Silence in the Seraglio: Women and Legislation in Montesquieu

This article aligns silence in Montesquieu's Lettres persanes with his notion of legal spirit as central in the transition from despotism to liberty. Exploring the imbrication of despotism and the passions, it traces the means by which the protagonist Usbek's wives rewrite the laws of the seraglio as they co-opt its silence to emancipatory ends. By both concealing and revealing their passions, the women access a new language and philosophy, while seizing the subversive political potential of ineffability and dramatizing it through the transgressive epistolary form.