By Jenna Judd
Abstract:
Although recognition of the reality that the painters of 19th century
orientalist art depicted both female and male Middle Eastern figurers with fair
skin is demonstrated, this paper examines specifically the motivations behind
the persistent portrayals of a mutually sexualized and orientalized
white-skinned female figure as well as their effects upon the contemporary
viewer. Through examinations of both the male gaze and the understanding of
imperial conquest through the metaphor of male sexual conquest, the paper
supports, explains the motivation behind and extends Ivan Kalmar’s assertion
that such a depiction of the orientalized female figure succeeded in projecting
the European woman into the role of the European man’s sex slaves. The second major
objective of the paper is an illumination of the legitimate existence of a
pleasurable female reading of the depictions of women characteristic of both
orientalist art and genre of the nude in order to demonstrate that contemporary
women would derive pleasure through their identification with the odalisque, an
identification that would be strengthened by the represented figure’s white
skin. Although the establishment of the female fantasy of projection with the
orientalized figure would likely conflict with European women’s own racialized understanding of the differences between
European and Middle Eastern women, the identification would demonstrate women’s
recognition of and reconciliation to their own inferior position to the
European man in contemporary society, inferiority that was analogous to the
position of the Middle Eastern individual to the European individual. Both the
female and male readings of the white skinned Middle Eastern figure demonstrate
the reality that in the general European conception of the Orient and its
relationship to the West, the European woman and the Middle Eastern individual
were intertwined.
Introduction:
In confronting visions of the
Oriental odalisque executed in 19th century orientalist art, it
becomes difficult to account for the unrealistic pallor of the figure’s
complexion. Interpretations of this persistent phenomenon are subject to the
various readings formulated in response to visual representations of women in
art generally. It is significant that both orientalist art was executed
predominantly by men and that it featured the representation of a Middle
Eastern figure that was typically female and in some cases a feminized male, as
in the example of Jerome’s “The Snake Charmer.” (This essay will consider
representations of women specifically.) In spite of the sex of the represented
Oriental figure, consistently, her or his racial identity is blurred. This
convention is extremely powerful because of its ambiguity that requires
multiple coexisting interpretations. In reading the visual representation of
sexualized women in art as an expression of the phallocentric desire for men to
have sexual access to womankind, the whiteness of the represented Oriental
figure’s skin becomes a means of positioning the European woman into the role
of the European man’s sex slave, an assertion that is put forward by Ivan
Kalmar (“The Houkah in the Harem”). Conversely, if we are to accept the
validity of a pleasurable female reading of orientalist representations of
women, it becomes plausible that the whiteness of the represented Middle
Eastern figure’s skin functioned as a vehicle for a European woman to establish
an empathetic connection with the represented figure during the formation of a
positive and empowering reading of the visual text. Whether this phenomenon is
interpreted as the residue of men’s sexual control over women, or as the
facilitator of a subversive female reading that aims to both overcome
patriarchy’s imposition of limitations upon a woman’s identification with her
own sexuality and facilitate an escape from social restrictions upon women, the
meshing of signs of East and West is secured. Consequently, the ultimate task
before us is that of determining the motivations behind this linking of the
European woman to the Middle Eastern individual that is evident in the visual
representations of orientalist art as well as its effects upon its contemporary
European viewers. Ultimately, the correlation between these two identities that
is demonstrated in the portrayal of the Middle Eastern individual with white
skin reflects the reality that in the European conception of the Orient and the
West’s relationship to it, the European woman and the Middle Eastern individual
became intertwined.
Voyeurism:
the Male Gaze.
According to John Berger in his 1972 Ways of Seeing,
“In the average European oil painting of the nude the principal protagonist is never painted. He is the spectator in front of the picture and he is presumed to be a man. Everything is addressed to him. Everything must appear as the result of his being there. It is for him that the figures have assumed their nudity” (Berger: 54).
