(Originally aired 2023/12/16 - listen here)
Introduction
This episode is part of our ongoing series “our f/favorite tropes,” examining how popular historic romance tropes apply differently when the couple are both women, rather than a male-female couple. As used in the romance field, a trope is a recurring literary device or motif—a conventional story element that carries a certain set of expectations, associations, and resonances that connect the story that uses the trope to other works that have used it. The trope can be a character type, a situation, or a sort of “mini script.”
Today’s topic is employment-related tropes—any situation in which one member of the romantic couple works for the other member of the couple. In addition to considering gender dynamics, we’re also going to talk a little about the historic context of “employment”—in various forms—and how that intersects with gender as well.
As usual, I’ll add the disclaimer that my generalizations and examples will largely be drawn from western culture, so if you’re writing outside that scope you’ll need to check the assumptions.
It can help to split up employment tropes into three basic categories. Using the term “employment” for the first category is misleading, because that category covers enslavement and similar not-at-all-voluntary associations. I’m not going to address this category directly, but it draws on many of the same dynamics as the other categories—just more intensely on the consent-related issues. The second category is domestic employment, where the employee works in the employer’s home and provides various personal support services. The third category is non-domestic employment, covering situations where the employer and employee don’t reside in the same household—although even this category can get fuzzy around the edges in certain time periods.
Regardless of the type of employment, the relationship—and an important part of the dynamic for people who like these tropes—involves the presence of power differentials and associated consent issues. This can make the subject tricky to discuss, because for some fans of employment tropes, problematic power and consent issues are a major attraction, while for other fans, those issues represent a hazard to be worked around carefully.
On a more generally positive note, employment tropes generally bring in dynamics of compulsory proximity, and often the overlap between dynamics of trust, loyalty, and support that operate on both a personal and professional level.
Situating the Trope in Time
The ways in which employment tropes play out are strongly shaped by the historic setting. What types of employment were available? How did one enter a particular job? What restrictions or requirements do the jobs have on who may do them? How does the job shape other parts of your character’s life? What are the social and legal expectations of the employment contract? These are all factors that will be part of your general historic background research before considering the specific dynamics of your characters’ relationship and there isn’t space here to consider them in any detail.
Furthermore, when considering popular examples of employment-based relationships, there ways in which the difference between contemporary settings and historic settings are far more relevant than the gender of the participants. As modern people, we’re accustomed to a situation where employees expect much more control over their workplace conditions than they had in pre-20th century settings. We have more legal recourse and the power differentials—though still significant—are nowhere near as serious as in previous centuries. An employee can walk away from a problematic workplace without automatically putting all future employment at risk. So placing an employer-employee romance in a historic setting isn’t just a matter of set dressing, but involves very different rules and expectations.
As some general guidelines, settings in the ancient world (for example, classical Greece and Rome) are going to involve the significant presence of an enslaved workforce, especially for domestic labor, but the social and legal dynamics will differ from those of later eras.
The availability of domestic versus non-domestic employment will vary significantly for women in different eras, and will often depend on location, with non-domestic employment generally being associated with urban locations. While there will generally be some types of non-domestic employment available to women in all times, in many eras the majority of female employment will be domestic. Restrictions of the types of work available to women will often be greater the higher one’s social status. Manufacturing and craft type jobs are different in scope and nature before the Industrial Revolution, and the possibilities for employer-employee relationships are drastically affected by that shift.
The types of occupations and positions available to women, as contrasted with men, have also changed across the centuries, though not always in the same direction. The options for women’s non-domestic employment narrowed significantly around the 17th century and only began to expand again in the later 19th century.
From another angle, when dealing with pre-20th century employment, the general expectation that a married woman’s primary employment is taking care of her own household, means that the default expectation for an employer-employee pairing is for the employee to be unmarried. Expectations on the employer side are more variable. A woman employing domestic help is statistically likely to be married, unless she has an independent household, either as a widow or due to being wealthy. A woman employing non-domestic labor—assuming she’s the primary employer—may be more likely to be single, depending on the exact historic circumstances. It’s complicated and variable, and it may be helpful to go back and review some of the previous trope episodes that touched on economic independence, such as the episodes on spinsters, widows, and billionaires.
It’s probably a good rule of thumb that social status and employment power differentials will align closely—employees are unlikely to come from a higher social class than their employers, unless we’re also dealing with concealed origins.
Gender Dynamics in Workplace Romances
And that brings us to one of the two most significant gendered differences in employment tropes, because for a male-female workplace romance, gender adds a third axis to traditional power differentials. So if your employer is male and your employee is female, then you have the triple whammy, of gendered power, economic power, and most likely innate social power being in alignment, placing the female partner at multiple disadvantages in negotiating the relationship. In a historic context, even moreso than a contemporary one, there can be a strong pressure for a female employee to consider fielding romantic or sexual advances from her boss as part of the landscape. This makes it challenging for her to recognize sincere interest. And as an author, it can be tricky to set up believable romantic situations in which genuine consent is possible.
Conversely, if your employer is female and your employee is male, then you’re dealing with a structural conflict between the expectations of gendered power and the expectations of economic and social power. Both of these alignments can bring strong flavors to how the romantic relationship progresses. Does the male partner feel “unmanned” by being the less privileged member of the couple? Does the female partner feel the need to cede other types of power to make up for it? And that’s without touching the common taboo against women partnering men of a lower status.
But if both characters are female, then there is no extra layer of power differentials based on gender. The expectations of who will have initiative and control are based entirely on the employment relationship. Though we’ll get back to this topic in some of the literary examples.
The second significant difference applies primarily to domestic employment situations. Employer/employee interactions in the domestic sphere are traditionally aligned with gender. A female employer will have more direct interactions with female employees, and even if the household is headed by a single woman, interactions with male employees are likely to be managed through a male subordinate. In a more direct context, a female employer will be expected have close physical and personal interactions with female staff, in ways that would be highly suspect for a male employer. She will be dressed by women, cared for by women, kept company by women, and perform everyday tasks in the company of women. This creates a context where emotional bonds can develop naturally, where professional loyalty can shade over into personal attachment unnoticed, and where types of physical and emotional caretaking that we often associate with romance may be an inherent part of the employee’s work. Depending on the specific time period, other tropes that may naturally align with domestic employment are forced proximity and even in some cases “only one bed.”
So while a male employer initiating highly personal interactions with a female employee (or vice versa) inherently violates social rules, resulting in heightened awareness of the romantic or sexual potential, a female employer or employee doing the same things is working within the system, not against it.
Employment-Based Tropes in History and Historic Literature
When we look for romantic or erotic potential within a female employment relationship in history and historic literature, we find two main themes—and this is where gender dynamics can sneak in by a back door. One manifestation is where the employee falls into the traditionally female role in the relationship: being supportive, submissive, perhaps silently yearning that her devotion will be recognized and rewarded, where her romantic role aligns with the power dynamics of her employment. The employer is not necessarily “masculinized” by this dynamic because the power imbalance can rest entirely on social and economic forces.
The other manifestation is where the employee takes a more active, assertive role in the relationship, perhaps where caretaking shades over to providing protection, or where the inherent problem-solving requirements of service shift into taking charge. The employer may be depicted as relatively helpless, perhaps leaning on motifs of female incapability where she is hyper-feminized in comparison to the employee. Or the employee may be overtly masculinized and depicted as adopting multiple signifiers of a male social role, in addition to taking the lead in the romance.
Neither of these is required, of course, when writing a historic romance—here I’m talking about historic examples where a romantic or erotic overlay can be identified. So let’s look at some of those specific examples. This isn’t meant to be an exhaustive catalog of romantic same-sex employment motifs.
We can see the motif of the devoted lady’s maid being depicted using standard romance tropes from a very early date. In the early Christian Greek romance of Xanthippe and Polyxena, the story of the beautiful young Polyxena being devoted to her mistress, being abducted from her chamber, and going through many perils and adventures to eventually be reunited is directly parallel to the structure of male-female romances of the same era.
In the French medieval romance L’Escoufle or “The Kite,” the young noblewoman Aelis, when abandoned in the world, takes up with a young working-class woman Ysabel with their interactions described in romantic and erotic terms. But class and employment relationships are constantly shifting around the female pairings in this story. Despite Aelis’s social isolation, she takes on the role of employer with respect to Ysabel, with Ysabel promising loyalty and obedience and Aelis setting up an embroidery business that Ysabel works to support. Then Aelis’s roles are upturned when the noblewoman she supplies with embroidered goods takes Aelis into her household as a handmaiden and their interactions then turn erotic. In both of the pairings, the higher status woman (or the one in the position of employer) takes charge of initiating the intimacies, and those intimacies are treated as an inherent aspect of the employment.
In a medieval or Renaissance context, the relationship between a queen or noblewoman and her ladies in waiting often take on a romantic tinge. While this may not be the typical image of an “employee,” the role definitely included personal service and a power dynamic that was dependent on a fine balance between intimacy and hierarchy. This type of employment would generally involve women of quite similar social class, that would avoid some of the potential anxieties of cross-class romance. Such relationships might be of long duration, and often meant foregoing marriage. Loyalty was expected, though not always observed, given the complex politics of court life.
Within a context such as the household of Queen Elizabeth I, a never-married woman could achieve an influence and functional social status that ordinarily would come only through marriage. Emotional connections between the women of the court would not raise the same concerns regarding loyalty and influence that marriage sometimes did. In addition to services such as managing the employer’s wardrobe and household, the women serving female aristocrats were secretaries, companions, and confidantes. At the upper levels of society, women shared beds as well as secrets with their closest companions. Such close relationships could not avoid having an erotic component, and when society felt that the employee was pushing the accepted bounds of influence, one of the charges that might be brought was that of an inappropriate sexual relationship, as happened to some of Queen Anne’s circle.
Literature of the 18th century has some notable examples of relationships that begin as maid and mistress then develop romance-like elements as a key plot point. In Daniel Defoe’s Roxana, gender and class roles get blurred when the title character is abandoned by her husband and—when cast onto her own resources—makes common cause with her loyal maidservant to set up in business. The maid, Amy, is faithful beyond expectations due to the affection she feels for her mistress, even when the latter can no longer offer her any monetary compensation. The language of business and love are intertwined in their relationship, sometimes uncomfortably, as the business they engage in together is being courtesans.
The contrasting dynamic is seen in Jane Barker’s story “The Unaccountable Wife” in which a woman develops such an infatuation for her maidservant that she turns the social order upside down by allowing the serving woman a life of ease while she does the menial labor of the home. The two women eventually move out together, descending into poverty while the wife continues to try to provide a life of ease for the serving woman. It’s never entirely clear that the maidservant returns her employer’s affections, and the peculiarity of the social role-reversal is the lynchpin of the plot.
In addition to shifts in employment possibilities for women, the era in which stories are set affected shifting beliefs about sexuality and class. In the 19th century, both historic commentary and fiction could reflect the attitude that a female sex drive was more strongly associated with the lower classes. Thus employment-based romances might either support the motif of employee-driven eroticism, or the reverse motif might be used as a negative commentary on the upper class employer.
Kirsti Bohata’s article “Mistress and Maid: Homoeroticism, Cross-Class Desire, and Disguise in Nineteenth-Century Fiction” (which I’ll be covering on the blog shortly), provides a wealth of examples in which these themes intertwine, from which I’ll offer a few examples.
In Amy Dillwyn’s Victorian-era novel Jill, a well-born woman disguises herself as working class after running away from a bad home situation and takes a position as a lady’s maid. She falls in love with her employer and enjoys the sensual aspects of dressing her and caring for her, but Jill’s devotion is not returned, though she contemplates revealing her true origins so that she can declare her love openly. The apparent class barrier between them is temporarily removed when the two are abducted and imprisoned in a gothic scenario.
Sarah Orne Jewett’s story “Martha’s Lady” defers the realization of the yearning romance and near-chivalric devotion between Martha and her employer until late in life, after long separation, when they are at last reunited—though still as mistress and servant—and Martha is rewarded with a declaration of tenderness and a kiss.
The motif in which a female employee in love with her employer is portrayed as being masculine shows up clearly in Elizabeth Gaskell’s story “The Grey Woman,” where the servant Amante rescues her mistress from a murderous husband by cross-dressing and working as a tailor so the two can live together as husband and wife. Not only does Amante take up a male role for the public, but as the “husband” she now has social power over her former employer within the context of the masquerade.
The preceding examples of Victorian employment relationships flirt with eroticism, but in a sufficiently deniable way that the desire can be portrayed as positive. In the same era, stories in the sensationalist vein are more likely to use same-sex cross-class employment-related desire to signal the moral defects of one or the other character, especially of the employer, as in Thomas Hardy’s novel Desperate Remedies where a mistress approaches her maid sexually and oscillates between leveraging her social power to obtain compliance and acting as a suitor who may be rejected and denied.
Workplace Sexual Harrassment
Because historic records (as contrasted with literary examples) are more likely to focus on toxic employment circumstances than mutually consenting relationships, our examples of unambiguously sexual encounters cannot be considered romantic, although they demonstrate circumstances in which homoerotic relationships might have developed.
18th century legal records from the Netherlands include legal complaints about a woman boasting that she had sex with her maid every morning, and that her maid preferred her to a man. In a different complaint involving a woman and her maid accused of having a sexual relationship, the maid was also accused of groping another serving girl against her will.
And since historic examples always seem to come around to Ann Lister eventually, we can note one of her diary entries where Lister is interviewing a girl for possible employment at Shibden Hall and, after commenting that she found the girl attractive, notes, “if I could contrive to have the house clear, might manage matters…”
Conclusion
This exploration of employment-based sapphic romance tropes has been a bit anecdotal, but those examples offer a glimpse of how such relationships might evolve, what difficulties and challenges they might face, and how their dynamics would differ from similar romance plots for different-sex couples. Romance in the face of fundamental power imbalances can be tricky to write, but the interplay of power, desire, and negotiating consent can be very sexy indeed.
In this episode we talk about:
Links to the Lesbian Historic Motif Project Online
Links to Heather Online
(Originally aired 2023/12/02 - listen here)
Welcome to On the Shelf for December 2023.
Another year comes to a close and it’s hard not to start having those “what have I accomplished” thoughts. Mostly, with respect to the blog and podcast, I’ve just kept plodding along. The blog took an unintentional break for much of the year, but I’ve been trying to make up for it a little. It helps that I’ve done some trips to the U.C. Berkeley library to download and photocopy articles. Articles are less daunting to blog than entire books and give me more of a chance to put together themes that might lead into podcast topics.
Publications on the Blog
This past month the blog was definitely all about working on materials for a podcast episode on early modern European perceptions of lesbianism in the Ottoman empire. So I blogged a whole array of primary sources. Reports of travelers and diplomats like Nicolas de Nicolay, Ogier Ghiselin de Busbecq, Ottaviano Bon, Thomas Glover, Jean-Baptiste Tavernier, and Mary Wortley Montague. Plus publications that demonstrate how Europeans came to specially associate Ottoman Turkey with lesbianism among sequestered women, such as William Walsh’s A Dialogue Concerning Women and the anonymous tract Satan’s Harvest Home.
Book Shopping!
No sapphic-related book shopping this month, but I did pick up a collection of essays on pre-20th century science fiction: Anticipations: Essays on Early Science Fiction and its Precursors, edited by David Seed.
Fiction
This month we’ll present the final story in our 2023 fiction series: “Battling Poll” by Rose Cullen. And of course next month submissions are open for the 2024 series. I’m a bit worried about getting as much reach for publicizing the submissions call, given how useless the former Twitter has become. It feels like BlueSky is growing into the same supportive community for creative works, but the reach isn’t quite as wide yet. And while I enjoy being on Mastodon, it feels too fragmented and isolated to be useful for submissions calls. Every year I worry about what I’ll receive and every year I’ve gotten enough good stories. But it really helps if you-all can spread the submissions call around if you see it on your social media.
Reviews
In the outro to every episode, we encourage you to rate and review the show, to help others find us. I don’t make a big deal out of it because, quite honestly, I can’t afford to set my heart on getting those reviews. But the other day I was checking something out on Apple Podcasts and happened to notice that we’ve had two new reviews this year. So I thought I’d share what people are saying about the show. One listener praises the show for “always [taking] the greatest care to let us know what is modern supposition, historical theory, or written/verified ‘fact’.” Several people give a shout out to the original fiction and the new book listings. I love that folks say they’ll pause the podcast to go look up a book that sounds interesting. I’d love to know how many people have found and enjoyed books because they heard about them here. One listener especially appreciates discussions of “the thorny issue of reading our modern ideas into historic text.” I think my favorite review is the one that says, “This podcast is better than any queer studies course offered at any university at the moment, and it’s FREE!” (All caps.) Anyway, I just wanted you to know that I do appreciate when you listeners share your love of the podcast, whether in a review or just by recommending the show to your friends.
