Edith Wharton's Travel Narrative In Morocco

Travel writers share their experience in visiting other countries by discourse, in their writings, they are mainly concerned with the non-western other. Numerable books are written to describe the orient world, it is usually seen opposed to the western world and the kind of discourse used is mostly colonial in depicting the non-European other. Because discourse itself can be a form of colonization, we shall consider to what extent the use of language by travel writers adheres to this type of colonialism. European travel writing emphasizes the notion of otherness which creates boundaries between the western and the orient, and reconsiders the notion of identity that separates the orient from the west and gives definitions to each side. These …show more content…
This paper aims to study Edith Wharton's travel narrative in her visit to Morocco and how she contributed to western production of knowledge about the other. It studies travel writing that reveals the imperial intentions of the west where an interaction between cultures occur to give each of the empires a certain position , through colonial discourse the paper shall study the travel narrative to show how travel narratives took part in the western discovery of the non-western other. It will analyze Edith Wharton's travel narrative In Morocco(1920) to reveal how is the colonized other perceived in the Western's perspective , discussing the relationship between the colonizer and the colonized and how Edith Wharton uses an orientalist discourse that stands with the French colony that occurred at the time . Her work can be seen as orientalist since her position stands with the colonial power that views the east as uncivilized compared to the …show more content…
Morocco for Wharton is an unknown country, nevertheless, she gives herself the procuration to write about it even though it is according to her " mysterious”, from here, a lack of originality in her book is to be expected because even though she claims to be an expert of Morocco and she describes her work as Morocco's first travel book, Wharton reflects a colonial discourse to dominate by her colonizing eyes. She reinforces the French intervention that occurred in the First World War period, when the struggle of the other was majorly caused by the dominance of the colonial powers whose aim is to defeat and marginalize the Colonized other. Thus Wharton's descriptions to the various parts of Morocco lacks originality and credibility regarding her production of knowledge, her text is constructed within colonialism that acts upon her in relation to the Moroccan country, its people, culture and other descriptions of Morocco in her book. The content and style of the book that