Berger’s influential interpretation of the gendered dynamics of power encoded in visual representations of women in the genre of the nude established that the male gaze that is defined by its promise of power, sexual dominance and active control of an objectified female figure was the underlying mechanism behind the production and appreciation of visual texts dedicated to the visual representation of the female nude (Berger 1972). Berger’s understanding of the gender dynamics operating within and without the visual texts born of the tradition of the nude is applicable to the majority of orientalist art that was similarly devoted to the representation of sexualized female figures. In recognizing that nudes were manifestations of and indulgences for the heterosexual male gaze, Berger’s interpretations of the visual representation of the female nude in European art acknowledge that the represented female figures become outlets for heterosexual male sexual desire. In situating orientalist artworks representing dually sexualized and orientalized figures, like several of those executed by Gerome, Ingres and Delacoix including “Le Bain maure” (1870), “Le Bain Turc” (1862-3) and “Odalisque allongee sur divan” (1827-8) in the context of Berger’s reading of visual representations of the female nude, the depicted female figures are undressed for the pleasure of their male author and viewer. Although the female figure looks back towards the male author/viewer that scrutinizes her naked body, in Berger’s mind her “nakedness is not, however an expression of her own feelings; it is a sign of her submission to the owner’s feelings and demands. (The owner of both woman and paintings)” (Berger: 52). Berger continues by asserting that the composition of the represented female figure’s body functions as vehicle to maximize male sexual viewing pleasure. Ultimately, in Berger’s mind, “Women are there to feed an appetite, not to have any of their own” (Berger: 55).
Ruth Bernard Yeazell reinforces the understanding of orientalist art representing dually sexualized and orientalized female figures as both the manifestation of and outlet for the sexualized male gaze in her work Harems of the Mind. According to Yeazell, the European fascination with the orientalized harem during the colonial era was based on the ability of the harem (or at least the Western conception of it) to facilitate a male fantasy of unbridled sexual indulgence that provided an escape from the cultural emphasis on the importance of monogamy and marriage (Yeazell: 97). The reality that the male orientalist artist’s visual representation of the harem was both a manifestation of and outlet for male sexual fantasy is supported by Reina Lewis’s assertion that Ingres failed to incorporate the descriptions of Lady Mary Whortley Montagu regarding female conduct in Turkish Baths, which she characterized as both respectable and devoid of overt expressions of sexuality, in favour of representing an imagined scene of what Lewis refers to as “sex and excess” (Lewis: 129). In this context, representations of the orientalized harem and its occupants in art and literature were manifestations of male sexual fantasies produced ostensibly by and for men and facilitated by the sexualized conception of the female orientalized figure.
Laura Mulvey recognizes that in spite of the fact that visual cultural texts such as film are defined by their display function: by the reality that they exist in order “to be seen,” they are consistently structured in such a way “to give the spectator an illusion of looking in on a private world” (Mulvey: 17). Mulvey’s observation is applicable to orientalist art and serves to highlight the manner in which representations of the harem were typically constructed so as to make the viewer of a text feel as though they were privy to the viewing of a secret and forbidden scene, an effect that maximized the voyeurism associated to the male gaze (Yeazell: 27). For example, Yeazell asserts that Ingres frequently depicted orientalized figures in close proximity to drapery in order to convey the idea that the painting’s viewers were accessing a glimpse of a scene that was otherwise hidden from view (Yeazell: 27). In referring specifically to Delacroix’s “Femmes d’Alger dans leur appartement” (1834), Ivan Kalmar reinforces the realities that “Very common in the background of harem scenes is the suggestion of a mysterious interior beyond” and that this “interiority … has obvious vaginal connotations” (“The Houkah in the Harem”). Consequently, orientalist representations of the odalisque can be read as manifestations of and outlets for a male sexual fantasy characterized by an expression of exploitative male sexual power inherent in the prohibited and secret trespass of the harem upon its oblivious and consequently disempowered female occupants, an occurrence that is facilitated by the means of the male gaze. The act of a contemporary heterosexual man pleasurably viewing visual texts in which the suggestions of trespass and vaginal interiority are operational becomes the equivalent of an act of sexual trespass in which the male gaze penetrates and possesses the female body without female consent. The circular canvas of Ingres’s “Le Bain Turc” (1862-3) that effectively maximizes the voyeurism associated to the male gaze exemplifies the exploitative act of male sexual trespass encouraged by the compositional strategies of orientalist visual representations of harem scenes. According to Yeazell, “the circle draws attention to itself as an artificial boundary of our vision, as if we were seeing the bodies before us by means of an intervening aperture” (Yeazell: 28). Yeazell continues, “Ingres’s bathers appear to glimpsed unawares through a spyglass or keyhole” (Yeazell: 29). In the context of Yeazell’s understanding of the male fantasy facilitated by orientalist harem scenes as an escape from socially acceptable forms of sexual interaction: those resulting from the monogamous relationship forged under the institution of marriage, we can acknowledge that the male sexual fantasies embedded in orientalist visual representations of the harem privileged male promiscuity and male sexual domination and exploitation of the female body by means of the male gaze (Yeazell: 97).
