Appropriating Difference in Ella C. Sykes' Through Persia on a Side-Saddle. Issue 2 (2nd April 2016)

• Record Type: Journal Article
• Authors: Ghaderi, Farah; Sadeghi, Karim
• Is Part Of: Angelaki. Volume 21:Issue 2(2016)
• Page Start: 163
• Page End: 176
• Publication Date: 2016-04-02
• Subjects: imaginative appropriation -- colonial appropriation -- self-criticism -- difference -- Other -- Ella Sykes; Literature -- Criticism and interpretation -- Periodicals; Philosophy -- Periodicals; Political science -- Periodicals; 100
• DOI: 10.1080/0969725X.2016.1182734
• Languages: English
• ISSNs: 0969-725X

Abstract

Abstract: This article teases out Ella Sykes' responses to the differences she encounters in the contact zone in Persia in her much-neglected travel narrative Through Persia on a Side-Saddle (1898). The authors argue that Ella Sykes' position/self-positioning in relation to difference is shaped by various, and at times opposing, factors, which contribute to the ambivalent nature of her representations of Persia and its people in her travel narrative. The paper proposes that even though Through Persia seems to be moulded by and moulds hegemonic Orientalist perspectives, it has its own specificities, as Ella Sykes' representations of difference are also informed by implications of English gender ideology. It further shows how Ella Sykes' representations of the differences she encounters in Persia offer her an empowering medium through which she can indulge in self-criticism and self-assertion.