Persian Letters

Overview

About three hundred pages, an epistolary novel by Montesquieu, published anonymously in Amsterdam in 1721. Two Persian noblemen, Usbek and Rica, travel to Paris in 1712 and describe French customs, religion, politics and fashions to friends at home with the puzzled candour of outsiders.

They mock the Pope, the king, the financier John Law and the Academy. Interleaved are letters from Usbek’s harem in Isfahan, where his absence loosens the eunuchs’ control and his wives rebel. The book ends with the suicide of his favourite wife Roxane, who has deceived him and dies declaring herself free.

What happens

Usbek and Rica arrive in Paris. Two Persian noblemen, Usbek and Rica, travel to Paris in 1712, beginning an extended correspondence with friends at home describing French society through the puzzled candour of genuine outsiders encountering unfamiliar customs.

Satirizing French institutions. Usbek and Rica mock the Pope, the king, the financier John Law and the Academy, using their foreign perspective to make French religious, political and financial institutions look strange and therefore open to question.

The harem in Isfahan. Interleaved among the Parisian letters are letters from Usbek’s harem in Isfahan, establishing a parallel plot running alongside the more famous satirical observations of French society and politics.

The eunuchs’ control loosens. Usbek’s prolonged absence loosens the eunuchs’ control over his wives, gradually eroding the domestic order he left in place and setting up the household rebellion that will eventually consume the novel’s final letters.

The wives rebel. Usbek’s wives begin to rebel against the constraints of the harem, extending the novel’s critique of despotic power from the distant, satirized French institutions to Usbek’s own immediate domestic authority.

Roxane’s suicide. The novel ends with the suicide of Usbek’s favourite wife Roxane, who has deceived him throughout their marriage and dies declaring herself free, giving the harem plot a serious and consequential conclusion.

How to read it

Read the device of two Persian travelers describing French customs with puzzled outsider candour as a technique letting Montesquieu satirize powerful institutions with a critical freedom direct commentary under his own name could never have achieved.

Pay close attention to how the interleaved harem letters extend the same defamiliarizing critique from French politics and religion to the domestic despotism Usbek himself practices without apparently recognizing the parallel to what he mocks in Paris.

Notice how Roxane’s suicide, after deceiving Usbek throughout and dying declaring herself free, gives the epistolary novel’s fictional frame its most serious consequence, refusing to let the harem plot remain merely exotic backdrop to the more famous Parisian satire.

Consider the novel’s anonymous publication in Amsterdam as evidence of how dangerous contemporaries would have found its content; the combination of formal innovation and genuinely pointed political and religious critique required this protective distance from open attribution.

Read this novel alongside Montesquieu’s own later Spirit of the Laws to see how the satirical observations scattered across these letters anticipate the systematic comparative study of political and social institutions he would develop at far greater length in that mature masterwork.

Questions it raises

• Does the device of Persian travelers observing French customs with puzzled candour successfully defamiliarize institutions readers might otherwise take for granted, or does this technique risk exoticizing Usbek and Rica themselves as much as it critiques French society?
• How does the parallel between Usbek’s own domestic despotism over his harem and the French political and religious authority he and Rica satirize function within the novel’s larger structure? Does Usbek ever seem to recognize this parallel himself?
• What does Roxane’s suicide and her dying declaration of freedom suggest about the novel’s ultimate judgment on despotic power, whether exercised by a Persian husband or a French king? Does her death offer genuine critique or merely tragic spectacle?
• How should a reader weigh the novel’s anonymous publication in Amsterdam against its actual content? Does this protective anonymity suggest Montesquieu himself recognized just how dangerous his satirical observations about the Pope, the king and the Academy actually were?
• Given that the harem letters and the Parisian letters interleave throughout rather than appearing in separate sections, how does this structural choice shape a reader’s experience of the novel’s dual critique of French and Persian forms of authority?
• What does this novel’s use of an epistolary, multi-voiced form suggest about its approach to satire compared to more direct philosophical or political treatises? Does the fictional frame strengthen or complicate the seriousness of its critique?