Imperial
Ideology and Orientalist Art: Sexual Conquest and Subjugation of the Orient
In
acknowledging that the representation of the sexualized female Oriental figure
in orientalist art is a matter of both male sexual pleasure and male power, it
becomes easier to link relevant visual texts to the contemporary cultural
politics that recognized both women and members of the Orient as inferior to
the Western male and consequently subject to his domination. In this context,
both the identity of the European woman and the Middle Eastern individual were
conceived in like terms. The sexual objectification of the female body secured
in the visual representation by the voyeuristic and controlling gaze of the
male artist and its male audience is a reflection of an imperial discourse. The
female body is secured as the object of the male gaze in an act of sexual
conquest executed by the initiative of patriarchy. This act of sexual
domination can be understood as a metaphor for the efforts of European colonial
imperialism to subjugate the Orient. Conversely, European colonial imperialism
and its goal of subjugating the Orient can be understood as a metaphor for the
desire of contemporary heterosexual European men generally to assert social
dominance and an explicitly sexual form of control over European women. In this
context, the artistic convention of representing Middle Eastern figures with
unrealistically white skin represents an overlapping of metaphors. The European
woman, connoted by the white skin of the Middle Eastern figure signifies the
position of the Oriental in the hegemonic European colonial imperialist
conception by the means of metaphor. The Middle Eastern identity, explicitly
represented and identified to the audience by conventional signifiers of
Oriental otherness and the recognized Oriental character traits of
irrationality, sensuality, decadence, sloth, passivity and sexual availability
(“The Houkah and the Harem”) provides a metaphor for the general contemporary
conception of the European woman. She is decidedly irrational, conceived of as
lacking the positive traits exhibited by the European heterosexual man who
defines her as both inferior and other and expects her to be both subservient
and sexually available. The identities of the Middle Eastern individual and the
European woman are largely interchangeable in the general conception of the
contemporary European heterosexual male. It is not a shock therefore that their
identities become intertwined in visual representations of the day.
It is no accident, as
European
Women and Orientals as Sex Slaves;
It is my understanding that Kalmar’s assertion that the white skin of the odalisque in orientalist art represents a “perverse projection of the Western woman into the subject position of a powerless sex slave,” an occurrence that reflects Europe’s “patriarchal response to the gender politics of nineteenth and early twentieth century Europe” (“The Hookah in the Harem”) is both valid and born from the reality that European women and Orientals became intertwined in the dominant Western conception of the Orient and the West’s relationship to it. As Anne McClintock asserts in Imperial Leather, Europe’s colonial effort to subjugate the Orient represented a concrete attempt to re-establish the patriarchal control that was being destabilized at home (McClintock: 240). Ultimately, in controlling the Orient and defining the figures of the orientalist scholar and colonial administrator as patriarchs and that of the Oriental as female, the European imperial effort succeeded in reviving the traditional hierarchy of “The White Family of Man” by reasserting the perceived normalcy and naturalness of white male dominance over white women and representatives of deemed inferior races (McClintock: 232-57). As manifestations of the patriarchal and imperial European cultural imperatives, traditional orientalist paintings that sexually objectified and orientalized women for the viewing pleasure of the European male succeeded in colonizing both European women’s bodies and the ‘body’ of the Orient across the surface of the canvas. White women became subjected to the ultimate patriarchal fantasy: they were cast as sex slaves for the sexual pleasure of European men without consent. Similarly, the European conquest of the Orient was metaphorically secured by the means of the oil paint that facilitated the European male artist/viewer’s penetration of the “forbidden, Muslim space” through the male gaze (“The Houkah and the Harem”). Ultimately, it was not just the European woman that was cast as sex slave; it was members of the Orient as well. In conceiving of the relationship between East and West as the sexual relationship between a disempowered woman (the Orient) and a powerful male (the West) (Said: 93), European orientalists succeeded in removing the existence of the Oriental male from the Western metaphorical conception of the Orient in the same way that orientalist artists removed the male Muslim harem master from visual representations of the harem in visual art (“The Houkah and the Harem”). The Oriental male, because of his perceived ineffectual masculinity (Said: 95-8), pollution by oriental splendour, his sensuality, his irrationality and his sloth did not live up to the definition of masculinity put forth by Europe (“The Houkah and the Harem”). Essentially, the presence of the male Oriental in the dominant European conception of the Orient was reduced to the innocuous role of the eunuch or simply eliminated: conquered by the European male identity whose ‘true’ masculinity won out. Consequently, the Orient becomes conceived as ultimately feminine and its conquest by the West is defined as the assertion of male (European) sexual control of a woman’s body (the Orient). Consequently, it is my belief that the white skin of the orientalists’ odalisques signified the mutual projections of the white woman and the Oriental into the roles of the European male’s sex slaves.
