Western perspectives from regions outside of Europe are, more often than not, filtered through a lens of fantasy and imagination. This way of looking at the Orient is known as Orientalism, a word Edward Said defines as the "constellation of ideas" that presents the lands of the East as exotic and distinct from the West (Said ). This problematic way of seeing the East creates a false narrative that very few people have attempted to dismantle. Lady Mary Wortley Montagu is one of the few people who attempted to accomplish this in her works. She is best remembered for her letters that presented Middle Eastern culture in a more enlightened way. Her credible accounts came from travels and frequent visits to Türkiye as the wife of a British ambassador (Bohls, 179-205). Lady Montagu's feminist tone contrasted with the manufactured and male-dominated fantasies of the time. This essay will demonstrate that Montagu's writings humanized the coveted Eastern women because of the special access they had to that realm due to their gender; she showed the truth of harems and hammams in a humanistic way by emphasizing the cleanliness of Turkish women, their morals and the respectful order of their hierarchies, which demonstrates that they actually have more freedoms and freedoms than Western women. Lady Mary is, in many ways, correct in her depictions of the Turkish bath and the harem, but nonetheless incorrect in her depiction of the veil. The veil exists in Islamic cultures because it gives women the opportunity to present a sense of intimacy from the surrounding culture, without deceiving men or oppressing women, as Lady Mary's letters indicate. Say no to plagiarism. Get a tailor-made essay on “Why Violent Video Games Should Not Be Banned”? Get the original essay Lady Mary Wortley Montagu was an English aristocrat and poet particularly known for writing historical letters. As the wealthy wife of an ambassador, Lady Montagu's travel experience was exceptionally rare and a rather astonishing feat in itself; furthermore, his exposition of Turkish bath society deliberately rejected and inverted masculine fantasy expectations regarding female life in the Ottoman Empire. She holds a remarkable legacy for her letters, notably those from her travels in the Ottoman Empire. According to Billie Melman, the letters were an early and important example of secular work that a woman wrote about the Islamic presence in the Turkish East (Melman). Lady Mary's intellectual impact is, for this reason, reflected in later attempts by scholars to demystify the presence of women in the Ottoman Empire from perspectives that deny orientalism. Lady Mary traveled with her husband to Türkiye, where she wrote her famous letters about Turkish women. , Turkish bath and harem. In her letter, she describes her encounter with the culture practiced in Turkey as a decentering experience affecting the loss and reconstitution of her thematic position via social interactions with other women. The importance of Lady Montagu's letters lies above all in overturning the patriarchal and racist stereotypes previously written by European men. Ruth Barzilai-Lumbroso writes in the article “Turkish Men and the History of Ottoman Women: Studying the History of the Private Sphere of the Ottoman Dynasty through Women's Writings” that “the history of Ottoman women has been presented to the Turkish public through the mediation of mainly male historians, who were among the first to study Ottoman dynastic history” (Barzilai-Lumbroso, 54). His letters arerevolutionary in themselves because she was a rare traveler at a time when even royal and elite women were discriminated against and prevented from easily traveling, researching, or otherwise educating themselves. another way, gender-based difficulties that Sue Rosser discusses in the article "Feminist Scholarship in theSciences: Where are we now and when can we expect a breakthrough?" » (Rosser, 6). Having risen to the upper class of Turkish society in 1716 as the wife of the British ambassador, she was able to gain access to estates of the Ottoman aristocracy that even privileged men would have been forbidden to visit. It is important to know the truth presented by Lady Montagu in the "Letters from the Turkish Embassy", about the functions of hammams and harems, of Turkish women, and the definition of their role in society outside of the fantasies presented in orientalism. During her visit, she was deeply enchanted by the splendor of Ottoman ladies and the dignity of their surroundings, in contrast to the male writers' insistence on emphasizing perverse sexuality. Lady Mary's encounter with this kingdom for women in a Turkish shower is noteworthy. worth noting, as one of the experiences she recorded as a particularly entertaining episode during a gathering of Turkish ladies at a shower in Sofia (Aravamudan, 69-104). This depiction of Turkish women as confident agents of their own bodies was contrary to the male-dominated literature of that era. These women were liberated in these circumstances where they were masters of their own environments instead of being seen as objects of male sexual attention. In the Turkish baths, Lady Mary's sex gave her access to an area of ​​Ottoman culture that no man had been able to observe before. Due to the ban