Constantinople, v. 2 (of 2)

by Edmondo De Amicis

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There are those who maintain that the women of the East are not only satisfied with polygamy, but that they do not so much as understand its injustice. To believe this one would have to be ignorant, I do not say of Oriental life, but of the human heart itself. And how is it, if this be so, that almost every Turkish girl, when she agrees to marry, makes it a condition that during her lifetime there shall be no other wife, or that large numbers of wives return to their own homes on account of the husband’s failure to keep this promise? and what is the meaning of the Turkish proverb, “A house with four wives, a vessel in a storm”? And even supposing her husband worships her, an Oriental woman can hardly fail to curse polygamy, obliging her, as it does, to live with that sword of Damocles suspended over her head—the daily dread of a rival, not hidden and distant and always in the wrong, as the rival of a European wife must necessarily be, but installed beside her in the same house, with the same name, and entitled to equal rights with herself. She is liable at any time to have one of her own slaves suddenly lift her head in her presence, treat her as an equal, and have children whose rights are the same as those of her own. It is quite impossible that she should be blind to the injustice of such a state of things; and when the husband whom she loves introduces another wife into his house, it may well happen that, reflecting upon the fact that he is but taking advantage of the code of the Prophet, and knowing full well at the bottom of her heart that an older and more sacred law has denounced that act as an infamous abuse of power, she rebels against and curses the conditions which have taken her husband from her, cut the knot which bound them together, and destroyed the happiness of her life. On the other hand, suppose she does not love him: she still has good cause to detest a law which so seriously interferes with the rights of her children, wounds her self-respect, and permits her husband to either neglect her altogether or seek her society solely from motives in which affection plays no part. It may be urged that Turkish women know that such misfortunes as these sometimes overtake European women as well: perhaps they do, but they also know that the latter are not obliged by the law, both civil and religious, to treat with respect and give the title of sister to the women who have poisoned their lives, and have, moreover, the comfort of being looked upon as martyrs, as well as a hundred ways of vindicating and consoling themselves without the husband being once able to say, as the polygamist can to his rebellious wife, “I have a right to love a hundred women, while it is your duty to love no one but me.”

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The Turkish woman has, however, many rights and privileges under the law to console her. She is treated on all hands with a certain chivalric tenderness. No man would dare to raise a hand against her in public. Not a soldier, even in the midst of the general license and disorder of a riot, would attempt to maltreat even the most insolent woman of the people. The husband observes toward his wife a sort of formal deference, and the mother is always the object of especial veneration. Nor would a man dream of making his wife work in order that she might support him. It is the husband who settles the dot upon his wife; she is expected to bring him nothing but her wedding outfit and some female slaves. In cases of repudiation or divorce he is obliged to provide for her maintenance, and this is also the case when he treats her badly and she demands a separation in consequence. The facility of divorce remedies, to some small extent, the unfortunate consequences of marriages made almost always in the dark on account of the peculiar conditions of Turkish society, which oblige the two sexes to live entirely apart. It requires very little to enable a woman to obtain a divorce: it is only necessary to show that her husband has ill-treated her once, or spoken of her in conversation with others in offensive terms, or neglected her for a certain length of time. When she has a complaint to make, she has only to lay her grievance before the court in writing, or she may, if she choose, present it in person before a vizier—the grand vizier himself, if she wishes to—he being almost always ready to receive and listen to her kindly and patiently. If she cannot get on with his other wives, she may require her husband to provide her with a separate establishment, to which, indeed, she has a right in any case, or at least to separate apartments. The husband is forbidden to take either as wife or odalisque any slave whom his wife has brought from her father’s house. A woman who has been betrayed and abandoned can require the man to marry her unless he already has four wives: in that case she can oblige him to support her in his house and recognize her children. There are no illegitimate children in Turkey. Bachelors and old maids are very rare, and forced marriages far less common than one would suppose, as the guilty fathers are liable to punishment under the law. The state pensions all widows without relatives or means, and also provides support for orphans; often female children who have been abandoned are taken from the street by women of wealth, who educate and marry them off, and it is unusual for women to be reduced to absolute want. Now, all of this is not only true, but very admirable, but at the same time one cannot refrain from laughing outright when the Turks solemnly compare the social privileges enjoyed by their women with those of European countries, to the advantage of the former, or try to persuade us that they are blessed with an immunity from the corruption which, they declare, exists among us. What possible value in the eyes of a woman is an outward show of respect, when her very position as a suppliant wife is in itself a humiliation? Of what avail the facility of divorce and right it gives her to remarry, when the second husband can at any time repeat the offence for which she left the first? What great matter is it for a man to be required to recognize his illegitimate son, when he has not the means to support him, and can have fifty others “legitimately,” who, if they are spared the opprobious epithet of “bastard,” are not spared from want and neglect? The social evils which exist in European lands are to be found in Turkey under different conditions and names, and the fact that they are tolerated, and even sanctioned, certainly does not extenuate them, while it may and does make them more common. For a Turk to attempt to criticise any one else in this regard is to the last degree blind and fatuous.