Female
Spectatorship and the Female Gaze: ‘Stuck between a Rock and Hard Place’.
Mary Devereaux
illustrates the discrepancy between level of power ascribed to the male and
female gazes that are operational in both Orientalist art and the genre of the
nude in the following words. “[T]he male gaze involves more than simply
looking; it carries with it the threat of action and possession. This power to
act and possess is not reciprocal. Women can receive and return a gaze, but
they cannot act upon it” (
Charlotte Bronte’s exploration of Lucy Snowe’s experience in a gallery setting is successful in demonstrating that in the context of formulating a distinctly female appreciation of visual representations of women predominant in the Victorian period, women were ‘stuck between a rock and a hard place’. This concept is expressed in the interaction between Lucy Snowe and Monsieur Paul, who after finding Lucy seated in front of an orientalist nude, distressfully inquires whether Lucy had ventured to the gallery alone (Bronte: 275). Paul subsequently barks, “How dare you a young person, sit coolly down, with the self-possession of a garcon, and look at that picture?” (Bronte: 275). Soon after, M. Paul whisks her from its vicinity to “a particularly dull corner, before a series of most specially dreary ‘cadres’” that represented the various stages of a woman’s life (Bronte: 275). In Griselda Pollock’s interpretation of Lucy’s gallery experience, “Lucy Snowe, an educated self-supporting and desiring woman, is directed to look at woman as Young Bride, Wife, Mother and Widow” (Pollock: 136), visions of femininity that Lucy refuses to embrace. Bronte’s characterization demonstrates the discrepancy between the artworks available to female spectatorship which alternated between what Pollock refers to as the “small, didactic paintings that trace the limited spaces of women’s permitted place in patriarchy – as objects of exchange and use by men” (Pollock: 136) and the sexualized images of women produced by and largely for heterosexual male viewing pleasure. Bronte considers a contemporary female response to the latter by exploring Lucy Snowe’s subjective response to the represented of figure an orientalist “Cleopatra” in the following passage:
“She was, indeed, extremely well fed: very much
butcher’s meat – to say nothing of bread, vegetables, and liquids – must she
have consumed to attain that breadth and height, that wealth of muscle, that
affluence of flesh. She lay half reclined on a couch: why it would be difficult
to say… she out to have been standing or at least sitting bolt upright. She had
no business to lounge away the
Lucy’s
disdain for the “very ugly picture,” (Bronte: 275) seems to demonstrate her
simultaneous acknowledgement and discontentment with both the painting’s male
authorship and its function as an outlet for heterosexual male viewing
pleasure. If this painting had been executed by and for a woman like Lucy, we
are swayed to believe that the figure would have maximized the grandeur of her
body to both be active and defy sexual objectification. Although educated and independent
women such as Lucy and presumably her creator Charlotte Bronte failed to
establish a positive and empowering reading of orientalist paintings in which a
female figure is mutually orientalized and sexualized, it is undeniable that
women did. Female Pleasurable
Spectatorship of Orientalist Art
The realities that both a version of
Gerome’s “Moorish Bath” was dedicated to his daughter (Doy:
224) and a woman: Caroline Bonaparte Murat,
Napoleon’s youngest sister commissioned Ingres’ “La Grande Odalisque” (Ockman: 33) imply that European women found pleasure in
viewing orientalist portrayals of female figures. Kalmar’s recognition of
Ingres’ expressive rendering of the various sensory dimensions of the setting
of “La Grande Odalisque” reinforce the painting’s appeal to female sensuality
that extends beyond the masculine dimension of the purely visual to encompass
most notably touch. The viewer’s full sensory experience is achieved through
Ingres’ sensuous depictions of all that is tactile: the odalisque’s supple skin
and shapely body, the rich textures of the curtains and fabric and the soft
plumage of peacock feathers (“The Houkah and the Harem”). The appealing
sensuousness of the scene that would likely please both male and female viewers
alike is further developed through the suggestion of the mellow smell and taste
of smoke evoked by the glossy pipe that is recognized by
“Even the ‘Grande Odalisque,’ where the figure is looking out of the painting towards the viewer, is unassailable, the level gaze lacks the coyness or enticement generally given by the male artist to naked female images. The figures in these paintings attend to the sights and sounds of their own world; they are intent on their own pleasures” (Leek: 31).
