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American Missionaries and the Harem: Cultural Exchanges behind the Scenes
Published online by Cambridge University Press: 28 March 2011
Abstract
This article examines the impact on American furniture and clothing styles by women missionaries traveling to Turkey in the Victorian era. Although there has been much discussion of the impact of Western missionaries on Turkey and other parts of Asia, the reciprocal impact on American culture has not been adequately assessed. Missionary work, which started in the 1820s in a modest manner, turned into a systematic and large-scale activity, reaching its climax during the last quarter of the nineteenth century. Unlike Western diplomats, whose visits took place in the palaces of Istanbul, far from the realities of everyday life, missionary women had informal contact with ordinary Turkish women. Ottoman Turkish domestic space was highly gendered, so only these missionary women would have had access to authentic Ottoman Turkish interiors and been able to observe them as social spaces. The furniture style and the unique concept of comfort that they observed in Turkey presented an alternative point of view of home life and its organization. After spending years abroad, these women would return to the US to recruit and raise money for their missions by traveling from community to community, often creating interest for their work abroad by presenting examples of material culture. This article will put letters, diaries, travelogues and other contemporary material in the context of American culture of the Victorian era in order to chart the unusual way in which American and Turkish women interacted with each other at this historical moment.
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References
1 On gendered spaces in the Ottoman Empire see Ferhunde Özbay, “Gendered Space: A New Look at Turkish Modernisation,” in Leonore Davidoff, Keith McClelland, and Eleni Varikas, eds., Gender and History: Retrospect and Prospect (Oxford: Blackwell Publishers, 2000), 137–50. On selamlık see Emre Yalçın, “The Story of a Mansion,” in Suraiya Faroqhi and Christoph K. Neumann, eds., The Illuminated Table, the Prosperous House: Food and Shelter in Ottoman Material Culture (Würzburg: Ergon in Kommission, 2005) 244–45.
2 For more on the conversion of Turks to Islam see Carter V. Findley, The Turks in World History (New York: Oxford University Press, 2005); Ira Marvin Lapidus, A History of Islamic Societies (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2002); Justin McCarthy, The Ottoman Turks: An Introductory History to 1923 (London: Longman, 1997); Oktay Aslanapa, Turkish Art and Architecture (New York: Praeger Publishers, 1971).
3 Jill Beaulieu and Mary Roberts, Inderpal Grewal, Elizabeth C. Goldsmith, and Katherine Bullock used this term. Jill Beaulieu and Mary Roberts, eds.,Orientalism's Interlocutors: Painting, Architecture, Photography (Durham, NC: Duke University Press, 2002); Inderpal Grewal,Home and Harem: Nation, Gender, Empire, and the Cultures of Travel (Durham, NC: Duke University Press, 1996); Katherine Bullock,Rethinking Muslim Women and the Veil: Challenging Historical and Modern Stereotypes (Herndon: International Institute of Islamic Thought, 2002).
4 European travelers who wrote about gender separation in Ottoman Turkish houses include François Charles Hugues Laurent Pouqueville, Travels through the Morea, Albania, and other parts of the Ottoman Empire to Constantinople (London: Printed for R. Phillips by Barnard and Suttzer, 1806); Robert Bowyer, Turkey in Europe (n.p. 1819?); Thomas Thornton, The Present State of Turkey (London: Printed for Joseph Mawman, 1809); Pierre Blanchard, Le Voyageur de la Jeunesse dans les Quatre Parties du Monde (Paris: Le Prieur, 1818); Gullaume-Antoine Olivier, Voyage dans l'Empire Othman, l'Egypte et la Perse (Paris: H. Agasse, 1801).
5 The key discussion is in Edward Said, Orientalism (New York: Pantheon, 1978). See also Billie Melman, Women's Orients: English Women and the Middle East, 1718–1918 (Ann Arbor: University of Michigan Press, 1992), esp. 73.