Recent Lesbian/Sapphic Historical Fiction
And speaking of learning about new releases, what do we have for you this time? There are a few October books that only just came to my attention and the rest are December releases. Maybe I’ll spot some more November books for next month’s episode.
First up is a cross-time story, Say Their Names by Karen Badger from Badger Bliss Books.
Jo Benson is a political science professor. Tam Allen is a cardiac care nurse. Jo and Tam met several years previously, at a demonstration protesting police brutality against the black community. After several years together, they relocate from South Carolina to upstate New York when Jo is offered a tenured position at the State University of New York. Two years after relocating, Jo and Tam purchase an old mansion in the Adirondack region of New York. History collides when they discover secrets about their new home that will change their lives forever. Join them as they strive to discover who had been living in their attic for sixty years.
I’m assuming from context that the secrets in the attic are sapphic in nature, as well as the contemporary framing story.
Next up is Rest in Paper by Jay Mulling, which sent me to look up just how common it was for women to be lawyers at the turn of the 20th century. The answer might surprise you.
Josephine Bradley's grandmother insists that the Bard wrote utter smut. Josephine can't really find the fault in Granny's logic. She had no problem believing Shakespeare was a dirty dog. A very "keen sir," as it were.
Josephine Bradley is a 27-year-old lawyer living her best life. She didn't think she would wear 1904 well, but there she was, absolutely crushing it. She was killing it at her father's firm--well, at their firm, now that she had passed the Illinois Bar Exam--and couldn't think of a better place to be than exactly where she was. That place being the home that she had grown up in, surrounded by family and friends, in a small commuter suburb an hour's train ride west of Chicago.
This thought--that there was no better place to be--was only galvanized by the arrival of two new schoolteachers. One of them was a total Mary and Josephine really couldn't be bothered. But the other one--Miss Thalia Radcliffe--was perfect in every way and only too easy to love. Josephine flirts her way into the new schoolteacher's good graces and finds in her a partner she'd never thought she'd have. Not in this life, anyway.
Josephine and Thalia's budding romance is put on hold, however, when the Bradley's attend Chicago's 1904 Labor Day Parade and Josephine's grandmother goes missing. The family scours the city, searching for their missing matriarch. Chicago is no place for lost Grannies, after all.
Shoot the Moon by Isa Arsén from Putnam Books falls in that awkward era of, “how can this be historic fiction when I remember those events?”
Intelligent but isolated recent physics graduate Annie Fisk feels an undeniable pull toward space. Her childhood memories dimmed by loss, she has left behind her home, her family, and her first love in pursuit of intellectual fulfillment. When she finally lands a job as a NASA secretary during the Apollo 11 mission, the work is everything she dreamed, and while she feels a budding attraction to one of the engineers, she can’t get distracted. Not now.
When her inability to ignore mistaken calculations propels her into a new position, Annie finds herself torn between her ambition, her heart, and a mysterious discovery that upends everything she knows to be scientifically true. Can she overcome her doubts and reach beyond the limits of time and space?
Two Wings to Hide My Face by Penny Mickelbury from Bywater Books is the eagerly-awaited sequel to Two Wings to Fly Away.
In 1857 the US Supreme Court ruled that Blacks were not—and could never be citizens. Black lives were already in peril from the hooligans who would capture and sell them South under the protection of the Runaway Slave Act, even if they weren't runaway slaves. By 1861 Southern states spoke openly of seceding from the Union to form the Confederate States and protect what they believed was their right to own slaves. If the South were to win, slavery would become the law of the land. So for many Blacks, leaving was the only option. Genie Oliver, who frequently dresses as a man to move about the city, is no longer safe in her disguise. White people find themselves just as imperiled for providing any assistance to Blacks—which means that the former Pinkerton’s agent Ezra MacKaye, his fiancé Ada Lawrence, and heiress Abigail Read, are in as much danger as Genie and her friends, the Juniper family. Not knowing what to expect, Ezra, Ada, and the Juniper family join Genie and Abigail as they pack up their lives and head to Canada. Their goal is to stay at least one step ahead of the brutalities of the uncivil war, but can they outpace the dangers that cross their paths every step of the way?
The Prohibition era in California’s Bay Area is the setting for Whiskey War (Speakeasy #2) by Stacy Lynn Miller from Bella Books
At the height of Prohibition and the dawn of the Great Depression, lesbian couple Dax and Rose look forward to a clandestine life together in Half Moon Bay after narrowly escaping death at Devil’s Slide. Dax’s sister May makes the Foster House their refuge while they sit on a gold mine of stolen whiskey from the Seaside Club. But then Frankie Wilkes learns Dax might have it and makes Rose’s life miserable for defending her.
Dax scrambles to unload the barrels in San Francisco to keep their struggling restaurant afloat but sparks the curiosity of May’s husband Logan, who had abandoned them months earlier. He shows up looking for money and finds the hidden barrel Dax had kept for a rainy day. When Logan sells the whiskey to customers by the glass, Dax sees the ugly side of the illegal business when left unchecked.
In comes Grace Parsons, a wealthy Hollywood starlet and Rose’s former lover, with a solution to their problems. However, her bold help spirals into a violent feud that leaves no one in their inner circle untouched. How far will Logan and Frankie go to get what they want? Can Dax and Rose find a way out before the whiskey war takes their lives?
We have yet another cross-time story involving a discovery in an attic with The Apple Diary by Gerri Hill from Bella Books.
After the death of her grandmother, reluctant heiress Madilyn Marak agrees to stay with her grandfather at the estate for the summer. There, she finds an old diary hidden in an antique desk in the attic—The Apple Diary—written by her great-grandmother Isabel.
In there, she finds the love story of Isabel and Lorah, along with a photograph of the two young women from 1933. The diary, like the love affair, was short and brief, but rich and vivid enough for her to feel a true bond with the women despite the heartbreaking ending.
She is determined to get Isabel’s beloved apple orchard—which had fallen into ruins—vibrant again. She hires the inexperienced Dylan Hayes, a woman soon to be homeless, to take on the chore of restoring the orchard to its original glory.
The normally quiet and reserved Madilyn finds a new joy in life as she becomes friends with the outgoing and energetic woman who has come to live on the property. As she is transformed from a stoic and passive heiress to a happy and spirited woman, she realizes the similarities of her journey and that of Isabel’s.
Like Isabel, is she destined to marry a man she doesn’t love? Or will she find the strength that eluded Isabel and follow her heart?
Next up are a couple of books in that favored setting of World War II. Virgin Flight by E.V. Bancroft is from Butterworth Books.
Can love triumph in the battle between duty and desire?
Beryl Jenkinson is a young dreamer determined to break free. Though bound to her family’s garage, her heart dreams of taking flight with Attagirls, the brave women piloting planes across the nation to play a vital role in the war effort.
Odette de Lavigne embodies the allure of a World War Two pin-up girl: glamorous, seductive, and a masterful pilot. But beneath her carefree demeanour lies a poignant secret.
Their destinies collide when Odette literally crashes into Beryl’s life, sparking a blaze of passion and an enduring infatuation. Fate reunites them at the ATA, but can love conquer the clash between duty and enchanting desire?
J.E. Leak’s “Shadow Series” concludes with In the Shadow of Victory (Shadow Series #4) from Certifiably Creative LLC. If you haven’t been reading along in this series, you might want to start at the beginning.
Paris, 1944. As OSS agents Kathryn Hammond and Jenny Ryan navigate the dangerous world of espionage, they are faced with the ultimate test of love and loyalty. Can their love overcome the obstacles in their path, or have time and the shadows of the past cost them a second chance at happiness? Join Kathryn and Jenny on their journey of forgiveness, healing, and devotion, as they discover the strength of their love in the thrilling conclusion to the sapphic noir Shadow series.
Other Books of Interest
Three books fall in my “other books of interest” category.
Bone Rites by Natalie Bayley from Aurora Metro Books indicates that there is queer content, but it isn’t entirely clear what the specifics are.
"I collected the first bone when I was twelve. This fact was not mentioned in court... Such a tiny little bone, more like a tooth. I only kept it to keep him safe."
Kathryn Darkling, imprisoned in Holloway, is facing death by hanging for her vengeance killing. Haunted by a spirit, she still hopes to perform the ancient black magic that will free her soul, or her struggle to punish the mighty will have been in vain. Will the love of her life come to her aid?
Or can she find a way to escape her fate?
Stories set in a fantasy-Viking era often involve gender-bending protagonists. In the case of Vyking Queen by Elora Roze from Blue Flame Publishing the tagline “a third gender romance” suggests that I might be doing the character a disservice by putting her in the lesbian or sapphic category.
A story of a lonely young jarl that must live up to her father's legacy while securing her own. All while fighting against the curse she was born with due to her mother's hate. Will she find a true love? Will she break the curse? Or will the curse prove to be strong enough to break a thousand years rule her family has held over the wild North sea and the people that call it home.
While one of the reviews for A Season of Monstrous Conceptions by Lina Rather from Tor.com indicates that there are sapphic elements, and it turned up under my search terms, the cover copy itself is pretty much silent on the topic.
In 17th-century London, unnatural babies are being born, with eyes made for the dark and webbed digits suited to the sea. Sarah Davis is intimately familiar with such strangeness—having hidden her uncanny nature all her life and fled to London under suspicious circumstances, Sarah starts over as a midwife’s apprentice to a member of the illegal Worshipful Company of Midwives, hoping to carve out for herself an independent life. But with each new unnatural birth, the fear in London grows of the Devil's work. When the wealthy Lady Wren hires her to see her through her pregnancy, Sarah quickly becomes a favorite of her husband, the famous architect Lord Christopher Wren, whose interest in the uncanny borders on obsession. Sarah soon finds herself caught in a web of magic and intrigue created by those who want to use her power for themselves, and whose pursuits threaten to unmake the earth itself.
What Am I Reading?
And what am I reading? It was all audiobooks this month, and given that one of those was Menewood by Nichola Griffith, which clocks in at almost 29 hours of listening time, I hope you’ll understand the skimpiness of this month’s list. Menewood is the sequel to Hild and if you liked the first book, you’ll most likely enjoy this one as well. The story is packed with dense worldbuilding—a term not usually used for historic fiction—and has a meandering pace until things pick up in the last section. There’s more of the same casual background same-sex relationships that we saw in Hild—in fact, I’d say they’re more present and significant in Menewood, though it takes quite a while in the book for that aspect to appear. If you aren’t already familiar with early Anglo-Saxon history, it may be best to approach this book as if it were an epic fantasy set in an unfamiliar world, and let it soak in as you read.
The second audiobook I consumed was Nettle and Bone by T. Kingfisher, a dark, bordering-on-horror fairy-tale quest that won the Hugo Award for best novel and was a finalist for a couple other major awards. No sapphic content, but a solid Kingfisher-style adventure with a heroine you want to root for.
Misc.
I had ambitious plans to record a bunch of interviews this week when I was on vacation, and I utterly fell down on the job because my brain gets all claustrophobic and keeps putting off the whole “reaching out and making arrangements” part. Rest assured, I have several fascinating people to interview once I pull my brain back off the ledge and convince it that everything’s ok.
But I’ll finish up with a “what am I writing” note. Because the thing I did accomplish on my vacation was to write a short story that’s the first fiction I’ve completed since the start of the pandemic. Be sure that I’ll let you know more details as they’re available.
In this episode we talk about:
Links to the Lesbian Historic Motif Project Online
Links to Heather Online
The one major to-do item for my vacation this week was to write a short story I promised for an anthology on libraries and librarians. As of now, it's complete and ready for a few beta readers with quick turn-around time. It ties in with my planned Restoration-era historic romance series (series title: Diana's Band) and involves the failed heist of a book of Latin pornography. (Nothing explicit in the story.)
I really need to make a blog icon for the Diana's Band series at some point. This is the second story I"ve written in that series, but the first didn't sell to the market I wrote it for so I've been holding on to it for future use. The basic premise of the series begins with a second-chance romance between widows who were separated by marriage and then by their families being on opposing sides of the English Civil War. After they get back together (the first novel), Diana Countess of Hartsworth sets out on a campaign to take under her wing various women who find themselves in need of friends and assistance (many of whom just happen to be queer, naturally). Her pitch is that if she assists you, you've become part of Diana's Band and are pledged to repay the favor when she calls on you. (See this post for the inspiration for the name.) This creates the context for a connected through-line for the series that allows each story to stand on its own.
This is the first completed fiction project I've written since the start of Covid. One reason I signed up for the anthology project was to give myself a solid target for getting something written. After all, it would be good to have something of a running start when retirement shifts me into being a full-tme writer.
Lesbian Historic Motif Podcast - Episode 273 - Turkish Delights: The European Fascination with Lesbianism in the Ottoman Empire - transcript
(Originally aired 2023/11/18 - listen here)
Introduction
I’ve long wanted to do a show focusing on the peculiar fascination that early modern Europe had for the image of lesbianism in the Ottoman Empire. This is a topic that I’ve touched on in a number of previous shows, including episodes about lesbian stereotypes associated with racialized groups, and with lesbianism in single-sex communities, as well as other briefer references. In addition to looking at how this image developed and the historic context that gave it a deeper meaning, I’ve wanted to trace the connections between various early travelers’ descriptions that fed into this European stereotype.
This is not necessarily an episode about sexuality and sexual practices within the early modern Islamicate world, which is a different topic. But as background it can be useful to keep in mind that European attitudes toward homosexuality derive significantly from Christian attitudes toward sex, coming out of a deep-rooted asceticism that was suspicious of any erotic activity that could not be excused as procreation. In contrast, while the Islamic world included a wide variety of attitudes toward sex and pleasure, the moral and ethical frameworks that shaped them were different. There had been a long history of relatively neutral—or sometimes positive—attitudes toward female homoeroticism in the medieval Islamicate world that had no parallel in European culture. While there is a shift to more uniformly negative attitudes by the early modern period, it can be difficult to trace a clear timeline, not only due to the scarcity of documentation on the topic, but because those historic sources that do exist can be difficult for scholars to access due to current Islamic attitudes toward homosexuality among the institutions that control access to the texts.
But as I said, this is an episode about European beliefs and attitudes, and for that we need to begin with a brief overview of the history of the Ottoman Empire and its relations with Europe.
The Ottoman Empire
The Ottoman Empire was an extensive political entity, centered around modern-day Turkey, that had its roots in the 14th century and existed in some form or another into the early 20th century. At its greatest geographic extent in the 16th and 17th centuries, it included Turkey, significant portions of the Near East including modern Iraq, Syria, Palestine, Saudi Arabia, Egypt, stretching along the Mediterranean coastline as far as Algeria, and also including Greece, and areas roughly equivalent to the Balkans, Romania, Bulgaria, Hungary, and Ukraine. In the early 16th century, Sultan Suleiman the Magnificent—known in Europe as “the Great Turk”—made it as far as laying siege to Vienna, though he never took the city. The Ottoman Empire saw itself as the heir to the Byzantine Roman Empire, referring to its citizens collectively as “Romans” and setting its capital in Constantinople.
All this is to say that during the same period that Christian European nations saw themselves as emerging world powers in the realms of trade and colonization, they were literally next door neighbors to a vast Islamic empire whose power and influence could not be ignored or denied. European contacts in this era with other powers such as India and China played similar havoc with European illusions of cultural superiority, but those powers were not on the European doorstep.
After several centuries in which the dominant interactions were hostile, by the 16th century, European powers were coming to grips with the need to have solid diplomatic relations with the Ottomans. In this century, we have a profusion of writings by European diplomats and travelers, describing and commenting on what they saw and experienced in Constantinople and the rest of the empire. These commentaries are a mixture of admiration, curiosity, and no small admixture of smug superiority. But the writers could not dismiss Ottoman society as being insignificant, primitive, or uncultured. And this, I think, is one of the key underpinnings of European perceptions of female homoeroticism within Ottoman society generally, and especially within the culture of the harem.
