venuti

180 The Translator’s InvisibilityWinzy’s expense: the allusion inevitably points to the discrepancybetween his cringing weakness and Nourjahad’s potent excess,beginning the satire of male power that is Shelley’s theme.Yet whatever feminist design can be detected in Sheridan’s tale isfinally skewed by the racial and class ideologies that underwrite it.In interrogating patriarchy, The History of Nourjahad is clearlyoverdetermined by Orientalism: it simultaneously demonstrates andrehabilitates the moral inferiority of the East. Nourjahad’scharacterization involves the racist procedure of naturalizing ethnicstereotypes, grounding them in biology: “he was not of an activetemper,” “he was naturally choleric” (Weber 1812:698, 700). Andalthough Islam is treated reverentially, with Nourjahad receiving hismost severe punishment for blaspheming the Koran, Sheridan’svalorization of marriage is linked to an explicit privileging of theWest and to a consistent representation of women as the object ofmale sexual desire—even in the context of companionate marriage.Thus, Mandana’s reciprocation of Nourjahad’s love is described as“a felicity very rare among eastern husbands,” and she is revealedto be Schemzeddin’s gift to his favorite, freed from her status as thesultan’s “slave” because she participated in his “contrivance” byimpersonating Nourjahad’s guardian genius and later joining hisseraglio (ibid.:698, 719–720). Insofar as Schemzeddin is responsiblefor Nourjahad’s reformation, moreover, the narrative affirms aspecific political institution, a despotic monarchy that relies onpaternalistic interventions. The ideological configuration ofSheridan’s tale, what can be called an Orientalist image ofpatriarchal despotism, jars against the bourgeois feminism that canbe read out of Shelley’s allusion, forcing Winzy’s exclamation toprecipitate still more contradictions in her project. “How happy wasthe fabled Nourjahad”—that he lived under a despot who exercisedabsolute power over his subjects? That he dominated his wife as wellas the women in his seraglio? That he was a Persian who overcamehis Oriental propensity to vice? These potential meanings wouldhave been accessible to readers of The Keepsake: the audience forthese expensive giftbooks was largely aristocratic and bourgeoiswomen, politically conservative, accustomed to prose and poetrythat was often Orientalist and filled with patriarchal constructionsof gender (Faxon 1973:xxi; Altick 1957:362–363).Although The History of Nourjahad enjoyed some popularity onthe continent during the late eighteenth century, when it wastranslated into French, Russian, and Hungarian, it seems unlikely