6 Mary Roberts, Intimate Outsiders: The Harem in Ottoman and Orientalist Art and Travel Literature (Durham, NC: Duke University Press, 2007); Jill Beaulieu and Mary Roberts, Orientalism's Interlocutors: Painting, Architecture, Photography (Durham, NC: Duke University Press, 2002); Lynne Thornton, Women as Portrayed in Orientalist Painting (Coubevoie: ACR Edition, 1994); idem, Eastern Encounters: Orientalist Painters of the Nineteenth Century (London: Fine Arts Society, 1978); Marianne Roland Michel, “Exoticism and Genre Painting in Eighteenth-Century France,” in Colin B. Bailey, Philip Conisbee, and Thomas W. Gaehtgens, eds., The Age of Watteau, Chardin, and Fragonard (New Haven: Yale University Press, 2003), 106–19.
7 Lady Mary Wortley Montague's letters, written during her stay in Istanbul 1716–1718, are edited by Malcolm Jack in Turkish Embassy Letters (Athens: University of Georgia Press, 1993).
8 Jana Nittel,Wondrous Magic: Images of the Orient in 18th and 19th Centuries' British Women Travel Writing (Cambridge: Galda & Wich Verlag, 2001).
9 This point is made by Emmeline Lott, Harem Life in Egypt and Constantinople (Philadelphia: T. B. Peterson and Brothers, 1867), vi. On women travelers see Barbara Hodgson, Dreaming of East: Western Women and the Exotic Allure of the Orient (Berkeley: Greystone Books, 2005); Barbara Hodgson, No Place for a Lady: Tales of Adventurous Women Travelers (Berkeley: Ten Speed Press, 2002); Mary Roberts, Intimate Outsiders: The Harem in Ottoman and Orientalist Art and Travel Literature (Durham, NC: Duke University Press, 2007). Caroline Paine, another American traveler, recalls being received by a pasha's wife “with the ease and dignity of manner usual in a person accustomed to refined society.” Caroline Paine, Tent and Harem: Notes of an Oriental Trip (New York: D. Appleton and Company, 1859), 53.
10 For discussion of these tropes see Reina Lewis, Rethinking Orientalism: Women, Travel, and the Ottoman Harem (New Brunswick, NJ: Rutgers University Press, 2004); Beaulieu and Roberts.
11 Mary Lesley Ames, Life and Letters of Peter and Susan Lesley (Ed. by Their Daughter) (New York: G. P. Putnam's Sons, 1909), 62.
12 Emily Bithynia Hornby, Constantinople during the Crimean War(London: Richard Bentley, 1863), 238.
13 Billie Melman, Women's Orients: English Women and the Middle East, 1718–1918: Sexuality, Religion and Work(Ann Arbor: University of Michigan Press, 1995), 81.
14 Keith David Watenpaugh, Being Modern in the Middle East: Revolution, Nationalism, Colonialism, and the Arab Middle Class (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 2006); Prasenjit Duara, ed., Decolonization: Perspectives from Now and Then (New York: Routledge, 2003); David Waines, “Islam,” in Linda Woodhead and Paul Fletcher, eds., Religions in the Modern World (New York: Routledge, 2002); Malini Johar Schueller, U.S. Orientalisms: Race, Nation, and Gender in Literature, 1790–1890 (Ann Arbor: University of Michigan Press, 2001); Joseph L. Grabill, Protestant Diplomacy in the Near East: Missionary Influence on American Policy, 1810–1927 (Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press, 1971).
15 Almanac 1891, cited in K. Pelin Başci, “Shadows in the Missionary Garden of Roses: Women of Turkey in American Missionary Texts,” in Zehra F. Arat, ed., Deconstructing Images of the Turkish Woman (New York: St. Martin's Press, 1998), 101.
16 Başcı, “Shadows,” 101; Gağrı Erhan and Mustafa Aydin, eds., Turkish-American Relations: Past, Present and Future(New York: Routledge, 2004), 12–13.
17 Melman, Women's Orients, 66.
18 Ayhan Öztürk, Amerikan Protestan Misyonerlerin Türkiye'deki Faliyetleri (Kayseri: Arka Oda Yayınları, 2007); Frank A. Stone, Academies for Anatolia: A Study of the Rationale, Program, and Impact of the Educational Institutions Sponsored by the American Board in Turkey, 1830–2005 (San Francisco: Caddo Gap Press, 2006); Ömer Turan, Avrasya'da Misyonerlik (Ankara: Avrasya Stratejik Araştırmalar Merkezi, 2002); Uygur Kocabaşoğlu, Kendi Belgeleriyle Anadolu'daki Amerika: 19.Yüzyılda Osmanlı İmparatorluğu'ndaki Amerikan Misyoner Okulları (Sirkeci: ARBA, 1989).