Leek’s recognition of the inherent impenetrability of the Great Odalisque’s gaze undermines the powerless object status of the female figure of the cultural text recognized by Mary Devereux through her association of the represented figure to the reactionary gaze defined by Williams. Furthermore, Leek’s interpretations allow us to acknowledge the plausibility of the formation of a pleasurable female reading of several of Ingres’ odalisque representations, most notably, “La Grande Odalisque” and “Baigneuse Valcipon”, the two paintings in which the canvas is dedicated largely to the untouchable beauty of a single female figure whose primary sexual characteristics remain disclosed from male scrutiny (Leeks: 31-2). As Leek’s asserts, as more odalisques enter the canvas and the painting’s composition becomes more geared to the voyeurism of the male gaze as in the case of the rounded “Le Bain Turc”, the establishment of a pleasurable female reading is denied (Leeks: 32). Leek’s take on Ingres’ “La Grande Odalisque” and “Baigneuse Valcipon” reinforces the probability that women viewers derived pleasure from viewing images whose underlying function extended beyond the pure objectification of a female figure by a male gaze. The likelihood that the dynamics of the ‘better’ orientalist paintings that ascended beyond the simple sexual objectification of a female figure is supported by Peter Fuller’s belief that the “painstaking, imaginative and constitutive activity” involved in painting a female nude innately demonstrates respect for the female body (Fuller: 30). Certainly underlying Ingres’ “La Grande Odalisque” is an expression of the artist’s veneration for female beauty. Although I agree with the likelihood that female pleasure would be derived from viewing representations of women that ascended the simple sexual objectification of women by the male gaze, it is likely that some contemporary female viewers would derive personal pleasure in viewing the works that have been traditionally recognized as manifestations of and outlets for the male gaze.
Towards an
Empowering Female
Heather Dawkins recognizes within Marie-Amelie Chartroule de Montifaud’s criticisms of 19th century painting (written under the pseudonym Marc de Montifaud) a “mission to search for sensuous portrayals of the human body in art” (Dawkins: 144). In her criticisms, Montifaud expresses both her consternation with the supplantation of studies of the female nude by the representations of landscape that were favoured by Impressionists as well as her frustration with the conservatism, repression and censorship that constrained visual portrayals of the nude and their criticisms (Dawkins: 147). According to Dawkins, in Montifaud’s opinion, “she would rather see artists paint the nude poorly than abandon the tradition for decent characters securely enclosed in their garments” (Dawkins: 146). This sentiment surely reinforces the reality that the genre of the nude and sexualized representations of women generally, were valuable to at least some female viewers/critics. In her essay on a nude by Charbonnel, Montifaud celebrates the artist’s powerful rendering of the female body that successfully demonstrates his objective “of tacking nature in all its throbbing reality, of translating it with the shiver of the epidermis which makes the short hairs of the thighs and belly stand on end” (Dawkins: 145). In another critique, Montifaud demonstrates her admiration for Jules Lefebvre’s nude painting “Chloe” in which the critic’s gaze finds indulgence in “the fullness of the [female figures’] flanks, the liveliness with which these beautiful bodies are portrayed” (Dawkins: 146). The emphasis of Montifaud’s criticisms upon the value of realistic and vivid representations of the female body certainly demonstrates her personal pleasure in viewing the works that have been traditionally recognized as manifestations of and outlets for the male gaze. Montifaud’s personal pleasure in viewing the female form is similarly expressed in her comment that in artwork “Good drapery… gives the viewer the same impression as a beautiful woman who is dressed in a way that suggests her being clothed is an accident of short duration” (Dawkins: 146). Certainly, Montifaud’s sentiments demonstrate that the empowered gaze that finds pleasure in sexualized visual representations of women is not solely reserved for men, nor is the disempowered “reactionary gaze” described by Williams the only form that the female gaze may take within and without visual representations of women. In a passage of Montifaud’s fiction dedicated to the description of her character Therese’s sensual beauty, the potential for women to pleasurably indulge in the beauty of the
female form is explicitly expressed:
“This was a nudity meant to be breathed in when it emerged from the baptiste peignoir impregnated with its perfume. Her arms, her hands, her breasts inspired sudden embraces, prolonged pressures, extravagant kisses. Even women felt unexpected raptures when faced with this plastic perfection which offered itself willingly, during a friendly visit, to the touch of men, to their robust caresses” (Dawkins: 150).