Although the basics of European and Ottoman attitudes toward the place of women in society were not fundamentally different—women were in general viewed as lesser beings and were constrained as to their social freedoms and legal rights, though individual women might wield significant economic and political power—but Europeans found the superficial differences striking and noteworthy. The prevalence of polygamy among high-status men, the seclusion of women from contact with men outside their immediate family, the lack of a context in which men and women socialized freely. These factors, combined with popular beliefs about women’s sex drives and how they might be fulfilled among secluded women, led to a prurient curiosity about exactly what women might be doing together in those harems.
This would seem to be a second key factor in the fixation on Turkey as a locus of female homoeroticism. European men had no direct access to the personal lives of Ottoman women—especially high status women—and had strong preconceptions about what might predispose women to homosexual activity, especially lack of access to male company. In contrast to perceptions based on gender segregation, many Turkish women—especially those of the sultan’s household—wielded significant social and economic power within their own households and even extending beyond them. These mysteries and contradictions no doubt gave free rein to European imaginations.
Of course, given the traditionally more sex-positive attitudes in the Islamicate world, that prurient curiosity likely had substance to work with. But the result was a developing myth of rampant lesbianism in Turkish harems and bathhouses that continues to color Orientalist fantasies to the present day.
But let’s move on to exactly what those travelers and ambassadors recorded to share with their countrymen back home.
The Travelogues
I’ll split this discussion into two groups: the primary texts written by people who actually travelled to the Ottoman Empire (though there may be valid questions about whether they were recording first-hand observations), and then later texts that reflect the mythic image as it developed.
With respect to images of female homoeroticism, we’ll trace two major themes and two specific anecdotes. One theme is lesbianism among the women of the sultan’s seraglio. The “seraglio” as the term is used in the historic sources, refers to the sultan’s personal residence in its entirety, only a portion of which housed the women of the household. These women included not only the sultan’s wives and concubines, but all the female servants attending on them and a significant number of women being trained and educated to serve as resources for the sultan’s political engineering. There was a separate establishment known as the “old seraglio” that housed widowed sultanas, exiled former favorites, as well as the sultan’s sisters and daughters. Accounts often focused closely on these two households due to their association with the sultan and because they represented the ultimate in “forbidden women”. Discussions of lesbian activity within the household focus specifically on these.
The second locus of interest is the public baths. Travelers’ tales show fascination with the Turkish bath as a social institution, some comparing it to the function of coffee houses or taverns as a meeting place. Gender segregation in the baths might involve separate locations or more commonly involved designated times of day for men or women. While European observers comment on both male and female homosexuality, descriptions of the baths are more likely to mention female homosexuality than male activity.
It may be relevant that writers appear to mention one or the other of these locations, but not both. This may have to do with the specific interests of the writer: whether the court or general society.
The two specific anecdotes are, in part, what first drew my attention to the recycling of content among these accounts. One that I call the “cucumber anecdote” first appears in the account of Venetian ambassador Ottaviano Bon, and then is repeated to be rejected by Jean-Baptiste Tavernier a century later. The second anecdote that I call “the old women falls in love at the baths” is first related by Flemish traveler Ogier Ghiselin de Busbecq, also repeated by Tavernier a century later, and then quoted with attribution even later in the English polemical tract Satan’s Harvest Home.
As Valerie Traub notes, “These exoticizing tales, most of them written during the period when the Ottoman Empire posed a viable military and religious threat to Western Europe (and, incidentally, during the period when high ranking women of the Ottoman dynasty enjoyed a degree of political power and public prominence greater than ever before or after), enable a number of observations about the rhetorics and figures of female-female eroticism in the early modern period.”
With that introduction, let’s do a brief survey of the authors and the lesbian-related content of their accounts. For more extensive excerpts from the original texts, see the blog entries linked in the show notes.
Nicolas de Nicolay
Nicolas de Nicolay was a Frenchman who served in various diplomatic roles in the mid 16th century, including escorting the young Mary Queen of Scots to France for her marriage to the Dauphin, and accompanying the French ambassador to Suleiman the Magnificent in Constantinople. On this journey, one of his roles was to make an extensive survey of the lands and peoples he encountered, which was published in French in 1567 as the First Four Books of Navigations, and translated into English two decades later.
Like most of the male authors, Nicolay makes a special note of his lack of direct access to the lives of the women he’s describing, including how, in order to be shown how the women of the court dressed, his contact arranged for a “public woman” (probably meaning a prostitute) to be dressed in the fine clothing for him to see.
After a very extensive description of the men’s baths (including massage practices), he describes women’s bathing practices, whether in a private bath at home or going to the public baths several times a week. He notes that women might use the baths as a cover to making less approved excursions, as they had an absolute right to leave the house for bathing. He follows this comment with the following.
[S]ometimes they do go ten or twelve of them together, and sometimes more in a company, as well Turks as Grecians, and do familiarly wash one another, whereby it cometh to pass, that amongst the women of Levan, there is very great amity proceding only thro’ the frequentation and resort to the bathes: yea and sometimes become so fervently in love the one of the other, as if it were with men, in such sort, that perceiving some maiden or woman of excellent beauty they will not cease until they have found means to bathe with them, and to handle and grope them every where at their pleasures, so full are they of luxuriousness and feminine wantonness: even as in times past were the Tribades, of the number whereof was Sapho the Lesbian, which transferred the love wherewith she pursued an hundred women or maidens, upon her only friend Phaon. And therefore, considering the reasons aforesaid, to wit, the cleansing of their bodies, health, superstition, liberty to go abroad, and lascivious voluptuousness, it is not to be marvelled at, that these baths are so accustomably frequented by the Turks.
Ogier Ghiselin de Busbecq
Next we hear from the Flemish scholar Ogier Ghiselin de Busbecq, who was in Constantinople at roughly the same time as Nicolay. Busbecq was named an ambassador to the Ottoman Empire by the Holy Roman Emperor Ferdinand I and was in Constantinople primarily to negotiate a border treaty. But Busbecq was deeply interested in describing his experiences in an extensive correspondence with friends, which he later collected and published in Latin in a collection titled Turkish Letters in 1581. Unlike Nicolay’s account, it was nearly a century before Busbecq’s book was translated into English in 1694. (I’m focusing on English translations not only because that’s how I accessed the material, but because I’ll be talking about some specifically English resonances in the 18th century.)
Busbecq gives a relatively brief description of the women’s baths and then dives into a very detailed discussion of lesbian activity in them, including the anecdote of the “old woman who fell in love at the baths” which, I warn you, does not have a happy ending.
A Turk hates bodily Filthiness and Nastiness, worse than Soul-Defilement; and, therefore, they wash very often, and they never ease themselves, by going to Stool, but they carry Water with them for their Posteriors. But ordinarily the Women bathe by themselves, Bond and Free together; so that you shall many times see young Maids, exceeding beautiful, gathered from all Parts of the World, exposed Naked to the view of other Women, who thereupon fall in Love with them, as young Men do with us, at the sight of Virgins.
By this you may guess, what the strict Watch over Females comes to, and that it is not enough to avoid the Company of an adulterous Man, for the Females burn in Love one towards another; and the Pandaresses to such refined Loves are the Baths; and, therefore, some Turks will deny their Wives the use of their public Baths, but they cannot do it altogether, because their Law allows them. But these Offences happen among the ordinary sort; the richer sort of Persons have Baths at home, as I told you before.
It happened one time, that at the public Baths for Women, an old Woman fell in Love with a Girl, the Daughter of a poor Man, a Citizen of Constantinople; and, when neither by wooing nor flattering her, she could obtain that of her which her mad Affection aim’d at, she attempted to perform an Exploit almost incredible; she feign’d herself to be a Man, changed her Habit, hired an House near the Maid’s Father, and pretended she was one of the Chiauxes of the Grand Seignior; and thus, by reason of his Neighbourhood, she insinuated herself into the Man’s Acquaintance, and after some time, acquaints him with the desire of his Daughter. In short, he being a Man in such a prosperous Condition, the Matter was agreed on, a Portion was settled, such as they were able to give, and a Day appointed for the Marriage; when the Ceremonies were over, and this doughty Bridegroom went into the Bride-chamber to his Spouse; after some Discourse, and plucking off her Headgeer, she was found to be a Woman. Whereupon the Maid runs out, and calls up her Parents, who soon found that they had married her, not to a Man, but a Woman: Whereupon, they carried the supposed Man, the next day, to the General of the Janizaries, who, in the Absence of the Grand Seignior, was Governor of the City. When she was brought before him, he chide her soundly for her beastly Love; what, says he, are you not asham’d, an old Beldam as you are, to attempt so notorious a Bestiality, and so filthy a Fact?
Away, Sir, says she! You do not know the Force of Love, and God grant you never may. At this absurd Reply, the Governor could scarce forbear Laughter, but commanded her, presently, to be pack’d away and drown’d in the Deep; such was the unfortunate Issue of her wild Amours. For you must know, that the Turks make no noise when secret Offences are committed by them, that they may not open the Mouths of Scandal and Reproach; but open and manifest ones they punish most severely.
Ottaviano Bon
Ottaviano Bon was a Venetian diplomat, but his time in Constantinople appears to precede his diplomatic career, perhaps in the 1580s. This visit, which may well have been something of an espionage mission, resulted in a detailed Description of the Seraglio of the Great Turk, initially written as a confidential report, but published in Italian around 1606. An English translation appeared (without attribution) in 1625 as part of an extensive multi-volume collection of travel writing.
The following excerpt concerns young women who are servants of the court, rather than the sultanas and the sultan’s concubines, and is somewhat more vague than other writers about the nature of the behavior he is describing.
Now in the Womens lodgings, they live just as the Nunnes doe in their great Monasteries; for, these Virgins have very large Roomes to live in, and their Bed-chambers will hold almost a hundred of them a piece: they sleepe upon Sofaes, which are built long wise on both sides of the Roome, so that there is a large space in the midst for to walke in. Their Beds are very course and hard, and by every ten Virgins there lies an old woman: and all the night long there are many lights burning, so that one may see very plainely throughout the whole Roome; which doth both keepe the young Wenches from wantonnesses, and serve upon any occasion which may happen in the night.
It is unlikely that the “wantonness” referenced here involves men, given the strict seclusion of the women, but it is possible that the concern is for masturbation. This caveat also applies to the following anecdote.
Now it is not lawfull for any one to bring ought in unto them, with which they may commit the deeds of beastly uncleannesse ; so that if they have a will to eate Cucumbers, Gourds, or such like meates, they are sent in unto them sliced, to deprive them of the meanes of playing the wantons ; for, they all being young, lustie, and lascivious Wenches, and wanting the societie of Men (which would better instruct them) are doubtlesse of themselves inclined to that which is naught, and will be possest with unchast thoughts.
Although Bon is a bit coy on this point, we’ll see in a later version of this same anecdote that others clearly interpreted it as implying a lesbian context.
Thomas Glover
Unlike the other authors discussed in this podcast, Thomas Glover was born and raised in Constantinople. With an English father and Polish mother, he was fluent in Turkish, Greek, and Italian, as well as Polish and English. Around 1600 he served as secretary to two successive English Ambassadors to Constantinople before serving in the role himself. Despite being embedded in the culture, his attitudes toward Ottoman culture feel very similar to those of European visitors.
Glover’s description of the pubic baths, or “bannias,” somewhat confusingly mixes references to men and women, but when he gets around to describing same-sex activity, he gets more specific.
Much unnaturall and filthie lust is said to bee committed daily in the remote closets of the darkesome Bannias: yea, women with women; a thing uncredible, if former times had not given thereunto both detection and punishment.
Jean-Baptiste Tavernier
Jean-Baptiste Tavernier was a French gem merchant and traveller in the 17th century who went as far as India multiple times in pursuit of gemstones. He wrote extensively of the lands he visited—and some he did not—and also produced a treatise A New Relation Of The Inner-Part of The Grand Seignor’s Seraglio based on his time in Constantinople. There is some basis for questioning how much of Tavernier’s work was original observation as opposed to recycled material. He relates versions of both the cucumber anecdote and the “old woman who fell in love at the baths.” These are not exact copies of Busbecq and Bon’s accounts, and could represent stories that were in continued circulation during the half-century since those earlier writers recorded them. But they certainly aren’t original observations, and some of Tavernier’s other travel writing describes countries he never personally visited.
Tavernier offers what may be the most candid picture of the situation of male visitors to Constantinople who wanted to describe women’s lives.
There is not in all Christendome any Monastery of Religious Virgins, how regular and austere soever it may be, the entrance whereof is more strictly forbidden to men, than is that of this Appartment of the Women: insomuch that my white Eunuch, who has supply'd me with so particular a description of the inner part of the Seraglio, could give me no certain information of this Quarter of it, where the Women are lodg'd.
Tavernier clearly connects the “cucumber anecdote” with concerns about lesbian activity, but also claims that it’s a myth based on a misunderstanding of local foodways. Then he relates a version of Busbecq’s story, situating it in the time of Suleiman the Magnificent a half-century before, which matches the era when Busbecq recorded it.
[S]ome of the more ancient Maids are Mistresses over the Younger ones, and are, night and day employ'd in observing their actions, and that their unvoluntary restraint forces them to the same unseemly actions amongst themselves, as the brutish Passions of those Young Men engages them in, whenever they can find the opportunities to commit them. And this presumption has no doubt given occasion to the Fabulous Story, which is related of their being serv'd up with Cucumbers cut into pieces, and not entire, out of a ridiculous fear lest they should put them to undecent uses: they who have forg'd the Story not knowing, that it is the custome in the Levant, to cut the Fruit a-cross, into great thick slices, as I shall make it appear in the Chapter, where I treat of their Gardens. But it is not only in the Seraglio, that that abominable Vice reigns, but it is predominant also in the City of Constantinople, and in all the Provinces of the Empire, and the wicked Example of the Men, who, flighting the natural use of Woman-kind, are mutually enflam'd with a detestable love for one another, unfortunately enclines the Women to imitate them.
Of this, there was a strange instance in the time of Solyman the Magnificent. An old Woman was guilty of such an excess of extravagance, as to put on Man's Cloaths, and to give out, that she had bought a Chiaoux’s place, the better to compass her desire, of obtaining the only Daughter of a Trades-man of Constantinople, with whom she was desperately fallen in love, having made fruitless attempts, by other ways, to satisfie her infamous inclinations. The Father, not suspecting any thing of her wicked intentions, and being withal poor, grants her his Daughter, the Marriage is solemniz'd in the presence of the Cadi, and the imposture having been discover'd the very Wedding-night, the old woman was condemn'd the next day to be thrown into the Sea, there to quench the Gomorrhean Inflammations of her lewd desires. This Story is to this day related in Constantinople, and I have had it from several good hands.
These insatiable salaciousness amongst the Women, are the effects and conferences of the same inclinations in the Men; and the Turks are so much the more execrable and abominable as to this particular, the more they are permitted a plurality of Wives.
Popular Culture
We’ve seen how, from the mid 16th century through the mid 17th century, during the period when the Ottoman Empire was at the height of its power, European men visiting Constantinople reported back that Turkish women, segregated socially from all men except their husbands, and mingling with other women in the literal hothouse atmosphere of the baths, nude and free from male gazes, were susceptible to the attractions of lesbian desire. These inclinations were considered to be expected, if not approved, and only in extreme cases were there negative consequences. While we can be skeptical of how much direct knowledge the reporters had of the topic, it does seem to be a reasonable conclusion that there was a factual basis for their reports.
Now let’s turn our attention to how those reports developed into a fixed motif that Turkish women could be equated with lesbianism. The earliest connection I’ve found outside a traveler’s report doesn’t specifically single out Turkey as uniquely associated with lesbianism. The French author Brantôme, writing in The Lives of Gallant Women in the late 16th century, when discussing sex between women, comments:
By what I have heard say, there be in many regions and lands plenty of such lesbian ladies, in France, in Italy, in Spain, Turkey, Greece and other places. And wherever the women are kept secluded, and have not their entire liberty, this practice doth greatly prevail. For such women, burning in their bodies, surely must, as they say, make use of this remedy to cool off a bit or else they burn all over. The Turkish women go to the baths more for this than for any other reason, and are greatly devoted thereto. Even courtesans, who have men at their disposal at all hours, yet have recourse to these fricarelles, seek each other out and love each other, as I have heard of sundry doing in Italy and in Spain.
Brantôme doesn’t localize lesbianism to any specific place, but he does call out the Turkish baths as a site for sex, and suggests that gender segregation is a contributing cause. So we see a connection but not a unique one.
