During my BA in History, a wonderful course full of non-western history to shock my national curriculum shrouded eyes, Lady Mary Wortley Montagu was a figure that came up during a module on the Ottoman Empire. She lived in Turkey for two years and luckily for us recorded her experiences in great detail, a source that would prove historically invaluable. Yet after looking into her life it would seem she was an amazing figure for many additional reasons.
Born in 1689 in London into an aristocratic life, Mary was required to become lady of the house when her mother died. She immediately disliked the role in which she found herself (i.e. waitress) so in between carving meat and looking pretty, she defiantly began educating herself in the classics. She would later use some translations completed as a child to defend women’s right to education. After spending her teens adeptly developing her writing style that would come to articulate her feminist beliefs for Georgian high society, her father attempted to marry her off. In what was becoming characteristically defiant behaviour, she eloped with Edward Wortley Montagu and married him in 1712. Although they did not seem to dislike each other and even managed to have two children, it was largely a marriage of convenience and I believe if society hadn’t forced it down her neck she may have remained unmarried. However, even to a woman as wilful as Mary, not marrying at all was not a recourse of possibility for a woman of her social standing at this time.
Edward was made a member of parliament in 1715 and Mary was eager to join him at court, quickly becoming a prominent character due to her wit and beauty. This beauty was sadly taken from her the same year when a bout of smallpox left her badly scarred. This was a sorrowful experience as she found society’s treatment of her altered alongside her beauty and in response she began to nurture a contempt for the way society valued women purely for their appearance. Her barbed tongue would smite many a misogynist during her time at court, engaging in poetic battles at a time rife with satire. Some of it was was taken in good spirits; some people, particularly men, had to be careful not to offend her as she would launch public attacks against them via sharp and stringent poetry. She was reactionary in this respect, writing of things as and when they provoked her and giving little regard to offence they may cause – to be on the receiving end of her keen wit could be no laughing matter.
Just a year after her entry into the Georgian court her husband was made ambassador in Istanbul, and she lived there with him for two years. The letters she wrote at this time are of significance for several reasons; her writing was a great indicator as to the authority that women’s writing could hold, due to the female-only areas of society that they could access and record. Thus, she offered a unique view in her letters. The most well-known example is the time she spent time in the Turkish baths with the women. Not only was this an insight into an area unexperienced by men, she also didn’t take the euro-centric view common of that time period of the lack of civility in non-western societies. One only has to read Edward Said’s ‘Orientalism’ to understand the ideological divide that was created between the ‘West’ and the ‘East’. She described Turkish men as generous and noble, in actuality rarely taking more than one wife, nor stealing, kidnapping or killing, as people at home believed. The main limitation was that this was an unrepresentative portrayal purely of aristocratic life, yet it remains important for the section of society it was able to illuminate. The Turkish baths were regarded by the English as a highly sexualised environment where the women were uncivilised and indecent, yet Lady Mary enlightened all with her tales of political discussions, gossip and intrigue. She went as far as to compare them with the coffee houses of the men back at home. In fact, she even believed the women to be freer with their bodies and minds than in England, finding their culture liberating. This is reflected in a chat she had with the ladies about corsets, which they all found astoundingly horrendous, disbelieving that the women of Europe would freely imprison their bodies in such a way.
Equally noteable, she discovered a smallpox inoculation being used in Turkish society and due to her terrible experience of the disease became an immediate supporter. After having her own children inoculated she promoted the procedure once she returned home, despite the considerable resistance she experienced from the medical establishment. Such was her vigour that she even managed to persuade George I to inoculate his grandchildren, the children of Princess Caroline and heirs to the throne. The safer technique of vaccination was later developed from this and she eventually became praised for bringing the practice to Britain. Her adamancy in the face of reluctance shows her single-minded tenacity when fighting for what she believed in.
This was also evident in her erudite feminist writings. She wrote of how society placed a role upon women that led them to limit their own behaviour, that being treated as irrational and incapable made them act so rather than it being part of their nature. In a piece of writing objecting against the supposition of a woman’s innate lack of common sense, she described a desire of “exhibiting a set of pictures of such meritorious ladies, where I shall say nothing of the fire of their eyes, or the pureness of their complexions, but give them such praise as befit a rational sensible being: virtues of choice and not beauties of accident.” (“The Nonsense of Common Sense” Jan 24th 1738) She embodied these arguments by refusing to fit into the role placed upon her; she wrote courting letters to men at a time when it was seen as appalling for a woman to do so; she refused to follow fashion and instead of towering Georgian wigs she wore what was seen as extravagant Turkish dress. I love to imagine her defiant head held high through it all, defying anyone to condemn her actions for the opportunity to denigrate them in poetic terms. She was a woman of great character to stand up for these rights some 300 years ago. It is a shame that in the 21st century we are still arguing for women to be valued for more than merely appearances – at least we no longer have to wear corsets…yet Bridget Jones’ body shaping knickers come to mind…*sigh*
Women of Fire 