Perhaps more significantly, Montifaud
alerts us to the possibility that this female experience of titillation is
derived precisely from the female observation of another woman captivating the
sexual attention of men. This distinctly female form of voyeurism reinforces
the possibility that contemporary female viewers of art were indeed able to
experience pleasure during the viewing of sexualized representations of women
through their appreciation of the beauty of the female body and moreover,
because of their conscious recognition that the featured figure powerfully
secured the male gaze. The projection of the female viewer into the position of
the represented figure facilitated the formation of a fantasy in which the
viewer was able to feel herself absorbing the
attention of a male voyeur through the potency of her beauty and sexuality.
Similarly, in viewing the sexualized figure, the female viewer might relive a
moment in which her own femaleness and innate sexuality enraptured and
consequently subjected a man to an explicitly female form of power. This
concept that women were able to derive pleasure from securing the male gaze is
communicated in Montifaud’s sexually charged passage
of fiction, in which Madame Ducroisy poses for a nude
sculpture by the male artist Brandt. Brandt exclaims in his ecstatic indulgence
in Ducroisy’s naked beauty, “This time I have it! I
want this woman’s body, in a state of amorous intoxication, to feel the
fantastic swell of
Similar to the fantasy facilitated by romance fiction, visual representations of sexualized female figures within the genre of orientalist art allowed contemporary women to project themselves into the role of the desirable odalisque to a pleasurable effect. Identification with a sexualized figure in orientalist art arguably mirrored readers’ establishment of empathetic connections to the heroines of romance fiction. According to Janice Radway in her 1984 study of the romance novel, what the female readers enjoy most about romance fiction “is the opportunity to project themselves into the story, to become the heroine, and thus to share her surprise and slowly awakening pleasure of being so closely watched by someone who finds her valuable and worthy of love” (Radway: 67-68). The acquisition of the male gaze is one locus of the female fantasy satisfied by both a female viewer’s identification with the odalisque in orientalist art and the female reader’s identification with the heroine of the romance novel. Although the self-objectification of the female viewer/reader to the male gaze becomes secured in the process of identifying with the odalisque/heroine, it is necessary to recognize that often the female viewer/reader would have read this projection as empowering as a result of her entanglement in patriarchal society. Just as in the context of romance fiction, “each romance is, in fact, a mythic account of how women must achieve fulfillment in patriarchal society,” an assertion put forth by Radway (Radway: 17), orientalist art’s portrayal of women as objects of the male gaze reflects and reinforces the manner in which contemporary women were believed and encouraged to both achieve a fully developed female identity and to attain social power: through the development of a sexual identity that was capable of securing the male gaze. Although the acquisition of the male gaze signalled a women’s achievement of a developed female sexuality and identity, the desirability of the male gaze was also largely pleasurable to women for its perceived promise of emotional nurturance. According to Radway, for the female reader of romance fiction, “the hero’s uninterrupted gaze … evokes the memory of a period in the reader’s life when she was the center of a profoundly nurturant individual’s attention” (Radway: 84). Significantly, for the female reader/viewer the fantasy did not end with the successful acquisition of the male gaze; instead the fantasy depended on the female odalisque/heroine’s ability to “tame” the man (whose gaze she has already attained) by securing his emotional commitment and fidelity (Radway: 124). Presumably, marriage that legitimized a woman’s sexual, emotional and social claim to a man would be the end result of this “taming” of the man and the desired after-effect of the woman’s successful acquisition of the male gaze. In the context of 19th century Europe, a woman’s relationship to her husband would serve as a means to secure her economic and social survival and therefore for the female viewer, the fantasy of captivating the identity of a man through the acquisition of his gaze would delineate the reified objectives of women in the context of patriarchal society: to acquire emotional and sexual fulfillment and social power through the acquisition of a man that would be legitimized through marriage. Furthermore, orientalist representations of women offered European women the opportunity to identify with the unabashedly naked and sensual odalisque whose comfort with her own sexuality provided viewers with a fantasy of escape from their limited ability to identify with their own sexuality as a result of European society in which the female identity was circumscribed by social restrictions upon women’s movement, bodies and participation in the realm of culture. Ultimately, the fantasy of female success in both securing the male gaze and “taming” the male identity reflects subversion to patriarchy in so much that it reframes the sexual relationship between men and women as defined by patriarchy in a way that was deemed empowering to women. In conceiving of the female-male relationship as the result of the woman’s success in “taming” her man, women become conceived of as active participants in the relationship that through the lens of patriarchy has been recognized as controlled by men.