But by the later 17th century the connection with Turkey has become a byword—a coded reference that both confirms to the reader that we’re talking about lesbians, and safely displaces that knowledge not only to a distant land, but to a non-Christian society. Thus it becomes legible and deniable at the same time, even when the presence of lesbians in western Europe is the subject of discussion.
We see this in William Walsh’s supposedly feminist philosophical treatise A Dialogue Concerning Women, published in 1691, where the antagonist, holding up examples of women’s perfidy, pairs Sappho with Turkish lesbianism.
Sappho, as she was one of the wittiest Women that ever the World bred, so she thought with Reason it wou'd be expected she shou'd make some additions to a Science in which all Womankind had been so successful: What does she do then? Not content with our Sex, she begins Amours with her own, and teaches us a new sort of Sin, that was follow'd not only in Lucian's time, but is practis'd frequently in Turkey at this day.
The main voice of this treatise, speaking in support of women’s virtues, even as he defends Sappho’s literary talents, feels the need to acknowledge her sexual transgressions, once again bringing Turkey into the conversation, but arguing that famous Greek men of the classical era had similar reputations.
Whatever Sappho's Life and Conversation were, there is nothing in her Writings, but what represents the most tender, and delicate passion in the World. … But not a word more I beseech you of Sappho, nor her new Crime, let Lucian be forgotten for putting us in mind of it, and let it be Cloister'd up within the walls of a Turkish Seraglio;
I speak not this in behalf of the Female Sex, but of our own; for if they shou'd once hear of this Argument, and fall upon us with Socrates, Plato, and all those Heroes of Antiquity, whom Plutarch and Lucian produce in defence of a like Sin in our Sex; shou'd they mention Anacreon, Tibullus, Martial, and all those Poets who have eterniz'd their Infamy in their writings; and after that shew you what progresses this Crime has made, not only in the Turk's Dominion, but even in Spain and Italy, I am sure, Sir, you wou'd wish you had said nothing of a point, that may be so severely made use of against our selves.
Sappho has also, by this era, become an open signifier of lesbianism, so the two themes reflect back on each other, in case the reader missed one or the other of the references.
Both William Walsh’s text and a direct and acknowledged quotation of Busbecq’s writings are brought together in the somewhat peculiar treatise Satan’s Harvest Home, a cobbled-together polemic against all manner of sexual sins asserted to be running rampant in mid 18th century England—though one could be forgiven for reading it instead as tongue-in-cheek pornography. A snippet of Walsh’s text is introduced, adding to it the nickname “the game of flats”.
Sappho, as she was one of the wittiest Women that ever the World bred, so she thought with Reason, it would be expected she should make some Additions to a Science in which Womankind had been so successful: What does she do then? Not content with our Sex, begins Amours with her own, and teaches the Female World a new Sort of Sin, call'd the Flats, that was follow'd not only in Lucian's Time, but is practis'd frequently in Turkey, as well as at Twickenham at this Day.
In a separate section, the author lifts the entirety of Busbecq’s story of the old woman who fell in love at the baths, which I will not repeat as it’s word-for-word the same, but it’s prefaced by a text that connects the story to English habits.
I AM credibly informed, in order to render the Scheme of Iniquity still more extensive amongst us, a new and most abominable Vice has got footing among the Women of Quality, by some call'd the Game at Flats; however incredible this may appear to some People, I shall mention a Story from an Author of very great Credit, applicable to the Matter, speaking of the Turks.
So in the course of two centuries, we see the progression from Turkey being offered as an example of a place where lesbianism is known to be practiced, to the use of Turkey—alongside Sappho—as a symbol of the open practice of lesbianism.
We may see echoes of this association even in tangential comments, as in the late 18th century French pornographic text The English Spy, in which members of the lesbian-focused Anandrine Society, “take their places in pairs, reclining entwined on pillows in the Turkish style.” Is it the reclining or the pairing that is in the Turkish style? Or both?
Mary Wortley Montagu
But after all these male voices and disparaging texts, I’d like to leave you with the breath of fresh air that is the accounts of Lady Mary Wortley Montagu. Montagu was the wife of the British ambassador to the Ottoman Empire in the early 18th century. She was there well after the travelers’ accounts discussed earlier, but Montagu’s account is groundbreaking in several ways. Unlike the male authors of observations on Ottoman society in the 16-17th centuries, Montagu had access to segregated women’s spaces and—as a high-status guest—social access to women of the upper classes, including a visit to the baths and invitations to private socializing. Her account does not include any salacious descriptions of overt lesbianism, though she does regularly express appreciation for the beauty and sensuality of the women she interacted with. And there’s one passage that…well, just wait for it.
During her travels, Montagu corresponded extensively with friends and relatives and these letters were collected up and published in 1763 at her death, though they were in private circulation during her lifetime. Montagu presents an entirely different image of Ottoman women’s lives—though one that was unlikely to dislodge prejudices, even had it been generally available at an earlier date.
I’ll quote two extensive passages from the letters, one about a visit to the baths and one about a private entertainment. Montagu must have stood out as an oddity at the baths as she declined to disrobe as was the standard custom.
I WAS in my travelling habit, which is a riding dress, and certainly appeared very extraordinary to them. Yet there was not one of them that shewed the least surprise or impertinent curiosity, but received me with all the obliging civility possible. I know no European court, where the ladies would have behaved themselves in so polite a manner to such a stranger. I believe, upon the whole, there were two hundred women, and yet none of those disdainful smiles, and satirical whispers, that never fail in our assemblies, when any body appears that is not dressed exactly in the fashion. They repeated over and over to me; "UZELLE, PEK UZELLE," which is nothing but, Charming, very Charming.—The first sofas were covered with cushions and rich carpets, on which sat the ladies; and on the second, their slaves behind them, but without any distinction of rank by their dress, all being in the state of nature, that is, in plain English, stark naked, without any beauty or defect concealed. Yet there was not the least wanton smile or immodest gesture amongst them. They walked and moved with the same majestic grace, which Milton describes our general mother with. There were many amongst them, as exactly proportioned as ever any goddess was drawn by the pencil of a Guido or Titian,—and most of their skins shiningly white, only adorned by their beautiful hair divided into many tresses, hanging on their shoulders, braided either with pearl or ribbon, perfectly representing the figures of the Graces.
I WAS here convinced of the truth of a reflection I have often made, That if it were the fashion to go naked, the face would be hardly observed. I perceived, that the ladies of the most delicate skins and finest shapes had the greatest share of my admiration, though their faces were sometimes less beautiful than those of their companions. To tell you the truth, I had wickedness enough, to wish secretly, that Mr Gervais could have been there invisible. I fancy it would have very much improved his art, to see so many fine women naked, in different postures, some in conversation, some working, others drinking coffee or sherbet, and many negligently lying on their cushions, while their slaves (generally pretty girls of seventeen or eighteen) were employed in braiding their hair in several pretty fancies. In short, 'tis the women's coffee-house, where all the news of the town is told, scandal invented, &c.—They generally take this diversion once a-week, and stay there at least four or five hours, without getting cold by immediate coming out of the hot bath into the cold room, which was very surprising to me. The lady, that seemed the most considerable among them, entreated me to sit by her, and would fain have undressed me for the bath. I excused myself with some difficulty.
At one point, Montagu had the opportunity to make a social visit to the wife of the kahya, the chief assistant to the grand vizier.
SHE was dressed in a caftan of gold brocade, flowered with silver, very well fitted to her shape, and shewing to admiration the beauty of her bosom, only shaded by the thin gauze of her shift. Her drawers were pale pink, her waistcoat green and silver, her slippers white sattin, finely embroidered: her lovely arms adorned with bracelets of diamonds, and her broad girdle set round with diamonds; upon her head a rich Turkish handkerchief of pink and silver, her own fine black hair hanging a great length, in various tresses, and on one side of her head some bodkins of jewels. I am afraid you will accuse me of extravagance in this description. I think I have read somewhere, that women always speak in rapture when they speak of beauty, and I cannot imagine why they should not be allowed to do so. I rather think it a virtue to be able to admire without any mixture of desire or envy. The gravest writers have spoken with great warmth, of some celebrated pictures and statues. The workmanship of Heaven, certainly excels all our weak imitations, and, I think, has a much better claim to our praise. For my part, I am not ashamed to own, I took more pleasure in looking on the beauteous Fatima, than the finest piece of sculpture could have given me. She told me, the two girls at her feet were her daughters, though she appeared too young to be their mother. Her fair maids were ranged below the sofa, to the number of twenty, and put me in mind of the pictures of the ancient nymphs. I did not think all nature could have furnished such a scene of beauty. She made them a sign to play and dance. Four of them immediately began to play some soft airs on instruments, between a lute and a guitar, which they accompanied with their voices, while the others danced by turns. This dance was very different from what I had seen before. Nothing could be more artful, or more proper to raise certain ideas. The tunes so soft!—the motions so languishing!—accompanied with pauses and dying eyes! half-falling back, and then recovering themselves in so artful a manner, that I am very positive, the coldest and most rigid prude upon earth, could not have looked upon them without thinking of something not to be spoke of.
The phrase “not to be spoke of” evokes the regular theme that same-sex desire is something “unspeakable” in the sense of something one is not supposed to talk about. So I don’t think it is at all a stretch to consider this passage to be directly (if coyly) raising the question of lesbian desire and indicating that Montagu was not impervious to that desire.
Montagu was a bit of a social iconoclast. She picked up the habit of wearing Turkish trousers for comfort, and later in life left her husband to take up with a bisexual Venetian philosopher. She enjoyed traveling independently and offered vocal support for women’s independence and freedom. And if she never personally acted on those “certain ideas” that the Turkish dancers had roused in her breast, one suspects that she might have sympathized with those who did.
In this episode we talk about:
Links to the Lesbian Historic Motif Project Online
Links to Heather Online
One of the observations that inspired me to do this focused series on texts related to Ottoman Turkey was the repetitiveness of the content. When specific content (not simply the topics or motifs) is recirculated and republished in different combinations, it can give the impression of being a far more dominant narrative than it may actually have been. "Look at all these authors saying the same thing!" But part of the dynamic here is that with the rise of publications for the popular market, the demand for content often outstripped the rate at which publishers were willing or able to source new content. Hence, a great amount of recycled text, either repackaged with a new introduction or reorganized an shuffled around to appear novel. Think of the practice, perhaps, as the Large Language Model text generator of the Early Modern period.
The polemical pamphlet Satan's Harvest Home gets cited a lot in studies of 18th century sexuality, but when you look at the content and its context, it becomes less clear what genre it actually meant to represent. Compare, for example, to the anti-masturbation tract The Onania which purports to be a moral treatise, but is difficult to distinguish in content from pornography. In this same era, medical manuals that addressed sexual issues were becoming a subject of scrutiny for similar reasons.
Another interesting feature of how the content is organized is the way in which male and female homosexuality is linked. It has not always been the case that the two topics were treated as parts of a whole. And the component tract "Reasons for the Growth of Sodomy" did not itself touch on female homosexuality--the chapter on the Game of Flats was added to it when incorporated into Satan's Harvest Home. Several texts of this era suggest that the (supposed) rise in female homosexuality was directly due to the rise of male sodomy, and the resulting lack of male attention to female sexual desires. This is a theme touched on in some of the Ottoman reports, though in those there is also the element of gender segregation, not only the assertion of male preference for homosexual encounters.
This finishes up the series of texts I'm newly posting for this topic. Next up will be the podcast in which I take an overall look at European perceptions of sexuality in the Ottoman Empire, and how those perceptions were integrated into discourse about lesbianism in Europe itself, becoming part of a long tradition of assigning the practice as newly-arrived due to foreign influences.
Anonymous. 1749. Satan's Harvest Home: or the Present State of Whorecraft, Adultery, Fornication, Procuring, Pimping, Sodomy, And the Game of Flatts, (Illustrated by an Authentick and Entertaining Story) And other Satanic Works, daily propagated in this good Protestant Kingdom. London.
This post is part of a series of primary source materials illustrating how Europeans perceived, reported, and discussed female homoeroticism in the Ottoman Empire during the 16th to early 18th centuries. I’ll give a larger context for why this is a period of interest for European interactions with a non-European, non-Christian culture that could not be dismissed easily as not being of equal power an importance to their own. Attitudes toward, and practice of homosexuality was far from the most noteworthy difference that these reports covered, but it’s the one of interest to us within the scope of this Project. I’ll be presenting the descriptions from ambassadors, travelers, and others in chronological order of their time spent in Constantinople and other key cities, followed by some additional primary sources that show how the echos of these interactions became part of European myths about lesbianism.
Satan’s Harvest Home is an anonymous polemic (published 1749) railing against the perceived rise of effeminacy, sodomy, and prostitution in English society. The full title is: Satan's Harvest Home: or the Present State of Whorecraft, Adultery, Fornication, Procuring, Pimping, Sodomy, And the Game of Flatts, (Illustrated by an Authentick and Entertaining Story) And other Satanic Works, daily propagated in this good Protestant Kingdom. The text has been cobbled together from several sources, some attributed, others not.
The first section is entitled The Present State of Whorecraft, Adultery, Fornication, Procuring, Pimping, Etc. In Great Britain, which includes material that is a direct reprint (or plagiarism) of the 1734 text Pretty Doings in a Protestant Nation, by the pseudonymous Father Poussin (part of which appears to be lifted from William Walsh’s A Dialogue Concerning Women).
The second section is entitled Reasons for the Growth of Sodomy, Etc., which directly lifts the text of a 1731 pamphlet Plain Reasons for the Growth of Sodomy in England and then appends as chapter V the text “Of the Game of Flatts,” which consists of a brief introductory passage followed by a direct (and attributed) quotation of Busbecq’s story of the old woman who fell in love with a girl at the baths. Of particular interest is the term “game of flats” which is clearly a slang term for lesbian sex (which did not appear in Busbecq).
It can be difficult to tell whether the pamphlet was genuinely intended to arouse a moral panic, or whether it used the cover of morality to collect up a number of salicious texts for prurient purposes. In any event, Satan’s Harvest Home is an excellent example of the syncretic nature of popular culture texts regarding sexuality in this era.
The text I used is downloaded from Google Books and proofed against a pdf of the original from the same source.
The first passage of interest discusses all manner of offenses against authorized sexuality, and includes a passage that is clearly equivalent to part of Walsh’s Dialogue (published earlier), but with some rearrangement and rewording. Sappho is invoked, lesbian sex is nicknamed “the flats”, and a connection is made between lesbianism in Turkey and lesbianism in England, though without implying a causal relationship.
I must confess, that in the Business of Lust we ought to submit to the Ladies, and with Shame allow them the Preference; ’tis that can make Sappho witty; Eloisa eloquent; a country Wife politick…
Sappho, as she was one of the wittiest Women that ever the World bred, so she thought with Reason, it would be expected she should make some Additions to a Science in which Womankind had been so successful: What does she do then? Not content with our Sex, begins Amours with her own, and teaches the Female World a new Sort of Sin, call'd the Flats, that was follow'd not only in Lucian's Time, but is practis'd frequently in Turkey, as well as at Twickenham at this Day.
The second passage of interest is the one lifting Busbecq’s story, but with a brief introduction asserting that this “new and most abominable vice” of lesbianism has “got footing among the w[ome]n of q[ualit]y” and gives it the name “game of flats.” Once again, this makes a direct connection between lesbianism in England and Turkey, though without explicitly claiming a causal relationship.
Chapter V Of the Game of Flatts
I AM credibly informed, in order to render the Scheme of Iniquity still more extensive amongst us, a new and most abominable Vice has got footing among the W—n of Q—y, by some call'd the Game at Flats; however incredible this may appear to some People, I shall mention a Story from an Author of very great Credit, applicable to the Matter, who, speaking of the Turks, says,
“A Turk hates bodily Filthiness and Nastiness, worse than Soul-Defilement; and, therefore, they wash very often, and they never ease themselves, by going to Stool, but they carry Water with them for their Posteriors. But ordinarily the Women bathe by themselves, Bond and Free together; so that you shall many times see young Maids, exceeding beautiful, gathered from all Parts of the World, exposed Naked to the view of other Women, who thereupon fall in Love with them, as young Men do with us, at the sight of Virgins.
By this you may guess, what the strict Watch over Females comes to, and that it is not enough to avoid the Company of an adulterous Man, for the Females burn in Love one towards another; and the Pandaresses to such refined Loves are the Baths; and, therefore, some Turks will deny their Wives the use of their public Baths, but they cannot do it altogether, because their Law allows them. But these Offences happen among the ordinary sort; the richer sort of Persons have Baths at home, as I told you before.
