Turkish Embassy Letters by Mary Wortley Montagu

If seen through male eyes, the women that Lady Mary Wortley Montagu interacted with would have been seen as submissive and oppressed by their own culture, embodying the ‘damsel in distress’ trope. Therefore, it is imperative that this account is from a female perspective. The Turkish Embassy Letters, comes with a pre-constructed, orientalist ideal of the East, where identity is constructed wholly on race and culture. The analysis also reveals that the Turkish Embassy Letters is a cultural document and literary work worthy of recognition.Identity is an idiosyncratic definition of a person that can be constructed through many variables: race, gender, class and culture, to name but a few. The result is an analysis which reveals why Lady Mary refused to publish the Letters in her lifetime-the subject matter was considered indecorous for an aristocratic woman in England during the eighteenth century. Cultural gynocriticism provides the justification for utilizing such material. The analysis of the Turkish Embassy Letters utilizes the conclusions drawn from the historical and biographical reviews. The biographical information discloses that Lady Mary, though not immune to social standards regarding decorum for women of her position, was exceptional in her ability to achieve balance between decorous behavior and her desire to learn and to excel as a writer. The history indicates that women were an educationally, professionally, and socially oppressed group. This first step allows for the next two aspects of this thesis, which include a brief review of the history of women of eighteenth-century England and a review of biographical information on Lady Mary. The result is the selection of a cultural gynocritics approach for this analysis. First, a definition of and justification for feminist theory is presented. Three steps are employed to achieve this analysis. This thesis is a feminist analysis of the Turkish Embassy Letters of Lady Mary Wortley Montagu. The indecorous aspects of her observations and opinions are precisely the reason Lady Mary would not allow the publication of the Letters during her lifetime the awareness of their potential value is her justification for taking steps to insure their publication after her death.

Even so, she was aware of the literary, social, and cultural value of this work.

Throughout this collection, Lady Mary oversteps the boundaries of decorous behavior for aristocratic women of that time period by addressing issues resserved only for men or issues that were inappropriate for either gender to broach. Her most famous work, the Turkish Embassy Letters, is a collection of letters written between 17 in which she addresses her observations of various countries, cultures, and customs during her husband's Embassy to Turkey. and witty author in eighteenth-century England.

Lady Mary Wortley Montagu was a gifted, insightful.

Turkish Embassy Letters by Mary Wortley Montagu