(Re)shaping Ottoman women: the construction of female subjectivities through educational discourse in women’s magazines (1869–1908)

ABSTRACT

This paper explores how female subjectivities were constructed in the educational discourse in women’s magazines published in the Ottoman language from the first magazine that was published in 1869 until the promulgation of the Second Constitution Period in 1908 in the Ottoman Empire. The study draws on the concept of Occidentalism defined by Meltem Ahıska, as well as on Deniz Kandiyoti’s concept of patriarchal bargain. These concepts are used to identify and explain central tensions emerging in the Occidentalist fantasy in the educational discourse. I argue that, in the writings on women in women’s magazines of the late Ottoman period, we can see, first, the early traces of the Occidentalist fantasy and, second, how it is channelised to shape Ottoman women’s subjectivities within at least three tensions. I also argue that the ambivalent attitudes of the authors in these Occidentalist tensions operated as strategies for patriarchal bargaining for Ottoman women. Thus, this paper contributes to the understanding of the construction of womanhood in the late Ottoman period by showing the complexity embedded in the transnational spread and transformation of educational ideas related to women’s education.

KEYWORDS:

• Occidentalism
• female subjectivities
• women’s magazines
• patriarchal bargain
• the Ottoman Empire

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author.

Notes

¹ This paper focuses on the magazines published in the Ottoman language. Most of the women writing in these magazines were Muslim-Turkish women who were the daughters, wives or relatives of the intellectuals or bureaucrats living in Istanbul. These urban elites were a part of the political project that happened to become modern Turkey later. Thus, the focus on these women is a fruitful way to study the dominant discussion on the nation-state and education.

² This is the first Turkish women’s magazine in the Ottoman Empire. However, the first women’s magazine was Kypseli, which was published in the Greek Orthodox community in 1845, while the first Armenian one, titled Gitar, was published in 1862. See Anastasia Falierou, “Enlightened Mothers and Scientific Housewives: Discussing Women’s Social Roles in Eurydice (Evridiki) (1870–1873)”, in A Social History of Late Ottoman Women: New Perspectives (Leiden: Brill, 2013), 208.

³ This paper treats education in a wider context than schooling, focusing on a broader intellectual and professional debate.

⁴ Meltem Ahıska, Occidentalism in Turkey: Questions of Modernity and National Identity in Turkish Radio Broadcasting (London: Tauris, 2010).

⁵ Deniz Kandiyoti, “Bargaining with Patriarchy”, Gender & Society 2, no. 3 (1988): 274–90, https://doi.org/10.1177/089124388002003004.

⁶ Literally meaning “reorganisation”, Tanzimat was a period of political, judicial, administrative, and financial reform. See Selçuk Akşin Somel, Historical Dictionary of the Ottoman Empire (Lanham, MD: Scarecrow Press, 2003), 289–90.

⁷ This period covers the reign of Abdülhamid II.

⁸ Bayram Kodaman, Abdülhamid Devri Eğitim Sistemi (Ankara: Türk Tarih Kurumu, 1991), 9.

⁹ Initiatives on public education focused initially on Muslim society, later including the non-Muslim population. Yet, in practice, non-Muslim communities attended to the schools founded by each religious community.

¹⁰ Christine Mayer and Adelina Arredondo, “Introduction”, in Women, Power Relations, and Education in a Transnational World, ed. Christine Mayer and Adelina Arredondo (Cham: Palgrave, 2020), 3, https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-44935-3_1.

¹¹ Benjamin C. Fortna, Imperial Classroom: Islam, the State, and Education in the Late Ottoman Empire (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2002), 241–47. This way of protection was evident in the increase in the religious emphasis on curriculum and the strict supervision of the teachers, students, and course books. See Hasan Ali Koçer, Türkiye’de Modern Eğitimin Doğuşu ve Gelişimi: 1773–1923 (İstanbul: MEB, 1991), 125. For the discussion about how the state focused on women in social disciplining through curriculum, see Badegül Eren Aydınlık and Seyfi Kenan, “Between Men, Time and the State: Education of Girls during the Late Ottoman Empire (1859–1908)”, Paedagogica Historica 57, no. 4 (2021): 400–418, https://doi.org/10.1080/00309230.2019.1660386.