It happened one time, that at the public Baths for Women, an old Woman fell in Love with a Girl, the Daughter of a poor Man, a Citizen of Constantinople; and, when neither by wooing nor flattering her, she could obtain that of her which her mad Affection aim’d at, she attempted to perform an Exploit almost incredible; she feign’d herself to be a Man, changed her Habit, hired an House near the Maid’s Father, and pretended she was one of the Chiauxes of the Grand Seignior; and thus, by reason of his Neighbourhood, she insinuated herself into the Man’s Acquaintance, and after some time, acquaints him with the desire of his Daughter. In short, he being a Man in such a prosperous Condition, the Matter was agreed on, a Portion was settled, such as they were able to give, and a Day appointed for the Marriage; when the Ceremonies were over, and this doughty Bridegroom went into the Bride-chamber to his Spouse; after some Discourse, and plucking off her Headgeer, she was found to be a Woman. Whereupon the Maid runs out, and calls up her Parents, who soon found that they had married her, not to a Man, but a Woman: Whereupon, they carried the supposed Man, the next day, to the General of the Janizaries, who, in the Absence of the Grand Seignior, was Governor of the City. When she was brought before him, he chide her soundly for her beastly Love; what, says he, are you not asham’d, an old Beldam as you are, to attempt so notorious a Bestiality, and so filthy a Fact?
Away, Sir, says she! You do not know the Force of Love, and God grant you never may. At this absurd Reply, the Governor could scarce forbear Laughter, but commanded her, presently, to be pack’d away and drown’d in the Deep; such was the unfortunate Issue of her wild Amours.”
See Busbequius's Travels into Turkey, P. 146, 147.
The last couple of sources I'm presenting as part of the Ottoman Turkey series are not travelers' accounts, but rather texts that demonstrate that the motif of "lesbians in Ottoman Turkey" had become sufficiently established to be referenced in popular culture. In this and the next text, we get the double-whammy of Turkey and poet Sappho as touchstones for lesbian activity. These aren't the only texts that use such references--I'll be mentioning others in the upcoming podcast, including some texts that have been blogged previously.
Walsh, William. 1691. A Dialogue Concerning Women, being a Defence of the Sex. London, Printed for R. Bentley in Russel-street in Covent-Garden, and I. Tonson at the Judge’s-Head in Chancery-Lane.
This post is part of a series of primary source materials illustrating how Europeans perceived, reported, and discussed female homoeroticism in the Ottoman Empire during the 16th to early 18th centuries. I’ll give a larger context for why this is a period of interest for European interactions with a non-European, non-Christian culture that could not be dismissed easily as not being of equal power an importance to their own. Attitudes toward, and practice of homosexuality was far from the most noteworthy difference that these reports covered, but it’s the one of interest to us within the scope of this Project. I’ll be presenting the descriptions from ambassadors, travelers, and others in chronological order of their time spent in Constantinople and other key cities, followed by some additional primary sources that show how the echos of these interactions became part of European myths about lesbianism.
William Walsh was a late 17th century English poet and critic. The work of his that piques our interest is a philosophical treatise A Dialogue Concerning Women, being a Defence of the Sex, which is dedicated to someone identified as Eugenia. The work is in the form of a debate between Misogynes (the misogynist) and Philogynes (the lover of women), with authorial asides commenting on their arguments and directly addressing the dedicatee. Unfortunately for the casual reader, it appears (based on a single image from the internet) that the voices are distinguished using italics for one, but none of the accessible texts online make this distinction. I’ve done my best to guess at distinguishing [Misogynes], [Philogynes], and [Narrator] in the excerpts below, based on content. I have bolded the text that references either lesbianism or Turkey, given that they are embedded in much more extensive quotations.
A Dialogue Concerning Women, being a Defence of the Sex was published in 1691. (London, Printed for R. Bentley in Russel-street in Covent-Garden, and I. Tonson at the Judge’s-Head in Chancery-Lane.) the text I used was sourced from the University of Michigan—Early English Books website. This text included a number of OCR glitches. I’ve cleaned up those where the intent was obvious, but there’s one Latin name where I couldn’t figure out which author was meant.
Walsh’s text is cited in Donoghue 1995.
The relevance of this text is the demonstration that a link between Sappho, lesbianism, and Turkey had become sufficiently embedded in popular culture by the late 17th century that it is presented as accepted fact in a screed (though one set up as a strawman) against learned women.
[Narrator] This Misogynes is a very rude Fellow, and I am sure your Ladyship will be of my Opinion, that his last simile was very fulsome. 'Tis a sign he hates Women; for had he convers'd with them, they wou'd have taught him better manners.
[Misogynes] But there are doubtless, you will say, Women of Understanding: Pray where are they? Is it your Prudent Woman, your good Houswife, who is plaguing all the World with her Management, and instructing every body how to feed Geese and Capons? Or is it your Politician, who is always full of Business, who carries a Secretary of State's Office in her Head, and is making her deep Observations upon every days News? Or is it your Learned Woman, who runs mad for the love of hard words, who talks a mixt Jargon, or Lingua Franca, and has spent a great deal of time to make her capable of talking Nonsense in four or five several Languages? What think you, Sir, do you not wish for your Visitant again, as the more tolerable folly of the two? Do not you think Learning and Politicks become a Woman as ill as riding astride? And had not the Duke of Brittaine reason, who thought a Woman knowing enough, when she cou'd distinguish between her Husband's Shirt and his Breeches?
[Misogynes] Do not you, in answer to these, fetch me a Sappho out of Greece; a Cornelia, the Mother of the Gracchi, out of Rome; an Anna Maria Schurman out of Holland; and think that in shewing me three Learned Women in three thousand years, you have gain'd your point; and from some few particular Instances, prov'd a general Conclusion: If I shou'd bring you half a dozen Magpies that cou'd talk, and as many Horses that cou'd dance, you wou'd not, I suppose, for all that, chuse out the one to converse with, or the other to walk a Corant.
[Misogynes] But wou'd you see 'em to their best advantage? Wou'd you have their Wit, Courage, and Conduct display'd? Take 'em upon the business of Lust. That can make Sappho witty, Aloisia Eloquent, a Country-wife Politick; That can humble Messalina's Pride to walk the Streets; can make tender Hippia en∣dure the Incommodities of a Sea-Voyage, can support the Queen of Sheba in a Journey to Solomon, and make Thalestris search out Alexander the Great: In this particular, I must confess, we ought to submit to 'em, and with shame allow 'em the preference. I cannot reflect upon the Stories of Semiramis's lying with all the handsomest men in her Army, and putting 'em to Death afterwards; of her offering her Son the last Favour; of Messalina the Empresses prostituting her self in the publick Stews; and of Queen Ioan of Naples providing a Bath under her Window, where she might see all the lustiest young men naked, and take her choice out of 'em, without such an admiration as their Heroick Actions deserve. Sappho, as she was one of the wittiest Women that ever the World bred, so she thought with Reason it wou'd be expected she shou'd make some additions to a Science in which all Womankind had been so successful: What does she do then? Not content with our Sex, she begins Amours with her own, and teaches us a new sort of Sin, that was follow'd not only in Lucian's time, but is practis'd frequently in Turkey at this day. You cannot but be sensible, Sir, that there is no necessity of going so far for Instances of their Lewdness, and were it civil to quote the Lampoons, or write the Amours of our own Time, we might be furnish'd with Examples enow nearer home.
…
[Philogynes] We might tell you further, Sir, that this Modesty too often hinders 'em from making their Vertues known; That they are not of those eternal Scriblers who are continually plagueing the World with their Works; and that it is not the Vanity of getting a Name, which several of the greatest men of the World have own'd to be the Cause of their writing, that is the Cause of the Womens. Had not Sappho been so much in Love, 'tis possible we had never heard any mention of one of the greatest Wits that ever was born; had not Cicero and Quintilian given us accounts of Cornelia, and the Daughters of L•lius, and Hortensius, they had never done it themselves; had not Jane Gray been put to Death, her Vertues had never been so much taken notice of; Had not the Portugueze Nun been deserted by her Gallant, we had mist some of the most passionate Letters that these latter Ages have produc'd; and had not Anna Maria Schurman's Works been publish'd by a Friend, without her consent, we had lost the benefit of 'em. We may tell you too, that 't not only in respect of their own Sex that they are admir'd, but even of ours. That of those two Odes we have yet of Sappho, we owe one to Dionysius Halicarnassaeus, the other to Longin, the two best Criticks of Greece, who chose 'em out for Examples to their Rules, before any of the Mens; That the Epistle of Sappho to Phaon, which is esteem'd the most delicate of Ovid,'s is supposed to be taken out of her Writings. That Corinna was five times victorious over Pindar the best Lyrick Poet of our Sex. And were we here in England as forward in Printing Letters, as they are in France and Italy, we might furnish Volumes of 'em written by our own Ladies, that wou'd make all the Women-haters blush, or make all Men else blush for 'em.
[Narrator] Here, Madam, I must own to you I grew jealous, for I cou'd not imagine that Philogynes wou'd have said this, without having seen some of your Ladyships Letters.
[Philogynes] We may tell you too, that granting the equal Capacities of both Sexes, 'tis a greater wonder to find one Learned Woman, than a hundred Learned Men, considering the difference of their Educations. If you shou'd go into Greece, and, seeing the ignorance is amongst 'em at present, tell 'em their Country men were incapable of Learning, wou'd you not be very well satisfied, when they told you of the Plato's and Aristotle's of Antiquity? And that if they had not as Famous Men now, it was because they have not the same Advantages they had then? And pray why may not the Women be allow'd the same excuse? Will you by all your Laws and Customs endeavour to keep 'em ignorant, and then blame 'em for being so? And forbid all Men of Sense keeping 'em Company, as you do, and yet be angry with them for keeping Company with Fools? Consider what Time and Charge is spent to make Men fit for somewhat; Eight or Nine Years at School; Six or Seven Years at the University; Four or Five Years in Travel; and after all this, are they not almost all Fops, Clowns, Dunces, or Pedants? I know not what you think of the Women; but if they are Fools, they are Fools I am sure with less pains and less expence than we are.
[Philogynes] Upon second thoughts I hope, Sir, you will allow, that Women may have Wit and Learning; for their Courage and Conduct we may possibly say more anon. But for Heaven's sake, do not aggravate their faults always at that rate; for whatever Sappho's Life and Conversation were, there is nothing in her Writings, but what represents the most tender, and delicate passion in the World: And as for Aloisia Sigaea (I give you thanks for putting me in mind of Aloisia Sigaea, who was as remarkable for her Wit and Learning as any of the other) I am very well assur'd you do not believe that infamous Book which goes under her Name, to have been written by her; all who speak of it assure us the contrary; and that she was so far from writing it, that she never publish'd any thing; On the other side, all Historians represent her as remarkable for her Vertue, as her Learning. For the Queen of Sheba, there is no mention in Scripture of her Travelling for any thing but to be satisfied with the wisdom of Solomon; however, if you will believe she went to him, for the same reason that Thalestris did to Alexander the Great; it was no such great matter, in Countreys where it was thought no Sin, if the one had a mind to have a Child by the wisest man in the world, and the other by the bravest. After all, we must own if there are lewd Women, they endeavour to conceal their lewdness they do not brag of it, nor flye openly in the face of Religion; and if they once come to be publickly discover'd, they are render'd infamous to all the World, and their nearest Friends and Relations avoid their company: Whilst there are several Men who boast of their iniquities, value themselves upon their being thought lewd, and what is worse, find others to value 'em upon it too; nay by their incitements and encouragements to wickedness, often bring themselves to that pass, that the least part of the Sins they are to answer for, are what they have committed themselves But not a word more I beseech you of Sappho, nor her new Crime, let Lucian be forgotten for putting us in mind of it, and let it be Cloister'd up within the walls of a Turk∣ish Seraglio; I speak not this in behalf of the Female Sex, but of our own; for if they shou'd once hear of this Argument, and fall upon us with Socrates, Plato, and all those Heroes of Antiquity, whom Plutarch and Lucian produce in defence of a like Sin in our Sex; shou'd they mention Anacreon, Tibullus, Martial, and all those Poets who have eterniz'd their Infamy in their writings; and after that shew you what progresses this Crime has made, not only in the Turk's Dominion, but even in Spain and Italy, I am sure, Sir, you wou'd wish you had said nothing of a point, that may be so severely made use of against our selves.
[Philogynes] Now tho' you are pleas'd to quote the Lampoons, yet you think as well as I that such things are not worth any bodies taking notice of; we both know there are a sort of people about this Town, who please themselves with Defamations; One of these, if they see a Man speak to a Woman, make their little signs, their politick winks, and possibly when they meet him, in their insipid way of Rallery, tax him with it: If he is angry at 'em, then he is pique'd, and afraid the Intrigue shou'd be found out; If he says nothing (as it deserves nothing) then he is out of Countenance and cannot say a word; and if he laughs at 'em (which is all the answer a man wou'd make to such stuff) then he is pleas'd with the thing; so that every way the poor Ladies Reputation suffers; and these Sparks shall not fail to blow it about Town, that there is an Amour; not that they think so of you, but that you may return the Complement, and say so of them, when they speak to any Lady themselves.
After what has begun to feel like the formulaic repetition of male reports of women in Ottoman society, Lady Mary Whortley Montagu feels like a breath of fresh air. At the same time, we should also keep in mind that her accounts are in the form of letters written to friends and contacts back in England--both men and women. To what extent might she have felt constrained by cultural taboos on what women were supposed to express in writing? Is there any indication that she might have treated the material differently depending on whether her correspondent was male or female? While male authors didn't hesitate to speak openly and negatively about sex between women, Montagu expresses very positive opinions of the women she interacted with. Might that have affected how she treated the subject of sexuality? In one letter she seems to defend Ottoman women against the suspicion of sexual activity in the baths, but in another she hints strongly at feeling (or at least acknowledging) the erotic potential of the dances women performed for each other in private.
Montague, Mary Wortley. 1763. Letters of the Right Honourable Lady M—y W—y M——e: Written during her Travels in Europe, Asia, and Africa. T. Becket and P.A. DeHondt, in the Strand.
This post is part of a series of primary source materials illustrating how Europeans perceived, reported, and discussed female homoeroticism in the Ottoman Empire during the 16th to early 18th centuries. I’ll give a larger context for why this is a period of interest for European interactions with a non-European, non-Christian culture that could not be dismissed easily as not being of equal power an importance to their own. Attitudes toward, and practice of homosexuality was far from the most noteworthy difference that these reports covered, but it’s the one of interest to us within the scope of this Project. I’ll be presenting the descriptions from ambassadors, travelers, and others in chronological order of their time spent in Constantinople and other key cities, followed by some additional primary sources that show how the echos of these interactions became part of European myths about lesbianism.
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Mary Wortley Montagu was the wife of the British ambassador to the Ottoman Empire in the early 18th century and spent two years accompanying him to Constantinople. During those travels, she corresponded regularly with a number of people, describing her experiences and observations. Much of that correspondence was later published as The Turkish Embassy Letters (initial publication title: Letters of the Right Honourable Lady M—y W—y M——e: Written during her Travels in Europe, Asia, and Africa).
Unlike the male authors of observations on Ottoman society in the 16-17th centuries, Montagu had access to segregated women’s spaces and—as a high-status guest—social access to women of the upper classes, including a visit to the women's baths. Her account does not include any salacious descriptions of overt lesbianism, though she does regularly express appreciation for the beauty and sensuality of the women she interacted with. There is, perhaps, a shift in approach between where she describes women as being entirely naked in the baths, but “there was not the least wanton smile or immodest gesture amongst them,” and a passage describing being entertained by a noblewoman whose daughters danced to entertain them. “This dance was very different from what I had seen before. Nothing could be more artful, or more proper to raise certain ideas. The tunes so soft!—the motions so languishing!—accompanied with pauses and dying eyes! half-falling back, and then recovering themselves in so artful a manner, that I am very positive, the coldest and most rigid prude upon earth, could not have looked upon them without thinking of something not to be spoke of.” The phrase “not to be spoke of” evokes the regular theme that same-sex desire is something “unspeakable” in the sense of something one is not supposed to talk about. So I don’t think it is at all a stretch to consider this passage to be directly (if obliquely) raising the question of lesbian desire and indicating that Montagu as not impervious to that desire.
