster’: contextualising a cross-class dresser

“…[77] Her tropology implicitly constructed the nonnurturant state as despotic in accord with a tradition of 'feminist orientalism' elucidated by Joyce Zonana -'figuring objectionable aspects of life in the West as "Eastern," ... rhetorically' defining emancipatory projects 'as the removal of Eastern elements from Western life'. [78] Within this tradition, 'Mahometan' 'treatment of women' was judged (erroneously) to be founded on 'the central belief that women do not have souls'. [79] Pethick Lawrence troped women's oppressed position as that of 'cattle'.…”