on men entering this female-only location, previous male visitors to the Ottoman Empire documented their findings as the result of speculation and not fact (Barzilai-Lumbroso, 61). These previous attempts to record Ottoman history from a male, Western perspective depicted these baths in an overly sexual manner; this corrupted the authentic nature of these bathhouses as places where women could gather in the privacy of their own sex, without prying eyes. They could simply behave as they would with other women, without interference. This article will show that three subjects taken from Lady Mary Montagu's letters to the Turkish embassy – those of the Turkish bath (or hammam), the harem and the veil – shattered previous conceptions of the latter. aspects of the identity of the Ottoman woman. She corrected many misinterpretations of ancient male travelers, including the sensationalist accounts recorded about religion, conventions, and the treatment of women in the Ottoman Empire. Her gender and class status gave her access to exclusive feminine worlds where she could give precise details about customs and fine outfits (Secor). On the other hand, even though her writings contradict male writers and their misconceptions, she resembles them in her description of the veil and her accusations against women's morals, as she, as a Christian, still finds some of the customs of Islam. strange or “oriental” society. Because she is an upper-class woman, Montagu's encounters with Turkish women sometimes spark misunderstandings due to the dramatic differences between the cultures, such as particular greeting customs and the relationship between the guest and the l host (However, 89). There is an Arabic proverb which meansthat the inhabitants of a place are best placed to know its hidden paths. Thus, even though Lady Mary entered the feminine space of this society, she was an outsider witness to certain feminine practices in the hammam and harem. She failed to fully understand the Muslim view of the veil as an important part of a Muslim woman's identity. The Turkish bath and harem may be specifically linked to identities associated with the Ottoman Empire, but the veil is a symbol for all of Islam, which is optional and not obligatory; women wear it based on their individual choices and beliefs about what it means to express their personal modesty as a follower of Islam while still allowing themselves to maintain their privacy from the surrounding world. Lady Montagu was fascinated by the freedom of Turkish women and their lives. , which was a stark contrast to the lives of women in England. The concept of women's freedom has been discussed for many years. The era in which Lady Mary Wortley Montagu lived coincided with that of the Enlightenment, a period of intense intellectual discussion in European history. Women, during this period, began to accept different roles in this changing society. In the article “Feminism and the Enlightenment 1650-1850,” Barbara Taylor explains how this era reevaluated the relationship between women, intellectuals, and philosophical thought in general. Taylor writes: "Histories of feminism in England have generally linked its emergence there to the revolution in political ideas that occurred in the 17th and 18th centuries, and in particular to the impact of the ideas of John Locke... His fierce attack on the model patriarchal political authority. was perhaps not intended to encourage criticism of patriarchal power within the family” (Taylor, 265). The feminist rejection of patriarchal models ironically finds its origins in the work of the man John Locke. Lady Montagu's writings are indicative of Enlightenment trends that highlighted a rejection of previous models while exploring new ways of engaging in thought. Later feminist intellectual movements can trace their roots to the era of Enlightenment women writers, such as Montagu, who examined society from a female perspective. In conjunction with the influences of contemporary Enlightenment thought, many of Lady Mary's observations stemmed from the culture shocks she experienced while living in the Ottoman Empire, an empire that operated according to Islamic rather than Christian values. enduring empires in world history and the center of the Islamic caliphate. The Turkic tribes that would become the Ottoman Empire conquered the Byzantine Empire in the 1200s, ending Greco-Roman rule in the Middle East in an empire that would last until World War I (Shaw). The Ottoman Empire established an Islamic society in Istanbul, which was once Constantinople and one of the largest cities in the world. The empire expanded into the Balkans, bringing its influence and Islam to the West while maintaining a distinct identity, often seen as incredibly foreign to the people of European nations. Ottoman influences still exist today through the predominance of Islam in countries such as Albania, Serbia and Kosovo; this demonstrates the extent to which Ottoman influences were able to influence society over the hundreds of years that the empire lasted. Ruth Barlizai-Lumbroso writes about the role of women in the Ottoman Empire, commenting: "Stories focused on the daily lives of Ottoman women have allowed historians to reconstruct representations of Ottoman women not only as submissive