I have included extensive quotations from letters describing women’s lives and experiences that Montagu had access to, in order to provide a counterpoint to the male-authored accounts from the previous century. To be clear, we should not assume that Ottoman culture was static and unchanging, and Montagu’s time in Adrianople and Constantinople was a century and a half later than Nicolay’s. But Montagu is our most accessible window on female Ottoman culture that is not by necessity filtered through several layers of male reportage. Since I’ve been adding in interesting trivia about other authors in this series, I’ll note that Montagu encountered an early version of smallpox inoculation in Turkey and helped introduce it into English practice
I’ve found conflicting information on the publication history of Montagu’s Turkish letters. Some sources claim the first published edition was in 1790, however while I was looking for online editions, Archive.org had a 3-volume set published in 1763, titled Letters of the Right Honourable Lady M—y W—y M——e: Written during her Travels in Europe, Asia, and Africa (T. Becket and P.A. DeHondt, in the Strand). (See link for the 1st volume—the others are linked to it.) Since sources note that she intended the letters to be published after her death, which was in 1762, presumably this is the earliest edition. It’s interesting to note that the collection has a preface dated 1724, half a dozen years after her return to England. I don’t know whether this indicates that she was already planning for the publication at that time. I’ve primarily used the 1790 edition available from Gutenberg.org because it’s already been transcribed and proofed, however I’ve amended one key word from the 1763 edition as discussed below. I’ve quoted fairly extensively from those letters that talk about women’s lives and experiences, as well as ones where she explicitly debunks popular beliefs about Ottoman society. Text that is in italics in the original is underlined here.
The excerpts included below are:
This is one of the letters often quoted to contrast with the reports of male authors on women’s baths in Turkey. This occurs somewhat early in her travels before reaching Constantinople. Adrianople is modern Edirne and is located very close to the border intersection between Turkey, Bulgaria, and Greece.
LET. XXVI.
TO THE LADY ——.
Adrianople, April 1. O. S. 1717.
I AM now got into a new world, where every thing I see appears to me a change of scene; and I write to your ladyship with some content of mind, hoping, at least, that you will find the charms of novelty in my letters, and no longer reproach me, that I tell you nothing extraordinary. I won't trouble you with a relation of our tedious journey; but must not omit what I saw remarkable at Sophia, one of the most beautiful towns in the Turkish empire, and famous for its hot baths, that are resorted to both for diversion and health. I stopped here one day, on purpose to see them; and, designing to go incognito, I hired a Turkish coach. These voitures are not at all like ours, but much more convenient for the country, the heat being so great, that glasses would be very troublesome. They are made a good deal in the manner of the Dutch stage-coaches, having wooden lattices painted and gilded; the inside being also painted with baskets and nosegays of flowers, intermixed commonly with little poetical mottos. They are covered all over with scarlet cloth, lined with silk, and very often richly embroidered and fringed. This covering entirely hides the persons in them, but may be thrown back at pleasure, and thus permits the ladies to peep through the lattices. They hold four people very conveniently, seated on cushions, but not raised.
IN one of these covered waggons (sic), I went to the bagnio about ten o'clock. It was already full of women. It is built of stone, in the shape of a dome, with no windows but in the roof, which gives light enough. There were five of these domes joined together, the outmost being less than the rest, and serving only as a hall, where the portress stood at the door. Ladies of quality generally give this woman a crown or ten shillings; and I did not forget that ceremony. The next room is a very large one paved with marble, and all round it are two raised sofas of marble, one above another. There were four fountains of cold water in this room, falling first into marble basons (sic), and then running on the floor in little channels made for that purpose, which carried the streams into the next room, something less than this, with the same sort of marble sofas, but so hot with steams of sulphur proceeding from the baths joining to it, 'twas impossible to stay there with one's cloaths (sic) on. The two other domes were the hot baths, one of which had cocks of cold water turning into it, to temper it to what degree of warmth the bathers pleased to have.
I WAS in my travelling habit, which is a riding dress, and certainly appeared very extraordinary to them. Yet there was not one of them that shewed the least surprise or impertinent curiosity, but received me with all the obliging civility possible. I know no European court, where the ladies would have behaved themselves in so polite a manner to such a stranger. I believe, upon the whole, there were two hundred women, and yet none of those disdainful smiles, and satirical whispers, that never fail in our assemblies, when any body appears that is not dressed exactly in the fashion. They repeated over and over to me; "UZELLE, PEK UZELLE," which is nothing but, Charming, very Charming.—The first sofas were covered with cushions and rich carpets, on which sat the ladies; and on the second, their slaves behind them, but without any distinction of rank by their dress, all being in the state of nature, that is, in plain English, stark naked, without any beauty or defect concealed. Yet there was not the least wanton smile or immodest gesture amongst them. They walked and moved with the same majestic grace, which Milton describes our general mother with. There were many amongst them, as exactly proportioned as ever any goddess was drawn by the pencil of a Guido or Titian,—and most of their skins shiningly white, only adorned by their beautiful hair divided into many tresses, hanging on their shoulders, braided either with pearl or ribbon, perfectly representing the figures of the Graces.
I WAS here convinced of the truth of a reflection I have often made, That if it were the fashion to go naked, the face would be hardly observed. I perceived, that the ladies of the most delicate skins and finest shapes had the greatest share of my admiration, though their faces were sometimes less beautiful than those of their companions. To tell you the truth, I had wickedness enough, to wish secretly, that Mr Gervais could have been there invisible. I fancy it would have very much improved his art, to see so many fine women naked, in different postures, some in conversation, some working, others drinking coffee or sherbet, and many negligently lying on their cushions, while their slaves (generally pretty girls of seventeen or eighteen) were employed in braiding their hair in several pretty fancies. In short, 'tis the women's coffee-house, where all the news of the town is told, scandal invented, &c.—They generally take this diversion once a-week (sic), and stay there at least four or five hours, without getting cold by immediate coming out of the hot bath into the cold room, which was very surprising to me. The lady, that seemed the most considerable among them, entreated me to sit by her, and would fain have undressed me for the bath. I excused myself with some difficulty. They being however all so earnest in persuading me, I was at last forced to open my shirt, and shew them my stays; which satisfied them very well; for, I saw, they believed I was locked up in that machine, and 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, and should have been very glad to pass more time with them; but Mr W—— resolving to pursue his journey next morning early, I was in haste to see the ruins of Justinian's church, which did not afford me so agreeable a prospect as I had left, being little more than a heap Of stones.
ADIEU, madam, I am sure I have now entertained you with an account of such a sight as you never saw in your life, and what no book of travels could inform you of, as 'tis no less than death for a man to be found in one of these places.
…
Taking into account that the women Montagu is meeting and speaking of are neither the women of the sultan’s immediate household, nor women of the lower classes, we are given some rather different angles on the social and economic power of women, at least within their own households.
LET. XXIX.
TO THE COUNTESS OF ——.
Adrianople, April. 1. O. S. 1717.
…
AS to their morality or good conduct, I can say, like Harlequin, that 'tis just as 'tis with you; and the Turkish ladies don't commit one sin the less for not being Christians. Now, that I am a little acquainted with their ways, I cannot forbear admiring, either the exemplary discretion, or extreme stupidity of all the writers that have given accounts of them. 'Tis very easy to see, they have in reality more liberty than we have. No woman, of what rank soever, is permitted to go into the streets without two murlins, one that covers her face all but her eyes, and another, that hides the whole dress of her head, and hangs half way down her back. Their shapes are also wholely (sic) concealed, by a thing they call a serigee, which no woman of any sort appears without; this has strait sleeves, that reach to their fingers-ends, and it laps all round them, not unlike a riding-hood. In winter, 'tis of cloth; and in summer, of plain stuff or silk. You may guess then, how effectually this disguises them, so that there is no distinguishing the great lady from her slave. 'Tis impossible for the most jealous husband to know his wife, when he meets her; and no man dare touch or follow a woman in the street.
THIS perpetual masquerade gives them entire liberty of following their inclinations, without danger of discovery. The most usual method of intrigue, is, to send an appointment to the lover to meet the lady at a Jew's shop, which are as notoriously convenient as our Indian-houses; and yet, even those who don't make use of them, do not scruple to go to buy pennyworths, and tumble over rich goods, which are chiefly to be found amongst that sort of people. The great ladies seldom let their gallants know who they are; and 'tis so difficult to find it out, that they can very seldom guess at her name, whom they have corresponded with for above half a year together. You may easily imagine the number of faithful wives very small in a country where they have nothing to fear from a lover's indiscretion, since we see so many have the courage to expose themselves to that in this world, and all the threatened punishment of the next, which is never preached to the Turkish damsels. Neither have they much to apprehend from the resentment of their husbands; those ladies that are rich, having all their money in their own hands. Upon the whole, I look upon the Turkish women, as the only free people in the empire; the very divan pays respect to them; and the grand signior himself, when a bassa is executed, never violates the privileges of the haram, (or womens apartment) which remains unsearched and entire to the widow. They are queens of their slaves, whom the husband has no permission so much as to look upon, except it be an old woman or two that his lady chuses. 'Tis true, their law permits them four wives; but there is no instance of a man of quality that makes use of this liberty, or of a woman of rank that would suffer it. When a husband happens to be inconstant, (as those things will happen) he keeps his mistress in a house apart, and visits her as privately as he can, just as it is with you. Amongst all the great men here, I only know the testerdar, (i.e. a treasurer) that keeps a number of she slaves, for his own use, (that is, on his own side of the house; for a slave once given to serve a lady, is entirely at her disposal) and he is spoke of as a libertine, or what we should call a rake, and his wife won't see him, though she continues to live in his house. Thus you see, dear sister, the manners of mankind do not differ so Widely, as our voyage-writers would make us believe. Perhaps, it would be more entertaining to add a few surprising customs of my own invention; but nothing seems to me so agreeable as truth, and I believe nothing so acceptable to you. I conclude therefore with repeating the great truth of my being, Dear sister, &c.
In this next letter, we get some very detailed descriptions of being entertained within the private women’s quarters of two upper-class women. This letter includes the closest Montagu gets to discussing female same-sex desire.
LET. XXXIII.
TO THE COUNTESS OF ——.
Adrianopolis, April 18. O. S.
I WROTE to you, dear sister, and to all my other English correspondents, by the last ship, and only Heaven can tell, when I shall have another opportunity of sending to you; but I cannot forbear to write again, though perhaps my letter may ly upon my hands this two months. To confess the truth, my head is so full of my entertainment yesterday, that 'tis absolutely necessary, for my own repose, to give it some vent. Without farther preface, I will then begin my story.
I WAS invited to dine with the grand vizier's lady, and it was with a great deal of pleasure I prepared myself for an entertainment, which was never before given to any Christian. I thought I should very little satisfy her curiosity, (which I did not doubt was a considerable motive to the invitation) by going in a dress she was used to see, and therefore dressed myself in the court habit of Vienna, which is much more magnificent than ours. However, I chose to go incognito, to avoid any disputes about ceremony, and went in a Turkish coach, only attended by my woman, that held up my train, and the Greek lady, who was my interpretess. I was met at the court door by her black eunuch, who helped me out of the coach with great respect, and conducted me through several rooms, where her she-slaves, finely dressed, were ranged on each side. In the innermost, I found the lady sitting on her sofa, in a sable vest. She advanced to meet me, and presented me half a dozen of her friends, with great civility. She seemed a very good woman, near fifty years old. I was surprised to observe so little magnificence in her house, the furniture being all very moderate; and, except the habits and number of her slaves, nothing about her appeared expensive. She guessed at my thoughts, and told me she was no longer of an age to spend either her time or money in superfluities; that her whole expence was in charity, and her whole employment praying to God. There was no affectation in this speech; both she and her husband are entirely given up to devotion. He never looks upon any other woman; and, what is much more extraordinary, touches no bribes, notwithstanding the example of all his predecessors. He is so scrupulous on this point, he would not accept Mr W——'s present, till he had been assured over and over, that it was a settled perquisite Of his place, at the entrance of every ambassador. She entertained me with all kind of civility, till dinner came in, which was served, one dish at a time, to a vast number, all finely dressed after their manner, which I don't think so bad as you have perhaps heard it represented. I am a very good judge of their eating, having lived three weeks in the house of an effendi at Belgrade, who gave us very magnificent dinners, dressed by his own cooks. The first week they pleased me extremely; but, I own, I then began to grow weary of their table, and desired our own cook might add a dish or two after our manner. But I attribute this to custom, and am very much inclined to believe, that an Indian, who had never tasted of either, would prefer their cookery to ours. Their sauces are very high, all the roast very much done. They use a great deal of very rich spice. The soup is served for the last dish; and they have, at least, as great a variety of ragouts as we have. I was very sorry I could not eat of as many as the good lady would have had me, who was very earnest in serving me of every thing. The treat concluded with coffee and perfumes, which is a high mark of respect; two slaves kneeling censed my hair, clothes, and handkerchief. After this ceremony, she commanded her slaves to play and dance, which they did with their guitars in their hands, and she excused to me their want of skill, saying she took no care to accomplish them in that art.
I RETURNED her thanks, and, soon after, took my leave. I was conducted back in the same manner I entered, and would have gone straight to my own house; but the Greek lady with me, earnestly solicited me to visit the kahya's lady, saying, he was the second officer in the empire, and ought indeed to be looked upon as the first, the grand vizier having only the name, while he exercised the authority. I had found so little diversion in the vizier's haram, that I had no mind to go into another. But her importunity prevailed with me, and I am extremely glad I was so complaisant. All things here were with quite another air than at the grand vizier's; and the very house confessed the difference between an old devotee, and a young beauty. It was nicely clean and magnificent. I was met at the door by two black eunuchs, who led me through a long gallery, between two ranks of beautiful young girls, with their hair finely plaited, almost hanging to their feet, all dressed in fine light damasks, brocaded with silver. I was sorry that decency did not permit me to stop to consider them nearer. But that thought was lost upon my entrance into a large room, or rather pavilion, built round with gilded sashes, which were most of them thrown up, and the trees planted near them gave an agreeable shade, which hindered the sun from being troublesome. The jessamines and honey-suckles that twisted round their trunks, shed a soft perfume, increased by a white marble fountain playing sweet water in the lower part of the room, which fell into three or four basins, with a pleasing sound. The roof was painted with all sorts of flowers, falling out of gilded baskets, that seemed tumbling down. On a sofa, raised three steps, and covered with fine Persian carpets, sat the kahya's lady, leaning on cushions of white sattin, embroidered; and at her feet sat two young girls about twelve years old, lovely as angels, dressed perfectly rich, and almost covered with jewels. But they were hardly seen near the fair Fatima, (for that is her name) so much her beauty effaced every thing I have seen, nay, all that has been called lovely either in England or Germany. I must own, that I never saw any thing so gloriously beautiful, nor can I recollect a face that would have been taken notice of near hers. She stood up to receive me, saluting me after their fashion, putting her hand to her heart with a sweetness full of majesty, that no court breeding could ever give. She ordered cushions to be given me, and took care to place me in the corner, which is the place of honour. I confess, though the Greek lady had before given me a great opinion of her beauty, I was so struck with admiration, that I could not, for some time, speak to her, being wholly taken up in gazing. That surprising harmony of features! that charming result of the whole! that exact proportion of body! that lovely bloom of complexion unsullied by art! the unutterable enchantment of her smile!—But her eyes!—large and black, with all the soft languishment of the blue! every turn of her face discovering some new grace.
AFTER my first surprise was over, I endeavoured, by nicely examining her face, to find out some imperfection, without any fruit of my search, but my being clearly convinced of the error of that vulgar notion, that a face exactly proportioned, and perfectly beautiful, would not be agreeable; nature having done for her, with more success, what Appelles is said to have essayed, by a collection of the most exact features, to form a perfect face. Add to all this, a behaviour so full of grace and sweetness, such easy motions, with an air so majestic, yet free from stiffness or affectation, that I am persuaded, could she be suddenly transported upon the most polite throne of Europe, no body would think her other than born and bred to be a queen, though educated in a country we call barbarous. To say all in a word, our most celebrated English beauties would vanish near her.
