hilaritas 's review for:

Harem: The World Behind the Veil by Alev Lytle Croutier

2.0

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This book contains some good material on an interesting topic and has an intriguing structure, but it ultimately fails of its purpose in my opinion. The highlights are the low-key way that Croutier incorporates elements of her family history into the account, along with a well-curated selection of illustrations. However, these elements are not enough to rescue an otherwise lightweight treatment of the subject. Croutier purports in the introductions to provide a feminist demythologizing of the idea of the harem, but she in fact seems to fall victim to the allure of the myth. Most of this book reads like a breathless rehash of the more prurient aspects of the Western concept of the harem, and very little attention gets paid to the ways in which the segregation of women systemically degraded people and social structures. Further, the last chapter is a weird paean to the Earth Mother bonds of women in groups, and verges uncomfortably close to arguing for the harem as the natural social structure towards which all women in groups will gravitate. A really strange book that I was hoping would provide critical insight into an often-misunderstood non-Western tradition, but which left me feeling like the pernicious and titillating Orientalist myth claimed another mind.