¹² Fortna, Imperial Classroom, 40.

¹³ Duygu Köksal and Anastasia Falierou, eds., “Introduction: Historiography of Late Ottoman Women”, in A Social History of Late Ottoman Women: New Perspectives (Leiden: Brill, 2013), 1–2, https://doi.org/10.1163/9789004255258_002.

¹⁴ For feminist historians’ significant effort to find and reveal women’s magazines of the late Ottoman period in the archives, see Zehra Toska et al., eds., İstanbul Kütüphanelerindeki Eski Harfli Türkçe Kadın Dergileri Bibliyografyası: 1869–1927 (İstanbul: Metis, 1993). For the influential works on women and their education, see Duygu Köksal and Anastasia Falierou, eds., A Social History of Late Ottoman Women: New Perspectives (Leiden: Brill, 2013); Elif Ekin Akşit, Kızların Sessizliği: Kız Enstitülerinin Uzun Tarihi (İstanbul: İletişim, 2012).

¹⁵ Elizabeth Frierson, “Unimagined Communities: Educational Reform and Civic Identity among Late-Ottoman Women”, Critical Matrix 9, no. 12 (1995): 55–90.

¹⁶ Derya Iner, “Gaining a Public Voice: Ottoman Women’s Struggle to Survive in the Print Life of Early Twentieth-Century Ottoman Society, and the Example of Halide Edib (1884–1964)”, Women’s History Review 24, no. 6 (2015): 965–84, https://doi.org/10.1080/09612025.2015.1034603.

¹⁷ Serpil Çakır, Osmanlı Kadın Hareketi (İstanbul: Metis, 2013).

¹⁸ Pelin Başcı, “Advertising ‘the New Woman’: Fashion, Beauty, and Health in Women’s World”, International Journal of Turkish Studies 1, no. 1/2 (2005): 61–80.

¹⁹ Nicole A. N. M. Van Os, “Ottoman Muslim and Turkish Women in an International Context”, European Review 13, no. 3 (2005): 459–79, https://doi.org/10.1017/S1062798705000578; Senem Timuroğlu, Kanatlanmış Kadınlar: Osmanlı ve Avrupalı Kadın Yazarların Dostluğu (İstanbul: İletişim, 2020).

²⁰ Ayşegül Utku Günaydın, Kadınlık Daima Bir Muamma: Osmanlı Kadın Yazarların Romanlarında Modernleşme (İstanbul: Metis, 2017).

²¹ Başcı, “Advertising ‘the New Woman’”, 79.

²² Deniz Kandiyoti, “Introduction”, in Women, Islam and the State (London: Palgrave, 1991), 3–4.

²³ Katerina Dalakoura, “The Moral and Nationalist Education of Girls in the Greek Communities of the Ottoman Empire (c.1800–1922)”, Women’s History Review 20, no. 4 (2011): 651–62, https://doi.org/10.1080/09612025.2011.599627; Falierou, “Enlightened Mothers”. For the influence of non-Muslim schools on Muslim women’s education, see Barbara Reeves-Ellington, “Constantinople Woman’s College: Constructing Gendered, Religious, and Political Identities in an American Institution in the Late Ottoman Empire”, Women’s History Review 24, no. 1 (2015): 53–71, https://doi.org/10.1080/09612025.2014.920674.

²⁴ Meryem Karabekmez, “Case Study of Women Instructors and Their Education in the Reign of Abdulhamid II”, Paedagogica Historica 53, no. 1–2 (2017): 71–79, https://doi.org/10.1080/00309230.2016.1243137; Betül Açıkgöz, “The Advent of Scientific Housewifery in the Ottoman Empire”, Paedagogica Historica 54, no. 6 (2018): 783–99, https://doi.org/10.1080/00309230.2018.1489861. For a detailed description of girls’ public schools in the Second Constitutional Period, see Yasemin Tümer Erdem, II. Meşrutiyet’ten Cumhuriyet’e Kızların Eğitimi (Ankara: Türk Tarih Kurumu, 2013).