SHE was dressed in a caftan of gold brocade, flowered with silver, very well fitted to her shape, and shewing to admiration the beauty of her bosom, only shaded by the thin gauze of her shift. Her drawers were pale pink, her waistcoat green and silver, her slippers white sattin, finely embroidered: her lovely arms adorned with bracelets of diamonds, and her broad girdle set round with diamonds; upon her head a rich Turkish handkerchief of pink and silver, her own fine black hair hanging a great length, in various tresses, and on one side of her head some bodkins of jewels. I am afraid you will accuse me of extravagance in this description. I think I have read somewhere, that women always speak in rapture when they speak of beauty, and I cannot imagine why they should not be allowed to do so. I rather think it a virtue to be able to admire without any mixture of desire or envy. The gravest writers have spoken with great warmth, of some celebrated pictures and statues. The workmanship of Heaven, certainly excels all our weak imitations, and, I think, has a much better claim to our praise. For my part, I am not ashamed to own, I took more pleasure in looking on the beauteous Fatima, than the finest piece of sculpture could have given me. She told me, the two girls at her feet were her daughters, though she appeared too young to be their mother. Her fair maids were ranged below the sofa, to the number of twenty, and put me in mind of the pictures of the ancient nymphs. I did not think all nature could have furnished such a scene of beauty. She made them a sign to play and dance. Four of them immediately began to play some soft airs on instruments, between a lute and a guitar, which they accompanied with their voices, while the others danced by turns. This dance was very different from what I had seen before. Nothing could be more artful, or more proper to raise certain ideas. The tunes so soft!—the motions so languishing!—accompanied with pauses and dying eyes! half-falling back, and then recovering themselves in so artful a manner, that I am very positive, the coldest and most rigid prude [see note] upon earth, could not have looked upon them without thinking of something not to be spoke of.—I suppose you may have read that the Turks have no music, but what is shocking to the ears; but this account is from those who never heard any but what is played in the streets, and is just as reasonable, as if a foreigner should take his ideas of English music, from the bladder and string, or the marrow-bones and cleavers. I can assure you that the music is extremely pathetic; 'tis true, I am inclined to prefer the Italian, but perhaps I am partial. I am acquainted with a Greek lady who sings better than Mrs Robinson, and is very well skilled in both, who gives the preference to the Turkish. 'Tis certain they have very fine natural voices; these were very agreeable. When the dance was over, four fair slaves came into the room, with silver censers in their hands, and perfumed the air with amber, aloes-wood, and other scents. After this, they served me coffee upon their knees, in the finest japan china, with soucoups of silver, gilt. The lovely Fatima entertained me, all this while, in the most polite agreeable manner, calling me often uzelle sultanam, or the beautiful sultana; and desiring my friendship with the best grace in the world, lamenting that she could not entertain me in my own language.
WHEN I took my leave, two maids brought in a fine silver basket of embroidered handkerchiefs; she begged I would wear the richest for her sake, and gave the others to my woman and interpretess.—I retired through the same ceremonies as before, and could not help thinking, I had been some time in Mahomet's paradise; so much was I charmed with what I had seen. I know not how the relation of it appears to you. I wish it may give you part of my pleasure; for I would have my dear sister share in all the diversions of, Yours,&c.
[Note: The 1790 edition, which is what Gutenberg.org used, has this word as “pride”, however despite what some sources indicate, this is not the earliest edition. Archive.org has volumes from a 1763 edition where the word is clearly “prude” [https://archive.org/details/bim_eighteenth-century_letters-of-the-right-hon_montagu-mary-wortley-l_1763_2_0/page/n95/mode/2up] which puts a very different spin on the comment, and this appears to be the “approved” reading in modern editions, so I have substituted it.
Montagu is rather sharp in several of her letters in pointing out what she believes to be myths and errors about Turkish society. I haven’t been able to identify who the “Dumont” is that she refers to.
LET. XXXVII.
TO THE LADY ——.
Belgrade Village, June 17 O. S.
…
Your whole letter is full of mistakes, from one end to the other. I see you have taken your ideas of Turkey, from that worthy author Dumont, who has wrote with equal ignorance and confidence. 'Tis a particular pleasure to me here, to read the voyages to the Levant, which are generally so far removed from truth, and so full of absurdities, I am very well diverted with them. They never fail giving you an account of the women, whom, 'tis certain, they never saw, and talking very wisely of the genius of the men, into whose company they are never admitted; and very often describe mosques, which they dare not even peep into. The Turks are very proud, and will not converse with a stranger they are not assured is considerable in his own country. I speak of the men of distinction; for, as to the ordinary fellows, you may imagine what ideas their conversation can give of the general genius of the people.
….
Also in the vein of debunking information she considers to be false or misleading, Montagu had occasion to meet a former Sultana and specifically asked about several stories in circulation about practices within the Sultan’s seraglio.
LET. XXXIX.
TO THE COUNTESS OF ——.
Pera of Constantinople, March 10. O. S.
…
THE sultana seemed in a very good humour, and talked to me with the utmost civility. I did not omit this opportunity of learning all that I possibly could of the seraglio, which is so entirely unknown amongst us. She assured me, that the story of the sultan's throwing a handkerchief, is altogether fabulous; and the manner, upon that occasion, no other than this: He sends the kyslir aga, to signify to the lady the honour he intends her. She is immediately complimented upon it, by the others, and led to the bath, where she is perfumed and dressed in the most magnificent and becoming manner. The emperor precedes his visit by a royal present, and then comes into her apartment: neither is there any such thing as her creeping in at the bed's foot. She said, that the first he made choice of was always after the first in rank, and not the mother of the eldest son, as other writers would make us believe. Sometimes the sultan diverts himself in the company of all his ladies, who stand in a circle round him. And she confessed, they were ready to die with envy and jealousy of the happy she that he distinguished by any appearance of preference. But this seemed to me neither better nor worse than the circles in most courts, where the glance of the monarch is watched, and every smile is waited for with impatience, and envied by those who cannot obtain it.
…
This, you will say, is but too like the Arabian tales.—These embroidered napkins! and a jewel as large as a turkey's egg!—You forget, dear sister, those very tales were written by an author of this country, and (excepting the enchantments) are a real representation of the manners here. We travellers are in very hard circumstances: If we say nothing but what has been said before us, we are dull, and we have observed nothing. If we tell any thing new, we are laughed at as fabulous and romantic, not allowing either for the difference of ranks, which affords difference of company, or more curiosity, or the change of customs, that happen every twenty years in every country. But the truth is, people judge of travellers, exactly with the same candour, good nature, and impartiality, they judge of their neighbours upon all occasions. For my part, if I live to return amongst you, I am so well acquainted with the morals of all my dear friends and acquaintances, that I am resolved to tell them nothing at all, to avoid the imputation (which their charity would certainly incline them to) of my telling too much. But I depend upon your knowing me enough, to believe whatever I seriously assert for truth; though I give you leave to be surprised at an account so new to you. But what would you say if I told you, that I have been in a haram, where the winter apartment was wainscoted (sic) with inlaid work of mother of pearl, ivory of different colours, and olive wood, exactly like the little boxes you have seen brought Out of this country; and in whose rooms designed for summer, the walls are all crusted with japan china, the roofs gilt, and the floors spread with the finest Persian carpets? Yet there is nothing more true; such is the palace of my lovely friend, the fair Fatima, whom I was acquainted with at Adrianople. I went to visit her yesterday; and, if possible, she appeared to me handsomer than before. She met me at the door of her chamber, and, giving me her hand With the best grace in the world; You Christian ladies (said she, with a smile that made her as beautiful as an angel) have the reputation of inconstancy, and I did not expect, whatever goodness you expressed for me at Adrianople, that I should ever see you again. But I am now convinced that I have really the happiness of pleasing you; and, if you knew how I speak of you amongst our ladies, you would be assured, that you do me justice in making me your friend. She placed me in the corner of the sofa, and I spent the afternoon in her conversation, with the greatest pleasure in the world.—The sultana Hafiten is, what one Would naturally expect to find a Turkish lady, willing to oblige, but not knowing how to go about it; and 'tis easy to see, in her manner, that she has lived excluded from the world. But Fatima has all the politeness and good breeding of a court, with an air that inspires, at once, respect and tenderness; and now, that I understand her language, I find her wit as agreeable as her beauty. She is very carious after the manners of other countries, and has not the partiality for her own, so common in little minds. A Greek that I carried with me, who had never seen her before, (nor could have been admitted now, if she had not been in my train,) shewed that surprise at her beauty and manners, which is unavoidable at the first sight, and said to me in Italian,—This is no Turkish lady, she is certainly some Christian.—Fatima guessed she spoke of her, and asked what she said. I would not have told her, thinking she would have been no better pleased with the compliment, than one of our court beauties to be told she had the air of a Turk; but the Greek lady told it to her; and she smiled, saying, It is not the first time I have heard so: my mother was a Poloneze, taken at the siege of Caminiec; and my father used to rally me, saying, He believed his Christian wife had found some gallant; for that I had not the air of a Turkish girl.—I assured her, that if all the Turkish ladies were like her, it was absolute necessary to confine them from public view, for the repose of mankind; and proceeded to tell her, what a noise such a face as hers would make in London or Paris. I can't believe you, replied she agreeably; if beauty was so much valued in your country, as you say, they would never have suffered you to leave it.—Perhaps, dear sister, you laugh at my vanity in repeating this compliment; but I only do it, as I think it very well turned, and give it you as an instance of the spirit of her conversation. Her house was magnificently furnished, and very well fancied; her winter rooms being furnished with figured velvet, on gold grounds, and those for summer, with fine Indian quilting embroidered with gold. The houses of the great Turkish ladies are kept clean with as much nicety as those in Holland. This was situated in a high part of the town; and from the window of her summer apartment, we had the prospect of the sea, the islands, and the Asian mountains.—My letter is insensibly grown so long, I am ashamed of it. This is a very bad symptom. 'Tis well if I don't degenerate into a downright story-teller. It may be, our proverb, that knowledge is no burden, may be true, as to one's self but knowing too much, is very apt to make us troublesome to other people. I am, &c, &c.
In this final excerpt, Montagu once again tackles debunking what she considers myths about the condition of Turkish women.
LET. XLII.
TO THE COUNTESS OF ——.
…
I will not tell you what you may find in every author that has writ of this country. I am more inclined, out of a true female spirit of contradiction, to tell you the falsehood of a great part of what you find in authors; as, for instance, in the admirable Mr Hill, who so gravely asserts, that he saw, in Sancta Sophia, a sweating pillar, very balsamic for disordered heads. There is not the least tradition of any such matter; and I suppose it was revealed to him in vision, during his wonderful stay in the Egyptian catacombs; for I am sure he never heard of any such miracle here. 'Tis also very pleasant to observe how tenderly he and all his brethren voyage-writers lament the miserable confinement of the Turkish ladies, who are perhaps more free than any ladies in the universe, and are the only women in the world that lead a life of uninterrupted pleasure, exempt from cares; their whole time being spent in visiting, bathing, or the agreeable amusement of spending money, and inventing new fashions. A husband would be thought mad, that exacted any degree of economy from his wife, whose expences are no way limited but by her own fancy. 'Tis his business to get money, and hers to spend it: and this noble prerogative extends itself to the very meanest of the sex. Here is a fellow that carries embroidered handkerchiefs upon his back to sell. And as miserable a figure as you may suppose such a mean dealer, yet, I'll assure you, his wife scorns to wear any thing less than cloth of gold; has her ermine furs, and a very handsome set of jewels for her head. 'Tis true, they have no places but the bagnios, and these can only be seen by their own sex; however, that is a diversion they take great pleasure in.
…
As we move towards a consideration of how certain motifs entered popular culture in western Europe, we need to start taking note of repeating anecdotes and descriptions. These anecdotes might be repeated in multiple accounts because they reflected factual observations. But they might instead represent the recycling of material by authors who wanted to add more colorful specifics to their own accounts. Given that the bulk of Tavernier's discussion of lesbianism in Ottoman culture takes the form of highly specific anecdotes that we have encountered earlier by other authors (Busbecq for the old woman who fell in love at the baths, and Bon for the cucumber story) the simplest explanation is that Taverner is recycling other authors' texts, even when he contradicts their truthfulness (as with the cucumber anecdote). Does this mean that he offers no actual independent support for the prevalence of lesbian activity? That question could be asked of many of these authors, given their lack of access to firsthand knowledge.
Tavernier, Jean-Baptiste. 1675. Nouvelle Relation De l’intéreur Du Sérail Du Grand Seigneur Contenant Plusieurs Singularitex Qui Jusqu’icy N’ont Point esté mises En Lumiere. Translated into English by J. Phillips as: A New Relation Of The Inner-Part of The Grand Seignor’s Seraglio, Containing Several Remarkable Particulars, Never Before Expos’d To Public View bound with A Short Description of all the Kingdoms Which Encompas the Euxine and Caspian Seas, Delivered by the author after Twenty Years Travel Together with a Preface Containing Several Remarkable Observations concerning divers of the forementioned countries. 1677. R. L. and Moses Pitt.
This post is part of a series of primary source materials illustrating how Europeans perceived, reported, and discussed female homoeroticism in the Ottoman Empire during the 16th to early 18th centuries. I’ll give a larger context for why this is a period of interest for European interactions with a non-European, non-Christian culture that could not be dismissed easily as not being of equal power an importance to their own. Attitudes toward, and practice of homosexuality was far from the most noteworthy difference that these reports covered, but it’s the one of interest to us within the scope of this Project. I’ll be presenting the descriptions from ambassadors, travelers, and others in chronological order of their time spent in Constantinople and other key cities, followed by some additional primary sources that show how the echos of these interactions became part of European myths about lesbianism.
Jean-Baptiste Tavernier was a French gem merchant and traveller in the 17th century. He traveled extensively for business to Persia and India, making six voyages between 1630-1668. At the request of King Louis XIV of France, in 1675 he wrote up his experiences as Les Six Voyages de Jean-Baptiste Tavernier. While, no doubt, much of Tavernier’s descriptions were based on first-hand experience, his Voyages includes accounts of Japan and Tongking, which he never visited personally, based on second-hand information. Among the trivia of Tavernier’s biography was the acquisition of the “Taverier Blue” diamond that at a later date (and a couple of re-cuttings) was re-named the Hope Diamond.
But our interest falls on a different publication the same year, based on the two visits he made to Constantinople during his first and sixth voyages: Nouvelle Relation De l’intéreur Du Sérail Du Grand Seigneur Contenant Plusieurs Singularitex Qui Jusqu’icy N’ont Point esté mises En Lumiere. Chez Gervais Clouzier, 1st ed. Paris, 7 February 1675. The general fascination with accounts of the Ottoman Empire can be seen in how quickly the work was translated into English by J. Phillips: A New Relation Of The Inner-Part of The Grand Seignor’s Seraglio, Containing Several Remarkable Particulars, Never Before Expos’d To Public View bound with A Short Description of all the Kingdoms Which Encompas the Euxine and Caspian Seas, Delivered by the author after Twenty Years Travel Together with a Preface Containing Several Remarkable Observations concerning divers of the forementioned countries. 1st English Edition, R. L. and Moses Pitt, 1677. The text I used is from a 1678 reprinting of the English translation, which is available at Archive.org.
Excerpts from Tavernier’s account are discussed in Traub 2002 and Donoghue 1995 (who quotes a 1684 edition).
The excerpts included below are:
Tavernier provides a detailed description of the household of the Grand Seraglio, with all the various functions, officers, and activities. Within this, chapter 17 (p.619 of the Archive.org pdf) concerns the women’s quarters. He also extensively describes male homoerotic activity within the court, noting that it is regulated for those of lesser status as part of general controls on behavior. It is telling that Tavernier explains how even his primary contact for information about the Seraglio (which can refer to the entire palace, not necessarily specifically the women’s quarters) “could give me no certain information of [the women’s] quarter of it.” Which necessarily raises doubts about how accurate the information he provides can be. In this context, it’s noteworthy that the two specific references he makes to lesbian activity are echoes of anecdotes previously published by others.
I Make a Chapter by it self of the Appartment of the Women, only to entertain the Reader, with the impossibility there is, of having a perfect knowledg of it, or getting any exact account, either what the accommodations of it are; or how the Persons, who are confin’d therein, behave themselves. There is not in all Christendome any Monastery of Religious Virgins, how regular and austere soever it may be, the entrance whereof is more strictly forbidden to men, than is that of this Appartment of the Women: insomuch that my white Eunuch, who has supply'd me with so particular a description of the inner part of the Seraglio, could give me no certain information of this Quarter of it, where the Women are lodg'd. All I could get out of him, was, That the Doors of it are kept by Negro-Eunuchs, and that, besides the Grand Seignor himself, and sometimes, the Physician, in case of great necessity, there never enters any man into it, no nor Woman, besides those who live in it, and they are never permitted to go out of it, unless it be in order to their confinement in the Old Seraglio. But we must except, out of that number, the Sultanesses, and their Maids, or Ladies of Honour, whom the Grand Seignor allows, when he pleases, to come into the Gardens of the Seraglio, and whom he sometimes takes abroad with him, into the Country; yet so as that they cannot be seen by any person whatsoever. Four Negro-Eunuchs carry a kind of Pavilion, under which is the Sultaness, and the Horse upon which she is mounted, all save only the head of the horse, which is seen on the out-side of the Pavilion, the two fore-pieces of which, taking him about the Neck, are close fasten'd, above, and below.