Ultimately, the white skin of the
represented odalisque enhanced the European woman’s identification to the
represented Middle Eastern female figure to the effect that the European viewer
is elevated to the empowered status of the goddesses (that is suggested by the
identity of the odalisque) who is able to secure the male gaze and its promise
of a man’s emotional investment unto her service. Consequently, the European
viewer is empowered by her imagined ability to captivate the Western male, an
ability that translates into power in the context of 19th century
The Female
Imperialist Gaze:
It is important to recognize that
European women like their male counterparts distinguished themselves from members
of the Orient. Furthermore, for the reason that women both participated in and
condoned
Wendy Leeks asserts that women like men perceived the Middle East through a voyeuristic gaze by which notions of Oriental otherness and exoticism were formulated (Leeks: 31). Leeks recognizes that Lady Mary Whortley Montagu’s account of her visit to Turkish women’s public baths demonstrates the existence of a female imperialist gaze (Leeks: 31). According to Leeks, although Whortley Montagu’s sex facilitated her entrance into the women’s public baths, her status as a European and as an ambassador’s wife as well as her refusal to participate with its female inhabitants by joining them in their nudity establishes her position at the baths as voyeuristic (Leeks: 31). Ultimately, the Turkish women were measured against the deemed normalcy of Whortley Monagu’s identity and became relegated to the position of the exotic, Oriental other (Leeks: 31). In Leeks words, “A notion of Western superiority objectifies the Eastern women and subjects them to investigation, even though that investigation is not connected with the author’s sexual desire” (Leeks: 31). Whortley Montagu’s voyeuristic position is further differentiated from that of men in so much that it is neither secretive nor non-reciprocal; instead Whortley Montagu’s precence at the public baths, which is legitimate because of her sex, renders her similarly subject to the gazes of the Turkish women. Significantly, Whortley Montagu’s distance from these women is further diminished by her agreement to open her skirt and reveal her stays at the women’s request (Leeks: 31). According to Leek’s, this action “reinforces her right to be there through emphasising what she and the other bathers have in common – their femaleness” (Leeks: 31).
The Point:
It is important to recognize that although European women typically distinguished themselves from Middle Eastern individuals on the basis of their perceived racial difference (Lewis: 15), they succeeded in identifying with the Oriental female figure in their pleasurable readings of orientalist visual representations. Just as Whortley Montagu shed her distanced and differentiated position in relation to the Turkish bathing women at the recognition of their parallel experience of femaleness (Leeks: 31), in projecting themselves into the role of odalisque, European women abandoned their conceived differences from members of the Orient in order to acknowledge the similarities between their identities. Significantly, the process of the European woman’s identification with the Oriental figure was secured precisely because evidence of the racial difference of the Middle Eastern figure, the foundation of European women’s self-differentiation from members of the Orient, was removed by the convention of representing the figure with white skin. It is my belief that in the European woman’s act of projecting herself into the role of odalisque there is an inherent demonstration of European woman’s recognition of and reconciliation to her inferior position to European man in patriarchal society that is conceived of as analogous to the position of members of the Orient to Europeans. In both representing and viewing Oriental figures with white skin, women became unconsciously confronted with a proposed correlation between the identities of the European woman and the Middle Eastern individual. In projecting themselves into the position of the Oriental figure, European women authenticate the legitimacy of this proposed correlation that would have been consciously undermined by European women’s own racialized self-distinction from members of the Orient. It seems the basis of the European woman and Oriental’s commonality was a parallel experience of subjugation to the European male. Significantly, Reina Lewis acknowledges that in European patriarchal society, Western women, like members of the Orient, were ‘orientalized’ in so much that they were “similarly produced through the energies of imperialism (Lewis: 21). In being reduced to “objects of exchange and use by men” in patriarchal society, an assertion put forth by Pollock, European women were subject to a similar disempowered status to which members of the Orient were subjected by the force of colonial imperialism (Pollock: 136). In her fantastic projection into the role of odalisque, European woman successfully reframed her disempowered position of passive sexual object to the European man by the means of a pleasurable fantasy in which she existed as the empowered goddess figure who was able to willingly secure the male gaze and its promise of a man’s emotional investment unto her service. Ultimately, the fantasy in which a willing woman captivated and “tamed” a man offered European woman an active position in the female-male relationship traditionally recognized as controlled by men. This fantastic projection of European woman into the position of love goddess (connoted by the romanticized representation of the odalisque) allowed a woman to reconcile herself to her subjugated existence as a man’s sexual object in patriarchal society by providing her with a fantasy of agency.
