Our philosophy professor, Marilyn, from the University of Dayton was our lecturer today. It was fascinating! She spoke on Gender and Mozart's Die Entfuhrung Aus Dem Serail (The Abduction from the Seraglio.) She gave a background of what the Enlightenment meant for society as a whole in Europe and compared the basics of society in the Ottoman Empire in the same time period. With the apparent obsession of anything Turkish during Mozart's era, we explored the portrayal of Turkish characters and settings in opera and entertainment in Europe versus what it was really like. However, it is noted that eighteenth century artists and thinkers started to see the similarities between the west and the Islamic east and created a "Sympathetic Orientalism." As Edward Said (a Philosopher of Orientalism) stated, "the eighteenth century mind...could see hidden elements of kinship between himself and the Orient...The Magic Flute (in which Masonic codes intermingle with visions of a benign Orient) and The Abduction from the Seraglio locate a particularly magnanimous form of humanity in the Orient." Essentially, Konstanze (the main female character) in the Abduction 'chooses' chastity, or subordination, to her husband in the setting of the Orient against a powerful Turkish Pasha, a ruler who ultimately allows the captives to live.
It is interesting how history does repeat itself. Similar to today and in recent history, humans of a certain culture will make assumptions and paint a false image of a different culture based on propaganda and political motivation. Most of the time, these assumptions are very inaccurate, creating unwarranted animosity and weary looks toward the 'other' culture.
When a western ear hears the term "Harem," one might picture a red-light-district place of adult escorts. In fact the term "harem" means "sacred place, forbidden space, guarded space." It was the space in a Muslim household reserved strictly for the residence of women (wives, daughters, concubines, servants, etc.) Several Ambassadors from Western Europe traveled to Turkey to get a first-hand glimpse into their daily lives. One such person was Lady Mary Wortley Montagu who wrote her Turkish Embassy Letters between 1717 and 1718. In these letters she states after visiting a harem, "...there was no the least wanton smile or immodest gesture amongst them...most of their skins shiningly white, only adorned by their beautiful hair...In short, 'tis the women's coffee house, where all the news of the town is told, scandal invented, etc. They generally take this diversion once a week, and stay there are least four or five hours..." Montagu was comparing these harems to her modern-day salons in Europe, where the drama of the day was discussed over coffee and dessert. However these salons were more for men to gather and were moderated/hosted by prominent women. Montagu actually saw the Turkish women as being very liberated. They were free to have their own female salons, they had the right to own and inherit property whether they were married or not, and they were covered in public, giving her a sense that they could be incognito. When the Turkish women saw Montagu's corset, she remarked, "I saw they believed I was so locked up in that machine, that it was not in my own power to open it, which contrivance they attributed to my husband. I was charmed with their civility and beauty...Upon the whole, I took upon Turkish women as the only free people in the empire." I am not, by any means, promoting the Turkish or Muslim way of life in the 1700s, as there was slavery and racism abhorrent to today's standards.
Back in Western Europe, the Enlightenment 'ideals' were taking shape. It's values of freedom, equality, and reason were primarily for men. Bourgeois women (the small, but growing middle class) had the responsibility of morality and chastity (constancy) within the home to preserve the social stability for the male line of inheritance. (Remember, women could not own or inherit property, the main avenue of success and economic survival.)
Before the Enlightenment Era was forming, the concept of marriage was very different than how we see it today. Marriage was a contract, especially with every class of people. In the working or poorer class, both people were responsible for the economic development of their family. They married if they knew the other person would positively effect the partnership and add to it's success. For instance, if the family were bakers, both partners and future children would work towards the success of their business. Aristocracy saw it as a contract between royal families to continue their reign and further their lineage. If love became a byproduct of the two people, that was nice, but it wasn't the main attraction. Love and romance didn't enter the picture until the late 1800s. Although many couples did love their partner, it was more of an adoration or a sense of respect and humility toward them. One commentary from 1758 stated, "By marriage, the husband and wife are one person in law; that is, the very being or legal existence of the woman is suspended during the marriage or at least is incorporated and consolidated into that of the husband, under whose wing, protection and cover, she performs everything."
Children became heirs and family workers. There was no contraception (that I know of), many babies died in infancy, and farms and businesses needed helpers, so women would give birth to many many children. It wasn't uncommon for wives to give birth to more than ten children during this time.
Some say that women's rights went backwards during the Enlightenment because the marriage became much less egalitarian as the Bourgeois class came to be. More and more families were able to hire servants to do their daily activities for them, so the women suddenly had no specific work to do. As a result, the wife was seen more as a symbol of the home, carrying the children, giving birth, and then honoring their husbands, while maintaining morality and constancy in the home. There were many pamphlets and letters written during this "Enlightenment" that spelled out how women, and wives in particular, were to act. They basically taught young women to retract into their own world and keep a strong sense of morality and guilt by their sides. Some of these pamphlets actually stated what instrument women could and could not play. The piano and the harp were the most feminine or accepted instruments because they allowed the woman to stay in a demure position. The violin and viola were also allowed, but never the cello!! Wind instruments distorted the face!! One from 1766 says, "Chastity is the next virtue...no charm can supply its place; without it beauty is unlovely, wit is mean and wanton; quality contemptible, and good-breeding worthless. She, who forgets her chastity, withers by degrees into scorn and condition; but she, who lives up to its rules, ever flourishes, like a rose in June, with all her virgin graces about her--sweet to the sense, and lovely to the eye. It is a kind of quick and delicate feeling in the soul, which makes her shrink and withdraw herself, from everything that is wanton, or has danger in it...I prescribe to you the practice of it in your greatest solitudes, as if the best judges were to see and censure all you do." If that's not a guilt trip, I'm not sure what is. Of course, we're reading these with a 21st century lens. There were women of this time who dismissed these writings and were 'dangerous,' but for the most part, when you have a society and environment telling you how to act and behave and think every day you're alive, you can start to believe it. Education and exposure were and still are the antithesis to this "Enlightened oppression."
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