Tavernier asserts that the “cucumber anecdote” that he relates is a myth, based on a misunderstanding of the usual method of serving fresh fruits. Given that his anecdote closely matches that in Ottaviano Bon, we have two possibilities. Either Tavernier has adapted Bon’s anecdote (only to contradict it) or the cucumber anecdote was a longstanding trope within Ottoman society (there being almost a century between Bon’s publication and Tavernier’s) that was related to curious travelers (regardless of whether it was believed within Ottoman society itself). In contrast to Bon, Tavernier unambiguously connects the cucumber anecdote to homosexuality, and suggests that both male and female homosexuality in Ottoman society are a consequence of the extreme gender segregation. Tavernier then relates the “old woman falling in love at the baths” anecdote, clearly identifying it as an old story from the time of Suleiman the Magnificent. As we first encountered this story from Busbecq, whose time in Constantinople was during the reign of Suleiman the Magnificent, either he is taking the story from Busbecq or the specific dating of the anecdote was part of its transmission to him. Although many specific details in Busbecq’s and Tavernier’s accounts match up, the two narratives are structured differently and Tavernier has fewer specifics. This could be consistent with oral transmission of a historic anecdote, but the exact relationship between the two accounts with regard to provenance cannot be known for certain.
Besides these things, which may be positively known, concerning the Appartment of the Women, in the Seraglio, it may well be imagined, that the embellishments of their Lodgings are answerable to those of the Grand Seignor, since it is the place where he passes away the most divertive part of his time. It is also not to be question'd, but that it has its Infirmary, its Baths, and the other accommodations and conveniences, that can be wish'd for. It may also be conjectur'd, That there is, in this Quarter, an observance of the same regulations, as there are in the Chambers of the Ichoglans: That some of the more ancient Maids are Mistresses over the Younger ones, and are, night and day employ'd in observing their actions, and that their unvoluntary restraint forces them to the same unseemly actions amongst themselves, as the brutish Passions of those Young Men engages them in, whenever they can find the opportunities to commit them. And this presumption has no doubt given occasion to the Fabulous Story, which is related of their being serv'd up with Cucumbers cut into pieces, and not entire, out of a ridiculous fear lest they should put them to undecent uses: they who have forg'd the Story not knowing, that it is the custome in the Levant, to cut the Fruit a-cross, into great thick slices, as I shall make it appear in the Chapter, where I treat of their Gardens. But it is not only in the Seraglio, that that abominable Vice reigns, but it is predominant also in the City of Constantinople, and in all the Provinces of the Empire, and the wicked Example of the Men, who, flighting the natural use of Woman-kind, are mutually enflam'd with a detestable love for one another, unfortunately enclines the Women to imitate them.
Of this, there was a strange instance in the time of Solyman the Magnificent. An old Woman was guilty of such an excess of extravagance, as to put on Man's Cloaths, and to give out, that she had bought a Chiaoux’s place, the better to compass her desire, of obtaining the only Daughter of a Trades-man of Constantinople, with whom she was desperately fallen in love, having made fruitless attempts, by other ways, to satisfie her infamous inclinations. The Father, not suspecting any thing of her wicked intentions, and being withal poor, grants her his Daughter, the Marriage is solemniz'd in the presence of the Cadi, and the imposture having been discover'd the very Wedding-night, the old woman was condemn'd the next day to be thrown into the Sea, there to quench the Gomorrhean Inflammations of her lewd desires. This Story is to this day related in Constantinople, and I have had it from several good hands.
These insatiable salaciousness amongst the Women, are the effects and conferences of the same inclinations in the Men; and the Turks are so much the more execrable and abominable as to this particular, the more they are permitted a plurality of Wives.
Given Thomas Glover's background (born and raised in Constantinople) and his multi-lingual competence, we might expect him to have a much more thorough familiarity with Ottoman Society than some of the other authors in this series. But his accounts are more terse, high-level summaries than some of the others. Perhaps, being a "local" he didn't have the same fascination and curiosity that led some of the other authors to write more extensively. His knee-jerk distaste for the idea of lesbian sex in the bath houses may well reflect a solidly western European attitude (his father was English, after all), but we can't discount the possibility that it reflects the default male attitude towards the topic in Constantinople. As Glover (along with all the other male writers) emphasizes, it isn't as if he could have direct evidence of what women were doing in the baths, so we should conclude that the topic was "common knowledge" regardless of how accurate the details were.
Glover, Thomas. 1610. The Muftie, Cadileschiers, Divans: Manners and attire of the Turkes. The Sultan described, and his Customes and Court. Included in George Sandys A Relation of a Journey begun Anno Dom. 1610 published in: Hakluytus Posthumus, or Purchas his Pilgrimes edited by Samuel Purchas (1625).
This post is part of a series of primary source materials illustrating how Europeans perceived, reported, and discussed female homoeroticism in the Ottoman Empire during the 16th to early 18th centuries. I’ll give a larger context for why this is a period of interest for European interactions with a non-European, non-Christian culture that could not be dismissed easily as not being of equal power an importance to their own. Attitudes toward, and practice of homosexuality was far from the most noteworthy difference that these reports covered, but it’s the one of interest to us within the scope of this Project. I’ll be presenting the descriptions from ambassadors, travelers, and others in chronological order of their time spent in Constantinople and other key cities, followed by some additional primary sources that show how the echos of these interactions became part of European myths about lesbianism.
Thomas Glover was born in Constantinople to an English father and Polish mother and was raised there, being fluent in Turkish, Greek, Italian, and Polish (as well as English). He served as secretary to two successive English ambassadors to Constantinople before being installed as ambassador himself in 1606. He was recalled to London in 1611 under something of a cloud, perhaps due to interceding in Moldavian royal politics, but evidently it blew over. The Wikipedia entry on him is scanty and doesn’t mention his writings.
Glover’s text is included in volume II of Purchas His Pilgrimes, published 1625, as an inclusion in an account dated 1610 by George Sandys. Glover’s text is titled, The Muftie, Cadileschiers, Divans: Manners and attire of the Turkes. The Sultan described, and his Customes and Court. Sandys’ text is an account of his travels through Europe and the Middle East beginning in 1610. Assuming the inclusion of Glover’s text in conjunction with Sandys’ is due to Sandys having acquired Glover’s description during his travels, this happened in 1610 based on an internal reference in Glover’s text. But without additional research, I can’t be certain that the conjunction of these two texts isn’t an editorial decision by Purchas. On the other hand, given that The Muftie… is a sort of “introduction to Ottoman government and society” it might well be the sort of thing written to help a visiting English traveler. (Purchas His Pilgrimes is an extensive four-volume collection of travel writing, edited by Samuel Purchas and titled Hakluytus Posthumus, or Purchas his Pilgrimes. The reference to Hakluyt points to Richard Hakluyt's Principal Navigations and Purchas’s collection was partly based on manuscripts left by Hakluyt, who had died in 1616. My text is taken from a copy of Purchas at Archive.org where it appears in volume 8, Chapter X (p.304ff).
There is a second text by Glover in the same volume titled, The Journey of Edward Barton Esquire, her Majesties Ambassador with the Grand Signior, otherwise called the Great Turke, in Constantinople, Sultan Mahumet Chan. Written by Sir Thomas Glover then Secretarie to the Ambassador, and since employed in that Honourable Function by his Majestie, to Sultan Achmet, which concerns an extensive description of travel logistics when the English ambassador accompanied the Sultan to the siege of Agria (modern Eger in Hungary) in 1596.
Glover’s text is briefly excerpted in Traub 2002.
The excerpts included below are:
As usual, I’ll begin with an excerpt in which Glover describes the seclusion of Turkish women, casting doubt on whether any of his subsequent descriptions of women’s appearance and behavior can truly be considered “eyewitness.”
Yet give they no entertaynment unto one another, nor come there any into their houses but upon speciall occasion, and those but into the publike parts thereof; their women being never seene but by the Nurses and Eunuches which attend on them. Yea, so jealous they are, that their Sonnes when they come to growth are separated from them.
In describing households and women, Glover includes many details that don’t jibe well with the idea that men are not allowed to see women who are not their wives, such as women’s rituals with a bride before marriage, the appearance of women, their cosmetics, and their clothing. Glover’s description of the baths is a bit ambiguous with regard to gender, since he mixes in both male and female bathing practices. When he describes “unnatural and filthy lust” it isn’t clear whether he’s referring to both male and female practices, but with the specification “yea, women with women” he clearly indicates the latter at least.
They never stirre forth, but (and then alwayes in troupes) to pray at the graves, and to the publike Bannias: which for excellency of buildings are next to their Mosques. But having in part alreadie described some of their formes, I will treate of their use…. The men take them up in the morning, and in the afternoone the women. … The men are attended upon by men, and the women by women; in the outermost roome they put off their clothes, and having Aprons of stayned linnen tyed about their wastes, then entring the Baths to what degree of heate that they please, (for severall roomes, and severall parts of them are of severall temperatures, as is the water let in by cocks to wash the sweat and filth of the bodie) the servitors wash them, rub them, stretch out their joynts, and cleanse their skins with a piece of rough Grogeram; which done, they shave the heads and bodies of men, or take away the haire with a composition of Rusma (a minerall of Cyprus) and unsleakt Lime; who returning to the place where they left their clothes, are dryed with fresh linnen; and for all this they pay not above three or foure Aspers: so little, in that endued with revenues by their Founders. But the women, doe anoint their bodies with an oyntment made of the earth of Chios, which maketh the skin soft, white, and shining; extending that on the face, and freeing it from wrinkles. Much unnaturall and filthie lust is said to bee committed daily in the remote closets of the darkesome Bannias: yea, women with women; a thing uncredible, if former times had not given thereunto both detection and punishment. They have generally the sweetest children that ever I saw; partly proceeding from their frequent bathings, and affected cleanlinesse. As wee beare ours in our armes, so they doe theirs astride on their shoulders.
In my opinion, Ottaviano Bon represents the last of the male-authored accounts that appear to be solidly "original" as opposed to potentially recycling the material of previous authors. He also introduces the second motif that gets repeated by other authors: the cucumber anecdote. But overall, his descriptions are vague and ambiguous with regard to whether he's describing lesbian relations among Ottoman women, as opposed to unauthorized self-stimulation. (If a valuable attribute of young women in the sarail is the physical attributes of virginity, self-stimulation involving penetration is enough to be considered "wantonness" or "beastly uncleanness" within patriarchal society.)
Bon, Ottaviano. 1587. Descrizione del serraglio del Gransignore. Translated by Robert Withers (1625) as The Grand Signiors Serraglio, published in: Hakluytus Posthumus, or Purchas his Pilgrimes edited by Samuel Purchas.
This post is part of a series of primary source materials illustrating how Europeans perceived, reported, and discussed female homoeroticism in the Ottoman Empire during the 16th to early 18th centuries. I’ll give a larger context for why this is a period of interest for European interactions with a non-European, non-Christian culture that could not be dismissed easily as not being of equal power an importance to their own. Attitudes toward, and practice of homosexuality was far from the most noteworthy difference that these reports covered, but it’s the one of interest to us within the scope of this Project. I’ll be presenting the descriptions from ambassadors, travelers, and others in chronological order of their time spent in Constantinople and other key cities, followed by some additional primary sources that show how the echos of these interactions became part of European myths about lesbianism.
Ottaviano Bon belonged to an aristocratic family in Venice and was active as a diplomat. I’m having trouble finding a clear biography of him through online sources. He has no English Wikipedia entry, and the Italian Wikipedia entry is brief and sketchy. A biography included in David Thomas and John Chesworth’s Christian-Muslim Relations: A Bibliographical History states that his “political career began in 1577, and he progressed through a series of positions of increasing importance, before beginning his diplomatic career in 1601 with his election as ambassador to Spain. In April 1604, he was elected to one of Venice’s most sensitive and important diplomatic postings, bailo, in Istanbul, a position he held until early 1609.”
But the text we’re interested in apparently dates earlier than his official mission, and Thomas and Chesworth note, “Another product of his time in Istanbul, the Descrizione del serraglio del Gransignore, is a rare first-person description of the sultan’s seraglio based on a surreptitious personal visit Bon arranged.” Traub (2002) indicates that the Descrizione was originally a “confidential document” written in 1587, and Thomas and Chesworth indicate it was first published (in Italian) around 1606. Very soon after, an English translation by Robert Withers appeared as The Grand Signiors Serraglio (with no attribution to Bon), which was published in 1625 as part of an extensive four-volume collection of travel writing, edited by Samuel Purchas and titled Hakluytus Posthumus, or Purchas his Pilgrimes. The reference to Hakluyt points to Richard Hakluyt's Principal Navigations and Purchas’s collection was partly based on manuscripts left by Hakluyt, who had died in 1616. My text is taken from a copy of Purchas at Archive.org.
In addition to Traub 2002, this text is discussed in a previous LHMP entry covering Murray 1997.
Bon wrote extensively on the sarail (serraglio) that housed the women of the sultan’s court. The excerpts included below that specifically reference lesbian desire are:
As noted above, there is a vast amount of text discussing the women of the court, their organization, their activities, their physical environment, and so on. This excerpt concerns young women who are servants of the court, rather than the sultanas and the sultan’s concubines. The reference to the desire to “keep the young wenches form wantonnesses” is decidedly vague, but given the emphasis made previously to the exclusion of any men other than eunuchs from this part of the palace, one must assume that the “wantonness” in question is with other women. The comparison to nuns is interesting, given the convents often had similar concerns about what young women in homo-social environments might get up to. As usual, we cannot simultaneously accept Bon's depiction of the extreme seclusion of the women of the sarail and the notion that he was writing from personal observation of the sarail and its inhabitants.
[Withers p.339] Now in the Womens lodgings, they live just as the Nunnes doe in their great Monasteries; for, these Virgins have very large Roomes to live in, and their Bed-chambers will hold almost a hundred of them a piece: they sleepe upon Sofaes, which are built long wise on both sides of the Roome, so that there is a large space in the midst for to walke in. Their Beds are very course and hard, and by every ten Virgins there lies an old woman: and all the night long there are many lights burning, so that one may see very plainely throughout the whole Roome; which doth both keepe the young Wenches from wantonnesses, and serve upon any occasion which may happen in the night.
I included the initial part of this next quote about execution by being “tied and put into a sack and in the night cast into the sea” because of the resonances with Busbecq’s description of being “packed away and drowned in the deep.” But it’s likely pure coincidence that Bon puts this in conjunction with an anecdote about being concerned that the women might use certain vegetables for “wanton” purposes. This is not a clear reference to lesbianism and is framed as being due to the unavailability of men for sexual satisfaction. In European references to dildoes during a similar era, their use isn’t necessarily perceived as indicating lesbianism, even when a female partner is involved. (Some day I will do a podcast on the history of dildoes and the contexts in which they do and do not intersect with lesbian themes.)
[Withers p.347] The Women of the Serraglio, are punished for their Punishments of faults very severely, and extreamely beaten by their Overseers : and if they prove disobedient, incorrigible and insolent, they are by the Kings order and expresse commandment, turned out and sent into the old Serraglio, as being rejected and cast off, and most part of that they have is taken from them. But if they shall be found culpable for Witchcraft : or any such hainous offence, then are they tyed and put into a Sacke, and in the Night cast into the Sea : so that by all meanes it behooveth them to bee very obedient, and containe themselves within the bounds of honestie and modestie, if they meane to come to a good end. Now it is not lawfull for any one to bring ought in unto them, with which they may commit the deeds of beastly uncleannesse ; so that if they have a will to eate Cucumbers, Gourds, or such like meates, they are sent in unto them sliced, to deprive them of the meanes of playing the wantons ; for, they all being young, lustie, and lascivious Wenches, and wanting the societie of Men (which would better instruct them) are doubtlesse of themselves inclined to that which is naught, and will be possest with unchast thoughts.