The image of Muslim Arab women is predominantly exotic, passive, veiled, and subjugated victim-women; they are represented as impersonal objects of stereotypes that steadily perpetuate cultural prejudices. This view is based and started, in part, by a number of “travellers’ stories” written by European visitors to Ottoman territories during the 17th 18th and 19th century. The institution of the harem was, without a doubt, one of the most overstated and misinterpreted aspects of the 19th century Middle East. Western society often viewed and described the East in sexual terms. When harems were referred by men travellers, women’s voices were not present or at worse, they were filtered by Western men imagination and prejudices. In addition, when female voices are highlighted in women traveler’s writings, during the Victorian Era, are …show more content…
Women managed the household and harem as the supreme authority ( Sancar, ottoman women) Managing the harem was an arduous job; there was, in fact, an extensive hierarchy of female positions within the harem (peirce imperial harem). The harem provided a space to compete with other women and to reach out to the men’s sphere of influence (Peirce imperial harem). Women attained power through their capacity to bear children and the opportunity later on to secure their influence through motherhood. Women were tasked with important, demanding obligations within the imperial harem, the valide sultan was at the head, a the title that was the highest role a woman could aspire to in Ottoman society (Peirce imperial harem).The emergence of the valide was preceded by the haseki, or the sultan’s favorite, and because Islamic faith revere mothers (hassem), reproduction was a critical aspect of female power and, therefore, dictated the role that a woman would have in Ottoman