The Gaze Between: What Happens when the Egyptian Harem Re-turns the Gaze of an Englishwoman
Keywords:
travel, colonialism, gender, englishwomanAbstract
Studies of Victorian women’s travel literature have long been focused on the constructed nature of the inside/outside dichotomy on which the British empire relied. The Englishwoman traveller situates her story within this construction by establishing her white female body as a symbol of English purity and insularity. As she ventures beyond the metropole, she must maintain the purity of her domestic sphere and her female body as a refuge from foreign influence. Her attempts to describe others as “Other” are therefore a construction and revelation of self. Through a close reading of the gaze in harem literature, this article contends that the Englishwoman is, in fact, deeply aware of how problematic the distinction between self and Other is. Far from taking the inside/outside dichotomy of the British empire for granted, she uses it as deliberate rhetorical strategy to bolster the boundaries she sees dissolving under her imperial gaze.
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