19 J. Smith, The Question of Foreign Missions: Foreign Missions in Light of the Fact, Public Opinion: A Comprehensive Summary of the Press throughout the World on All Important Current Topics, Vol. XX (January 1896–June, 1896)(New York: The Public Opinion Company, 1896), 145.
20 Mona Domosh, “The ‘Great Civilizer’ and Equalizer: Gender, Race, and Civilization in Singer Advertising,” in Mona Domosh, American Commodities in an Age of Empire (New York: Routledge, 2006), 55–94. See also Suzanne M. Spencer-Wood, “The World Their Household: Changing Meanings of the Domestic Sphere in the Nineteenth Century,” in Penelope Mary Allison, ed., The Archeology of Household Activities (New York: Routledge, 2002), 162–89.
21 Lisa Joy Pruitt, A Looking-Glass for Ladies: American Protestant Women and the Orient in the Nineteenth Century (Macon: Mercer University Press, 2005), 5.
22 Maria Abigail West, The Romance of Missions: Or, Inside Views of Life and Labor, in the Land of Ararat (New York: Randolph, 1875), 524.
23 Henry Whitney Bellows, The Old World in Its New Face: Impressions of Europe in 1867–1868, Volume II (New York: Harper and Brothers Publishers, 1869), 105.
24 Melman, Women's Orients, 17.
25 G. E. Post,A Glimpse of Moslem Homes(The Missionary Review of the World edited by Rev. A. T. Pierson, Volume XIX, New Series) (New York: Funk and Wagnalls Company, 1901), 933, emphasis added.
26 Arthur Tappan Pierson, Crises of Missions: Or, The Voice out of the Cloud (New York: R. Carter, 1886), 170.
27 Copp, J. A. (Recording Secretary), “Woman's Work: Annual Meeting of the Woman's Board,” Missionary Herald, 65 (Feb. 1869), 62Google Scholar.
28 In 1844, the Christian Witness and Church Member's Magazine (Volume 1, at 108) reported that the American Board of Commissioners for Foreign Missions had six stations with 16 missionaries and 16 female assistant missionaries in Turkey. Thirty-nine years later, in his book The Missionary Problem: Containing a History of Protestant Missions in Some of the Principal Fields (Toronto: William Briggs, 1883), journalist James Croil reported that in western Turkey the Americans had 22 ordained missionaries and 44 female missionaries (155–56), and in Eastern Turkey 15 ordained missionaries and 27 female missionaries (162). Missionary wives were commonly counted as “assistant missionaries.” See John C. Lowry A Manual of the Foreign Missions of the Presbyterian Church in the United States of America (New York: William Rankin, Jr., 1868).
29 Pruitt, 84. The same strategy can be observed in missions in other parts of Asia. See, for example, Maina Chawla Singh, “ ‘Darkness,’ ‘Disease,’ the Zenena, and the ‘Heathen Woman’: Constructing Discourses and Saving Souls,” in Maina Chawla Singh, Gender, Religion, and the “Heathen Lands”: American Missionary Women in South Asia, 1860s–1940s (New York: Garland Publishing, 2000), 105–36; Ruth Compton Brouwer, “Canadian Presbyterians and India Missions, 1877–1914: The Policy and Politics of ‘Women's Work for Women,’” in W. Shenk, ed., North American Foreign Missions, 1810–1914: Theology, Theory, and Policy (Grand Rapids, MI: W. B. Eerdmans Pub. Co., 2004), 192–217.
30 Dana Lee Robert,American Women in Mission: A Social History of Their Thought and Practice(Macon: Mercer University Press, 1997), 92–114.
