Transculturation and Politics in the Works of Lady Mary Wortley Montagu

This essay employs contemporary postcolonial and feminist theory to argue that Lady Mary Wortley Montagu became an overtly political subject and participant in English politics as a result of her travels through Western Europe and Turkey. Most critical analyses of the Turkish Embassy Letters contend that Lady Mary remains embedded within her aristocratic English womanhood at the end of her travels. On the contrary, the writer underwent a profound subjective transformation that manifests in her writing years after she wrote the Letters, most prominently in her newspaper, The Nonsense of Common-Sense.