²⁵ Carol Dyhouse, “Good Wives and Little Mothers: Social Anxieties and the Schoolgirl’s Curriculum, 1890–1920”, Oxford Review of Education 3, no. 1 (1977): 21–35, https://doi.org/10.1080/0305498770030102; Ellen Jordan, “‘Making Good Wives and Mothers’? The Transformation of Middle-Class Girls’ Education in Nineteenth-Century Britain”, History of Education Quarterly 31, no. 4 (1991): 439, https://doi.org/10.2307/368168; Hyaeweol Choi, “‘Wise Mother, Good Wife’: A Transcultural Discursive Construct in Modern Korea”, Journal of Korean Studies 14, no. 1 (2009): 1–33, https://doi.org/10.1353/jks.2009.0004.

²⁶ The range of topics covered by these magazines stretches from the importance of the woman in the family, child rearing and education, becoming better wives with special attention to household management, importance to getting rid of the superstitious beliefs and news from the empire and abroad. The authors also discussed the reasons for women’s lack of education, and their request for education. For a detailed description of magazines, see Zehra Toska, “Haremden Kadın Partisine Giden Yolda Kadın Dergileri Gündemleri ve Öncü Kadınlar”, Metis Defter 21 (1994): 116–42.

²⁷ Benjamin C. Fortna, “Education and Change in the Late Ottoman Empire and Turkey”, Journal of Educational Media, Memory, and Society 10, no. 1 (2018): 50, https://doi.org/10.3167/jemms.2018.100104.

²⁸ Iner, “Gaining a Public Voice”, 975–77.

²⁹ Ahıska, Occidentalism in Turkey.

³⁰ Xiaomei Chen, Occidentalism: A Theory of Counter-Discourse in Post-Mao China (New York: Oxford University Press, 1995); Ian Buruma and Avishai Margalit, Occidentalism: The West in the Eyes of Its Enemies, 2nd ed. (New York: Penguin, 2005); Couze Venn, Occidentalism: Modernity and Subjectivity (London: SAGE, 2000).

³¹ Ahıska, Occidentalism in Turkey, 7.

³² Ibid., 26–39.

³³ Ibid., 4.

³⁴ Kandiyoti, “Bargaining with Patriarchy”.

³⁵ Ibid., 274–75.

³⁶ See note 34 above.

³⁷ Lindsay J. Benstead, “Conceptualizing and Measuring Patriarchy: The Importance of Feminist Theory”, Mediterranean Politics 26, no. 2 (2021): 242, https://doi.org/10.1080/13629395.2020.1729627.

³⁸ “Kadınların Tahsîli Hakkında Bir Mütâlaa [1]”, HMG 20 (1311 [1895]): 1–2.

³⁹ “Kızların Tahsîli Hakkında Bir Mütâlaa [2]”, HMG 21 (1311 [1895]): 2; Fatma Aliye, “Talim ve Terbiye-i Benât-ı Osmaniye”, HMG 37 (1311 [1896]): 2; “İcmâl-i Ahvâl-i Nisvan”, HMG 51 (1311 [1896]): 1; “Sulh Kongresi ve Avrupa Kadınları”, HMG 2 (1311 [1895]): 10.

⁴⁰ Fatma Aliye, “Şükûfezar-ı Edebin Sâhibe-i İmtiyâz-ı Hanımefendiye”, Şükûfezar 4 (1303 [1887]): 49; Zeynep Sünbül, “[An Untitled Article on Women’s Literacy]”, HMG 7 (1311 [1895]): 1; “İfade-i Meram”, Aile 1 (1297 [1880]): 1.

⁴¹ Fatma Aliye, “Bablölerden İbret Alalım”, HMG 2 (1311 [1895]): 2–3.

⁴² “Kızların Tahsîli [2]”, 2.

⁴³ Education as the starting point of the (women’s) progress was prevalent in Egypt in the nineteenth and early twentieth centuries. For the similarity between Ottoman and Egyptian women’s movements and how Ottoman women’s magazines inspired women writing in magazines in Egypt, see Beth Baron, The Women’s Awakening in Egypt: Culture, Society, and the Press (New Haven: Yale University Press, 1994).

