Female Barbary Captivity Narratives: from “Self-made Woman” to Romantic Adventurer

Abstract

Female Barbary captivity narratives feature women who were captured by North African pirates and their experience during captivity. Despite the numerous adaptations of women in Barbary Captivity in renaissance “Tur­kish plays”, the fact-based female Barbary captivity narratives were rather limited. And in this essay two of them will be discussed: the narrative of Maria ter Meeteleen and the narrative of Elizabeth Marsh. These two earliest texts of female barbary captivity narratives revealed that, instead of falling into the stereotype of “damsel in distress” in renaissance drama, the captivity narratives actually in a way provided a space for the empowerment of wo­men. Meeteleen’s experience of “self-made woman” and Marsh’s romantic adventure both crossed the patriarchy order in their original society and represented the unique cross-cultural experience for female individuals in early modern era.