31 Amanda Porterfield,Mary Lyon and the Mount Holyoke Missionaries (New York: Oxford University Press).
32 Mrs. Sarah Locke Stow, ed., History of Mount Holyoke Seminary, 1837–1887 (Springfield, MA: Springfield Printing Company, 1887), 319–23, lists many Holyoke graduates who became missionaries in locations like Marsovan, Aintab, Cesarea, Smyrna, Harpoot, Bitlis, Mardin, Erzroom, Diarbekir, Adana, Van, Eski Zagra, and Istanbul. Louise Baird Wallace (1898 graduate) was the dean of Constantinople College. The seminary in Marsovan, Turkey (1864) and the missionary school in Bitlis (1868) were connected to Mount Holyoke.
33 Porterfield, 6.
34 Robert, 115.
35 Hill, 1985, 3.
36 West, The Romance of Missions, 525.
37 Porterfield, 5.
38 Katherine Joslin, “Introduction: The Gathering of Women,” in Janet Beer, Anne Marie Ford and Katherine Joslin, eds., American Feminism: Key Source Documents, 1848–1920 (London: Routledge, 2003), 6.
39 Melman, Women's Orients, 167.
40 For the relationship between women's missionary work and contemporary social movements such as temperance, abolitionism, and women's rights see Mary Kelley, Learning to Stand and Speak: Women, Education, and Public Life in America's Republic (Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 2006); Ellen C. DuBois, Feminism and Suffrage: The Emergence of an Independent Women's Movement in America, 1848–1869 (Ithaca: Cornell University Press, 1999); Ian Tyrrell, Woman's World/Woman's Empire: The Woman's Christian Temperance Union in International Perspective, 1880–1930 (Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 1991); Ruth B. A. Bordin, Woman and Temperance: The Quest for Power and Liberty, 1873–1900 (New Brunswick, NJ: Rutgers University Press, 1990); Barbara Berg, The Remembered Gate: Origins of American Feminism, 1800–1860 (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1980); Frances Elizabeth Willard, Woman and Temperance (Hartford, CT: The Park Publishing Co., 1883). On the impact of the Christian “Great Awakening” see Mark Ellingsen, Reclaiming Our Roots: An Inclusive Introduction to Church History (Harrisburg: Trinity Press International, 1999), 212.
41 Robert, 136.
42 For a discussion on this journal see Ann Braude, “Organized Womanhood,” in idem, ed., Sisters and Saints (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2008), 69–93; Rosemary Skinner Keller, “Women's Societies of Christian Service and Missionary Outreach,” in Christopher Hodge Evans, ed., The Social Gospel Today (Louisville, KY: Westminster John Knox Press, 2001), 67–86.
43 For missionaries and imperialism see Leslie A. Flemming, ed., Women's Work for Women: Missionaries and Social Change in Asia (Boulder: Westview Press, 1989); and Jane Hunter, The Gospel of Gentility: American Women Missionaries in Turn-of-the-Century China (New Haven: Yale University Press, 1984).
44 Robert, 136.
45 Harrison Gray Otis Dwight,Memoir of Mrs. Elizabeth B. Dwight: Including an Account of the Plague of 1837 (New York: H. W. Dodd, 1840), 206.
46 Mary E. Gallowy Giffen, Life and Letters of Mrs. Mary Gallowy Giffen, Who Was the Pioneer Missionary of the Associated Reformed Church, South and Served Nearly Seven Years (Louisville, GA: Myers, Shinkle, 1882), 188.
47 E. C. C. Baillie, A Sail to Smyrna, or An Englishwoman's Journal(London: Longmans, Green and Company, 1873), 124–25.
48 Eliza Cheney Abbott Schneider, Letters from Broosa, Asia Minor (Chambersburg, PA: Publication Office of the German Reformed Church, 1846), 84; Meta Lander, Light on the Dark River or Memorials of Mrs. Henrietta A. L. Hamlin, Missionary in Turkey (Boston: Lothrop, 1853); West, The Romance of Missions.
49 For example, Harriet Prescott Spofford, Art Decoration Applied to Furniture (New York: Harper & Brothers, Publishers, 1878), 84; Elizabeth Rose Cleveland, Social Mirror: A Complete Treatise on the Laws, Rules and Usages That Govern Our Most Refined Homes and Social Circles (St. Louis: L. W. Dickerson, 1888), 347; Mary Gay Humphreys, Mary Cadwalader, and Constance Cary Harrison, The Woman's Book (New York: Charles Scribner's Sons, 1894), 345; Alice L. James. Housekeeping for Two: A Practical Guide for Beginners (New York: G. P. Putnam's Sons, 1909), 82; Richard A. Wells, Manners, Culture and Dress of the Best American Society (Springfield, MA: King, Richardson, 1890), 468.