⁴⁴ Joyce Goodman, “‘The Measure to Rank the Nations in Terms of Wealth and Power?’ Transnationalism and the Circulation of the ‘Idea’ of Women’s Education”, in Women, Power Relations, and Education in a Transnational World, ed. Christine Mayer and Adelina Arredondo (Cham: Springer International, 2020), 17–43, https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-44935-3_2.

⁴⁵ “Tahdîs-i Nîmet, Tâyin-i Meslek”, HMG 1 (1311 [1895]): 1; “Hanımlarımızın Yazdıklarını Şimdi Mi İntikat Etmeli?”, HMG 34 (1311 [1895]): 2.

⁴⁶ “Sulh Kongresi”, 10; “Hayat-ı Nisvan: Almanya Kadınları”, HMG 19 (1320 [1904]): 298.

⁴⁷ “İnas Mekteblerinde Bazı Islahat”, HMG 46 (1311 [1896]): 1–2.

⁴⁸ “İnas Mekteblerinde”, 2; “Kızların Talim ve Terbiyesi Meselesi”, HMG 52 (1311 [1896]): 1–2.

⁴⁹ “İnas Mekteblerinde”, 2.

⁵⁰ Ibid., 1–2.

⁵¹ Fatma Aliye (1862–1936) is the first female novelist as well as being a translator, essayist and one of the initiators of the women’s movement in the Ottoman Empire. As the daughter of a well-known historian and bureaucrat Ahmed Cevdet Pasha, she wrote on women’s place in the society from an Islamist perspective. She followed the developments abroad and criticised the Orientalist view of foreigners in her writings in HMG.

⁵² Lady Mary Wortley Montagu (1689–1762) is an English writer and poet who lived in Istanbul due to her husband, Edward Wortley Montagu’s service as the British ambassador between 1712 and 1714. She was welcomed in the circles of elite Ottoman women during her stay, and she wrote on her experience in Istanbul. She is also known for introducing smallpox inoculation to Britain after her return from the Ottoman Empire.

⁵³ Fatma Aliye, “Bablölerden İbret Alalım”, 2–3. For similar articles on the morality of European women, see [Elif] Rasime, “Usul-i Talim ve Terbiyeye Dair Birkaç Söz”, HMG 236 (1315 [1899]): 2–4; “Müskirat ve Londra Kadınları”, HMG 19 (1316 [1900]): 295–98.

⁵⁴ Fatma Aliye, “Bablölerden İbret Alalım”, 3.

⁵⁵ “Ahlak”, Âyine 41 (1291 [1875]): 1–2; Mahmud Celaleddin, “Coğrafya: Bir Zevç Ile Zevce Beyninde Mükâleme”, İnsâniyet 1 (1299 [1882]): 19; “Varaka: İdare-i Beytiyye”, Vakit Yahud Mürebbî-i Muhadderat, 1291 [1875], 3; Ayşe Sıdıka, “Riyazat-ı Bedeniye Ile Çocukların Terbiyesinin Münasebatı [1]”, HMG 230 (1315 [1899]): 3–4; “Çocukların İki Yaşına Kadar Terbiye-i Bedeniyesi”, HMG 289 (1316 [1900]): 4; Gülistan İsmet, “Hıfzıssıha-i Etfal: Çocukların Yürümesi ve Diş Sürümesi”, HMG 383 (1318 [1902]); “Erken Yürüyen Çocuklar”, HMG 34 (1324 [1908]): 6. For the suggestions on learning Western languages and musical instruments, see also [Elif] Rasime, “Lisan Tahsîline Dair [1]”, HMG 202 (1314 [1899]): 2–3; [Elif] Rasime, “Lisan Tahsîline Dair [2]”, HMG 203 (1315 [1899]): 2–3; [Elif] Rasime, “Lisan Tahsîline Dair [3]”, HMG 204 (1315 [1899]): 2–3; “Mûsıkî ve Nisvan”, HMG 270 (1316 [1900]): 1–2; “Piyanoya Başlamak Sinni”, HMG 34 (1324 [1908]): 5–6.