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From the foregoing it is very easy to imagine what sort of women the Turkish ones are—merely “pleasing females” for the most part, who, barely knowing how to read and write, as a matter of fact do neither; miraculous beings those who have a little superficial smattering of education. It would not be agreeable to the men, in whose eyes they are endowed with “long hair and little brains,” for them to cultivate their minds, as it might be very inconvenient were they to become equal in this respect, or even superior to, themselves. And so, as they never read and are debarred from picking up any stray crumbs of knowledge by association with men, they grow up in a state of crass ignorance. The separation of the sexes also results in the loss of gentleness on the one hand and of high-mindedness on the other. The men grow rough as they grow older, and the women become gossips: even in old age, from never having moved in any society beyond the narrow circle of their female friends and relatives, the women retain something puerile in all their ideas and habits, are excessively curious, everything astonishes them, and they make a great deal out of every trifle; they have spiteful little tricks, too, and are inclined to look down on and despise education; they burst out laughing when any one speaks to them, and pass hours at a time over the most childish games, such as chasing each other from room to room, and snatching sugar-plums out of one another’s mouths. On the other hand, to paraphrase the French saying, they have good qualities in their defects: their natures are frank and open, easily read at a glance; they impress you as being “real persons,” as Madame de Sévigne said of them, not masques or caricatures or apes; free, natural, and, even when they are unhappy, “all of one piece;” and if, as it is said, one of them has only to affirm and reaffirm a thing for every one to discredit it, it only means that she has too little art to deceive with success. At all events—and it is no small praise—there are no dull blue-stockings among them, or wearisome pedagogues who can talk of nothing but language and style, or those spiritual creatures who dwell on a loftier plane than ordinary mortals. It is, however, perfectly true that in their narrow lives, cut off from all elevating association or occupation, with the instinctive desire of youth and beauty for love and admiration constantly thwarted and dissatisfied, their souls remain undeveloped. When once an evil passion gets control of them, having none of the checks and self-restraints imposed by education, they run into violent excesses. Their idle, purposeless life fosters the growth of all manner of foolish tastes, which they pursue with the utmost obstinacy, determined to satisfy them at whatever cost. Moreover, in the sensual air of the harem, surrounded constantly by women inferior to themselves in birth and education, and away from men, whose presence would act as a check, they abandon themselves to the most indecent crudities of language; ignorant of all shades of expression, they say things right out with brutal frankness, using words at which they ought to blush, and indulging in equivocal jests, becoming at times openly abusive and insolent: sometimes the ears of a European who understands Turkish are treated to a flood of invective and abuse directed against a rude or impolitic shopkeeper, which, coming as it does from the lips of a hanum to all outward appearance of the highest breeding, would never, among us, be heard from the mouth of any but the lowest class of women. It seems as though their virulence increased in proportion with their knowledge of European customs and intercourse with the women of other lands—as though the spirit of rebellion was stirred up within them by these means. A Turkish woman, finding herself really beloved by her husband, takes advantage of the fact to visit him with all manner of petty acts of tyranny in revenge for the great social tyranny of which she is the victim: she is often represented as being all sweetness and bashful timidity, but there are fierce, bold spirits as well, and in popular uprisings it is not uncommon to find women in the front ranks: they assemble and arm themselves, and stop the carriages of unpopular viziers, covering them with abuse, stoning them, and forcibly resisting arrest. They are, indeed, like all other women, sweet and gentle when unmoved by passion, treat their slaves with great kindness when they are not jealous of them, and are tender and affectionate with their children, though even if they were willing to take the trouble to have them educated or trained, they have no idea how to set about it. They contract the most ardent friendships with each other, especially those who are separated from their husbands or are suffering from the same kind of misfortune: these friendships are of the most exaggerated character; they wear the same colors, use the same perfumes, put on patches of the same size and shape, and make enthusiastic demonstrations and protestations of undying regard. I might add here the remark that has been made by more than one lady traveller from Europe, that there “exist among them all the vices of ancient Babylon,” were I not unwilling in so serious a matter to make a statement which rests wholly on the assertions of others.

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The manners of Turkish women reflect their characters. They are all more or less like young girls of good family, who, having been brought up in the country and arrived at the transition stage between childhood and womanhood, keep their mothers in a constant state of uneasiness by their want of conventionality. It is very funny to hear a European lady’s account of a visit to a harem. The hanum, for instance, after sitting for the first few moments in a dignified attitude upon the sofa, just as she sees her visitor doing, will suddenly and without any warning clasp her hands over her head, or begin to yawn loudly or to nurse one of her knees. Accustomed to the liberty, not to say license, of the harem, and to the easy attitudes of idleness and fatigue, and weakened as they are by their prolonged and frequent baths, they quickly tire in any erect or constrained position, and, throwing themselves on the divan, toss continually from one side to the other, twist and tangle up their long trains, roll themselves into balls, catch hold of their feet, put a cushion on their knees and rest their elbows upon it, straighten themselves out, twist, turn, stretch, arch their backs like cats, roll from the divan on to the mattress, from the mattress on to the rug, from the rug on to the marble pavement, and go to sleep like children wherever and whenever they happen to feel sleepy. One French lady traveller declares that they are something like mollusks, and they are nearly always in such a position that one could take them in his arms like a ball. Their most conventional attitude is sitting cross-legged, and it is said that the defect of slightly crooked legs so common among them comes from their having sat in this position since childhood. But how gracefully they do it! You can see them in the public gardens and cemeteries. They drop straight down without so much as putting out a hand, erect as statues, and rise with the same ease, perfectly straight and without leaning upon anything, as though they were being drawn out. But this is about the only free, strong movement they have. The grace of a Turkish woman seems to consist entirely in those attitudes of repose which display to their best advantage the charming curves of her figure. With head thrown back, hair streaming loosely over the pillow, and arms hanging down, she can draw money and jewels from the husband’s pocket and drive the unfortunate eunuch to the verge of despair.

Dancing Girls.