Women and Veiling

Women who traveled to other lands sometimes made positive interactions with women in their host country. Lady Mary Wortley Montagu was the wife of the British ambassador to Ottoman Turkey, where upper class women were kept away from the eyes of men outside their families. In visiting the luxurious baths for women, and their separate quarters at home, Lady Montagu gained access to their lives in a way denied to men. Her writings describing womens’ manners, appearance, and clothing, as well as their incredulous reactions to her own stiff, unyielding attire, reveal enlightened views of Turkish women.

In a 1717 letter to her sister, Lady Montagu said: “I am now got into a new world where everything I see appears to some a change of scene. I went to the bagnio about ten o’clock. It was already full of women…..The lady that seemed the most considerable amongst them entreated me to sit by her and would fain have undressed me for the bath. I…was at least forced to open my skirt and show them my stays, which satisfied ‘em very well, for I saw they believed I was so locked up in that machine that it was not in my own power to open it, which connivance they attributed to my husband…..”

Later that year she wrote: “Now 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 ‘em. ‘Tis very easy to see they have more liberty than we have, no woman of what rank soever being permitted to go in the streets without two muslins, one that cover her face all but her eyes and another that hides her the whole dress of her head and hangs half-way down her back; and their shape are wholly concealed by a thing they call a ferigée …You may guess how effectually this disguises them, that there is no distinguishing the great lady for her slave, and ‘tis impossible for the most jealous husband to know his wife when he meets her, and no man dare either touch or follow a woman in the street. This perpetual masquerade gives them entire liberty of following their inclinations without danger of discovery….Upon the whole, I look upon the Turkish women as the only free people in the empire. Thus you see, dear sister, the manners of mankind do not differ so widely as our voyage writers would make us believe.”

Source: http://www.womeninworldhistory.com/lesson19.html