⁵⁶ “(Namerde Değil Merde Hudâ Etmeye Muhtaç)”, Terakkî-i Muhadderat 2 (1285 [1869]): 3; “İnsanı İnsan Eden İlim ve Marifettir. Onun Da En Birinci Medar-ı Tahsili İnsanın Çocuklukta Gördüğü Terbiyettir”, Terakkî-i Muhadderat 8 (1285 [1869]): 1–2.

⁵⁷ “Terbiye: Fénelon’un Kızlara Terbiyesi Risalesinden”, Terakkî-i Muhadderat 26 (1285 [1870]): 3–4.

⁵⁸ Marilyn Booth, “Girlhood Translated? Fénelon’s Traité de l’éducation Des Filles (1687) as a Text of Egyptian Modernity (1901, 1909)”, in Migrating Texts: Circulating Translations around the Ottoman Mediterranean, ed. Marilyn Booth (Edinburgh: Edinburgh University Press, 2019), 266–99, https://doi.org/10.1515/9781474439015-013. In her work, Booth presents how Fénelon’s “seventeenth-century French Catholic” book was appropriated for addressing women’s question in modernising Egypt.

⁵⁹ Cemaliye and Fahriye, “Kızların Tâlim ve Terbiyesi: Kızlar Için Tâlim ve Terbiyenin Lüzumu”, Parça Bohçası 1 (1305 [1889/1890]): 7–10.

⁶⁰ “Kadın”, Aile 2 (1297 [1880]): 17.

⁶¹ “Avrupa’da Terbiye-i Nisvaniye”, HMG 145 (1313 [1898]): 2.

⁶² “[An Untitled Article on the Education of Girls]”, Terakkî-i Muhadderat 19 (1285 [1869]): 2–3.

⁶³ “Osmanlı Kadınlarının Terbiyesine Dair Manzume-i Efkar Gazetesinde Görülen Benttir”, Terakkî-i Muhadderat 7 (1285 [1869]): 3–5.

⁶⁴ Faika, “Varaka”, Terakkî-i Muhadderat 5 (1285 [1869]): 5.

⁶⁵ Faika, 5.

⁶⁶ Ismah Tita Ruslin, “The Way of a Patriarchal Bargain: How the Bargain under the Structure and Agency Perspective”, ETNOSIA : Jurnal Etnografi Indonesia, 4 November 2022, 146, https://doi.org/10.31947/etnosia.v7i2.21293.

⁶⁷ Alan Duben and Cem Behar, Istanbul Households: Marriage, Family and Fertility, 1880–1940 (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1991), 246–47.

⁶⁸ “Aile”, Aile 1 (1297 [1880]): 4.

⁶⁹ “Medeni Kadınlar”, HMG 117 (1313 [1897]): 1–2.

⁷⁰ “Tahdîs-i Nîmet”, 2.

⁷¹ “Rüşdiye Mektebi Şâkirdânından Bir Kız Ile Validesinin Muhâveresi”, Terakkî-i Muhadderat 22 (1285 [1869]): 2–3.

⁷² See note 70 above.

⁷³ “Kadınların Tahsîli [1]”; “Kızların Tahsîli [2]”, 2; “Kızların Tahsîli Hakkında Bir Mütâlaa [3]”, HMG 22 (1311 [1895]): 2; “Kızların Tahsîli Hakkında Bir Mütâlaa [4]”, HMG 23 (1311 [1895]): 1–2; “Kızların Tahsîli Hakkında Bir Mütâlaa [5]”, HMG 24 (1311 [1895]): 3; “Kızların Tahsîli Hakkında Bir Mütâlaa [6]”, HMG 28 (1311 [1895]): 1–2.

⁷⁴ “Kadınların Tahsîli [1]”, 1–2; “Kızların Tahsîli [2]”, 2.

⁷⁵ “Kadınların Tahsîli [1]”, 1–2.

⁷⁶ “Kızların Tahsîli [2]”, 2.

⁷⁷ “Kızların Tahsîli [3]”, 2.

⁷⁸ Cemaliye and Fahriye, “Kızların Tâlim ve Terbiyesi”, 2.

⁷⁹ “Kızların Tahsîli [5]”, 3.

⁸⁰ “Medeni Kadınlar”, 1–2.

⁸¹ “Medeni Kadınlar”, 1–2. A similar article on women inventors in the West: Gülistan İsmet, “Mucit Kadınlar”, HMG 210 (1315 [1899]): 2–3.

