European men invented two opposite images of the same Oriental woman

Evidence

Like Oceania, the Orient was represented as a place of dreams and nightmares, which were often expressed along gender lines. Miscegenation, an anxiety rather pronounced when it came to many exotic locales, is often absent in Polynesian romances, which frequently include a white man romancing a Tahitian, Hawaiian, or other Polynesian maiden. The fantasies associated with the South Pacific influenced some of the ways in which Muslims were represented, especially in Romantic fiction, such as the novellas penned by Pierre Loti. Loti wrote himself into many love stories with foreign, nubile, young women, including both Polynesian and Muslim maidens. In The Marriage of Loti, he falls in love with a Tahitian named Rarahu, and in Aziyade, with a Turkish girl. These two excerpts, which describe the two characters, demonstrate how Polynesian and Muslim females functioned as almost identical objects of desire in Romantic fiction: Rarahu had tawny black eyes, full of exotic languor, of wheedling softness, like those of kittens when one strokes them. — Sophia Rose Arjana, Muslims in the Western Imagination, 370 (#exemplifies, via linked claim)

Categorization

• XREF: connects to: Orientalist paintings of Muslim women reveal European male fantasy more than real conditions. — Green, Todd H, The Fear of Islam_ An Introduction to…, 199; South Pacific and Muslim fantasy women functioned as identical objects of desire; Muslim women were pornographically depicted to commodity the Orient (+6 more)

Related

• South Pacific and Muslim fantasy women functioned as identical objects of desire (similarity 0.93)
• Romantic fiction made Polynesian and Muslim women interchangeable objects of desire (similarity 0.93)
• Orientalist paintings of Muslim women reveal European male fantasy more than real conditions. (similarity 0.87)
• Romantic Orientalism shaped how Muslims were imagined even in positive portrayals (similarity 0.83)
• Orientalist writers framed Muslim women as commodified sexual objects to be acquired (similarity 0.80)
• The oppressed-Muslim-woman trope emerged in 18th-19th century Europe, not earlier (similarity 0.79)
• Romantic Orientalism’s rare positive Arab portrayals were overwhelmed by negative depictions (similarity 0.79)
• European portrayals of the harem projected fantasy rather than observed reality (similarity 0.78)

Broader Connections

• Changing European society, not Muslim women, drove the oppression image #expands (0.55)
• The oppressed-Muslim-woman trope emerged in 18th-19th century Europe, not earlier #corroborates (0.50)
• Romantic fiction made Polynesian and Muslim women interchangeable objects of desire #exemplifies (0.50) — Sophia Rose Arjana, Muslims in the Western Imagination, 370
• Gendered Islamophobia assigns opposite tropes to Muslim women and men #expands (0.45) — Khaled A. Beydoun, The New Crusades_ Islamophobia and the…, 1244
• Circulating veiled-woman imagery deadens Westerners’ sense of Muslim women’s diversity #expands (0.35) — Arsalan Iftikhar, Fear of a Muslim Planet_ Global…, 394