and submissive, but also ashaving control over their lives. ; not just as passive spectators, but as powerful and active participants in their society. (Barlizai-Lumbroso, 76-77). Women were not simply objects of male sexuality, but rather were agents in their own lives. The dominance of Islam as the primary religion in the Ottoman kingdoms created a society in which Muslim values ​​were the standard by which all others were judged, a fundamental difference from Western societies based on their individual perceptions of Christianity (Shaw , 95). These values, however, were radically different from those generally perceived by Western sources as expressed in Montagu's letters, perhaps explaining his confusion when it came to the subject of a woman's choice to adopt the veil. The Ottoman Empire expressed modesty as a personal choice to signify themselves as followers of Islam in public and to give themselves the opportunity to maintain a sense of privacy outside their own home; In this respect, the private lives of female followers of Islam were not as repressive as Western and Orientalist conceptions would have one believe. Instead of the erotic and romanticized views of the Ottoman Empire as a land of naked women and perverted men that were expressed in much of the literature of the empire era, the people were instead more pious , but expressed more liberation than is generally believed. Western representations (Said). Montagu's letters help deconstruct these orientalist views of the Ottoman Empire by depicting women as real people and not sexualized objects in a book. These earlier observations parallel later scholarly work, such as that of Said's writings on Orientalism, which truly show how revolutionary Lady Montagu's ideas were in her letters. For an 18th century woman, her ideas were truly revolutionary at a time of changing social order all over the world, with these thoughts previously mentioned as an extension of the Enlightenment. These dramatic social changes finally appeared in fully realized form during the French Revolution later in the same century. The 18th century is, from this perspective, the decisive century in the birth of the modern world and the intellectual perceptions which enabled its creation. She wrote about the Turkish hammam and its truthfulness in her letter XXVII. She declares in the first lines of her letter: “I have now entered a new world, where everything I see seems to me a change of scenery. » In the 18th century, the Orient was a strange and different realm for Europeans. Their designs based on letters written by male writers, Said called them orientalist. Travel writers and orientalists entered the hammam and she expected to see homosexuality as the male writers described it, but she found something else. scene: all being in a state of nature, that is to say in plain terms, completely naked, without any beauty or hidden flaw, yet there was not the slightest wanton smile or the slightest immodest gesture among them. They walked and moved the same way. The majestic Grace that Milton describes of our Mother General. There were many among them, as exactly proportioned as ever a Goddess drawn by the pencil of Guido [Reni] or Titian, and most of their skins were of brilliant whiteness, adorned only with their Belle. The hair divided into numerous braids hanging on the shoulder, braided either with beads or with ribbons, perfectly represents thefigures of the Graces (Montagu, Letter XXVI). The Turkish bath plays an important role in the social environment of Turkish Muslims as they provide an environment in which people of each gender can interact in an environment without interference from the other gender. Lady Montagu had the privilege, as a foreigner, of experiencing that aspect of Turkish culture which was so radically different from her own due to her gender and social class, the latter allowing her the mobility that other women Westerners were missing (Rosser, 7-8). Through this, she was able to observe Muslim women in an environment without the presence of men, which was the key factor that made her observations so different from those of the male travelers who came before her. Arthur J. Weitzman's article "Voyeurism and Aesthetics in the Turkish Baths: Lady Mary's School of Feminine Beauty" provides further insight into Lady Montagu's experience at the Turkish Baths. These experiences were, for Lady Montagu, a form of liberation she had never known before. [Lady Montagu indulged in these exotic experiences] in part by removing her outer clothing to reveal her “stays,” which, she wrote, “satisfied them.” very good, because I saw that they believed me to be so locked in this machine that it was not in my power to open it, which they attributed to my husband. Srinivas Aravamudan, despite Lady Mary's disavowal of the sexual content in her description of the bath, perversely maintains that "the letter of the bath turns into an immense letter." a metaphor for what he was trying to circumvent: "the sexual impropriety.” Although he admits that it “extinguishes the specter of lesbian eroticism,” the description “nevertheless suggests lesbian possibilities” (Weitzman, 353). The liberation that Lady Montagu experienced during her visits to the Turkish baths is a native component of the Islamic