50 Clifford Edward Clark,The American Family Home, 1800–1960(Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 1986).
51 For industrialization and furniture in America see Philip Scranton, Endless Novelty: Specialty Production and American Industrialization, 1865–1925 (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 2000); Edward S. Cooke, Upholstery in America and Europe: From the Seventeenth Century to World War I (New York: Norton, 1987); Anne Charlish, ed., The History of Furniture (London: Orbis, 1976).
52 On the importance of the spring coil in combination with the “Turkish frame construction” see Joseph T. Butler, Field Guide to American Antique Furniture (New York: Facts on File, 1985), 80.
53 William Seale, The Tasteful Interlude: American Interiors through the Camera's Eye, 1860–1917 (Walnut Creek, CA: Altamira Press, 1995), 12. For more on American eclecticism see John F. Pile, A History of Interior Design (Hoboken: J. Wiley & Sons, 2005).
54 E. R. Smith, The Gospel in All Lands(New York: Methodist Episcopal Church Missionary Society, Jan. 1886), 474.
55 A. R. Wells, The Missionary Manual: A Handbook of Methods for Missionary Work in Young People's Societies (Boston: United Society of Christian Endeavor, 1899), 78.
56 Ibid., esp. 13, 25–26, 29, 34–35. Also see Belle M. Brain, Fifty Missionary Programmes (Boston: United Society of Christian Endeavour, 1901); idem, Fuel for Missionary Fires: Some Programmes and Plans for Use in Young People's Societies (Boston: United Christian Endeavour, 1898); Lilly Ryder Gracey, ed., Gist: A Handbook of Missionary Information, Pre-eminently for Use in Young Women's Circles (Cincinnati: Cranston & Curts, 1893).
57 Wells, 70.
58 For example, Miss Lovell sent her mother a letter along with two dolls dressed as an Armenian bride and a Turkish female, for which she gave a long description of the clothing: “the yashmak is one of the niceties of Turkish dress; they spend a great deal of time before the glass in arranging the folds of the veil … The full trousers (sometimes made of bright calico, or in summer thin muslin) are called shalvar … You would find it hard to believe that any person should every rig out in so many different pieces of finery as do the females of this land.” Mary Gladding Wheeler Benjamin, ed., The Missionary Sisters (Boston: Geo. C. Rand & Avery, 1860), 153–54.
59 Rational Dress Society Gazette,1 (April 1888), 1.
60 On the Aesthetic Dress Movement see Patricia A. Cunningham, Reforming Women's Fashion, 1850–1920: Politics, Health, and Art (Kent, OH: Kent State University Press, 2003); Valerie Steele, The Corset: A Cultural History (New Haven: Yale University Press, 2003); Mary Warner Blanchard, Oscar Wilde's America: Counterculture in the Gilded Age (New Haven: Yale University Press, 1998); Lionel Lambourne, The Aesthetic Movement (London: Phaidon, 1996).
61 See Daniel Leonard Purdy, The Rise of Fashion: A Reader (Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press, 2004) 109; Amelia Bloomer, “The Reform Dress,” in Kim K. P. Johnson, Susan J. Torntore, and Joanne Bubolz Eicher, eds., Fashion Foundations: Early Writings on Fashion and Dress (Oxford and New York: Berg Publishers, 2003), 59–63; Gayle V. Vischer, Pantaloons and Power: A Nineteenth-Century Dress Reform in the United States (Kent, OH: Kent State University Press, 2001); Margaret Mary Finnegan, Selling Suffrage: Consumer Culture and Votes for Women (New York: Columbia University Press, 1999), 21. For parallel developments in Europe see Valerie Steele, Paris Fashion: A Cultural History (New York: Oxford University Press, 1988), esp. 162–67; Valerie Steele, Fashion and Eroticism: Ideals of Feminine Beauty from the Victorian Era to the Jazz Age (New York: Oxford University Press, 1985).