⁸² “Medeni Kadınlar”, 2. For similar arguments, see Ahmet Reşit, “Monsieur Jules Bevoit’nın Konferansı: Yirminci Asırda Kadınlar Ne Olacak?”, HMG 288 (1316 [1900]): 1–3; Saime, “Nisvan ve Tıp”, HMG 8 (1320 [1904]): 115–16.

⁸³ Ahıska, Occidentalism in Turkey, 17.

⁸⁴ Ibid., 18.

⁸⁵ “Osmanlı Kadınlarının Terbiyesine Dair”, 3–5; “Terbiye ve Temeddün”, Terakkî-i Muhadderat 14 (1285 [1869]): 1–3; Fatma Aliye, “Nisvân-ı İslâm ve Bir Fransız Muharriri”, HMG 91 (1312 [1896]): 5–6; Nigar bint-i Osman, “Nisvân-ı İslâm’da Terakkî”, HMG 108 (1313 [1897]): 1–2.

⁸⁶ Madame Fouré, “Bu Madde Hakkında La Turquie Nam Fransız Gazetesinde Görülen Madam Fouré’nin Mektubu”, Terakkî-i Muhadderat 16 (1285 [1869]): 3–4.

⁸⁷ “[A Conversation]”, Terakkî-i Muhadderat 31 (1285 [1869]): 2–3; Mahmud Celaleddin, “Bir Ecnebi İle Bir Osmanlı Arasında Vuku Bulan Mükâlemenin Bir Kısmı”, İnsâniyet 1 (1299 [1882]): 9–16.

⁸⁸ “Maarif-i Nezaret Celilesinden Gelen İlandır”, Terakkî-i Muhadderat 16 (1285 [1869]): 3.

⁸⁹ Madame Fouré, “Bu Madde Hakkında”, 3–4.

⁹⁰ “Terbiye ve Temeddün”, 1–3.

⁹¹ Ibid., 2–3.

⁹² Ibid.

⁹³ Nigar Hanım (1862–1918) was a poet and writer as well as one of the initiators of the Ottoman women’s movement. Being the daughter of Macar (Hungarian) Osman Pasha, she was well-educated especially in languages and cultures of the East and the West. Besides pioneering the European-style fashion, she became well-known in elite literary and art circles both in the Ottoman Empire and in Europe and later even became famous for hosting salons for these circles.

⁹⁴ Nigar bint-i Osman, “Nisvân-ı İslâm’da Terakkî”, 1–2.

⁹⁵ Nigar bint-i Osman, 1–2.

⁹⁶ Fatma Aliye, “Bablölerden İbret Alalım”, 2–3; Fatma Aliye, “Madam Montagu [1]”, HMG 5 (1311 [1895]): 2–4; Fatma Aliye, “Madam Montagu [2]”, HMG 6 (1311 [1895]): 2; Fatma Aliye, “Nisvân-ı İslâm”, HMG 92 (1312 [1896]): 2–3; Fatma Aliye, Nâmdârân-ı Zenân-ı İslâmiyân, 1901; Fatma Aliye, “Nisvân-ı İslâm ve Bir Fransız Muharriri”, 5–6.

⁹⁷ Fatma Aliye, “Nisvân-ı İslâm ve Bir Fransız Muharriri”, 5–6.

⁹⁸ Fatma Aliye, 5–6.

⁹⁹ Ibid., 6.

¹⁰⁰ Fatma Aliye, “Talim ve Terbiye”, 2.

¹⁰¹ See also Mektepli Kız [A School Girl], “Hazine-i Evrak Müesseseliğinedir Bu Mektup”, İnsâniyet 2 (1300 [1882/1883]): 5–6.

¹⁰² See note 29 above.

¹⁰³ See note 34 above.

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Notes on contributors

Badegül Eren-Aydınlık

Badegül Eren-Aydınlık is a PhD student in History and Education at the Department of Historical, Philosophical and Religious Studies at Umeå University, Sweden. Her research project explores how womanhood is constructed in educational discourse in the late Ottoman Empire and early Republic of Turkey (1869–1933).