religion. culture that originated in the Ottoman Empire. Muslim women, in these situations, expressed behaviors that would have been considered perverse in the West, but which were entirely tolerated in the sense of Ottoman modesty. This reality shows how prudish Western society was compared to the relatively free society that existed within these safe spaces dedicated to women. However, male-dominated Western viewpoints eroticized these typical scenes of Ottoman woman's life into perverted depictions of Orientalist scenarios of how life existed in the Orient. Due to the descriptions of Turkish women in these public baths, all typical images of oriental women are naked in the Western imagination. This depiction of sexualized Ottoman women is a misrepresentation that this article seeks to undermine. In the article "Aesthetics and Orientalism in the Letters of Lady Mary Wortley Montagu", Elizabeth A. Bohls argues that the West views naked oriental women as erotic and sexual objects because of these depictions of Turkish society from the point of view of Western male view. before this time, historical narratives and perspectives were defined, which is why it was so important that Lady Montagu's letters exist in historical records (Bohls, 191-192). His writings played a fundamental role in changing perspectives towards a more realistic view of Islamic society and Islamic society. roles of women in the Ottoman East. These are sources that modern scholars have used in order to determine the true roles that women had within this society as opposed to the more fictional and sexual accounts that men had made before it. , played roles that extended far beyond the stereotype of sexual objects in the eyes of male travelers.In the article “Western Ethnocentrism and Perceptions of the Harem,” author Leila Ahmed discusses the theme of the harem in the context of its relationship to Western views. of Ottoman society. Ahmed writes: “The orientalist image of a harem is that of a wealthy environment that is full of excellent and mysterious ladies whose only obligation is to take away all the pleasures of a man. This myth may have been based on the royal harem of the Ottoman Empire in the 17th and 18th centuries” (Ahmed, p. 521). Western travelers were the first to present this image, and we can still see artwork based on romantic imaginings today. Unfortunately, this image is based on an insufficient understanding of Muslim culture, traditions and the role of the harem in the country. The field of Orientalism was born from the combination of imagination and ignorance. The contributions of male explorers, travelers and artists are full of fantasies that resemble fairy tales. Heather Madar, in the article "Before the Odalisque: Renaissance Depictions of Elite Ottoman Women", argues that many of these depictions were reiterated through the lens of Renaissance artists, who transmitted these myths surrounding the Ottoman harem as a reality. Jean-Baptiste Vanmour appears as one of those travelers whose representation of the Ottoman harem was fundamentally erroneous, representing it as a place of sexuality (Madar, 31). Lady Montagu's stories are essential in destroying these myths about what constitutes Muslim identity in the area of ​​the role of women in society under the Ottoman Empire. Lady Mary Wortley Montagu's accounts of the Ottoman harem describe a space for women only, not a private brothel for women. a man of power. Judith Still writes in “Hospitable Harems? A European Woman and Eastern Spaces in the Age of Enlightenment", that "Montagu's experiences in Turkey seem to refute this assertion".cliché - she travels herself and is received in the harem (as in many other places) which becomes not a prison but simply the domain of women... Montagu's letters to her sister concerning the occasions on which she was received by noble ladies in the women's quarters of the house do much to dispel any myths about "harems" » (Still, 97-98). The harem was, contrary to male narratives about women's place in an Islamic household, a place where women could be themselves without interference from men. It was a place where men were generally not allowed to intervene. As Lady Mary Wortley Montagu wrote, this place was not a prison for these women, but rather a space dedicated to allowing them to exist in luxury, which defied Western expectations of what existed in this space. It is for this reason that Lady Mary's writings on the harem are important documents for establishing a historical perspective on the way in which the sexualized harem in the European imagination was the product of fiction, as opposed to the abode of women noble that he really was. Montagu's accounts provide details that are contrary to the male-dominated accounts that existed before his time in the Ottoman Empire. His beliefs about the function of the veil are incorrect. In her letter XXX to Lady Mar, Lady Montagu describes the Islamic veil saying: "A bride is worn to church, with a bonnet on her head, in the manner of a large trench coat, and over a red silk veil which covers it. standing everywhere… but her veil is never lifted, not even by her husband” (Montague, Letter XXX). This is at odds with Islam's ideas that veiling is an option for women to demonstrate their dedication to..