Conclusion:
Underlying the phenomenon by which the Middle Eastern figure is represented with white skin is the premise that in the European conception of the Orient and the West’s relationship to it, white women and the Middle Eastern individual become correlated. This is true in reading the phenomenon of the white skinned Oriental figure as evidence of European man’s mutual conception of the European woman and the Orient as objects of a form of perfidious power that is analogous to exploitative male sexual desire. Similarly, if the phenomenon is read as the means to facilitate a European woman’s fantastic projection into the role of the Oriental figure in order to reframe her disempowered position as the sexual object of European man in a fantasy of consent and control, the basic principle of the Oriental’s and women’s analogous position in the Western conception of East and West is indicated. Cited in Homi Bhabha’s introduction to “The Location of Culture” is a description of African American artist Renee Green’s conceptual art installation in which the cultural differences between black and white people is considered (Bhabha: 2-4). In Green’s metaphoric employment of the gallery building’s structure to explore the relationship between the two identities, she identifies in the stairwell between the upper and lower levels of the gallery, a “liminal space” in which a meeting of the two polar identities is secured (Bhabha: 2-4). Bhabha’s recognition of the stairwell as the “the connective tissue that constructs the difference between upper and lower, black and white” (Bhaba: 4) is relevant to our consideration of the manner in which white women and the Oriental identity were situated as “the connective tissue” between the identities of East and West in the Western conception of its relationship to the Orient. For the reason that both women and members of the Orient were recognized as inferior to the Western male and consequently subject to his domination, both the identity of the European woman and the Middle Eastern individual were conceived in like terms and it is therefore it is logical that their identities became intertwined in the visual representations of the white skinned Oriental figure. Ultimately, what we can ascertain from the tendency to portray Middle Eastern figures with white skin is the reality that European women and Orientals became similarly situated in what Homi K. Bhaba refers to as “the interstices of – the overlap and displacement of domains of difference … [through which] the intersubjective and collective experience of … [East and West] are negotiated (Bhaba: 2).
Works
Cited:
Bhabha, Homi.
“Introduction: Locations of Culture.” The Location of
Culture.
Berger, John. Ways
of Seeing.
Bronte,
Chicago,
Judy and Edward Lucie-Smith. Women and
Art: Contested Territory.
Dawkins, Heather.
The Nude in French Art and Culture, 1870-1910.
Doy, Gen. Women
and Visual Culture in Nineteenth Century
Kalmar, Ivan. "The Houkah in
the Harem: On Smoking and Orientalist
Art," Smoking, ed. by Sander L. Gilman and Xun Zhou.
Leeks, Wendy. “Ingres Other-Wise.”
Lewis, Reina. Gendering Orientalism: Race,
Femininity and Representation.
McClintock, Anne.
Imperial Leather: Race, Gender and Sexuality in the Colonial Contest.
Mulvey, Laura. Visual and Other Pleasures.
Pollock,
Griselda. Differencing the Canon: Feminist Desire and the
Writing of Art’s Histories.
Radway, Janice A.
Reading the Romance: Women, Patriarchy, and Popular Literature.
Said,
Edward. “Shattered Myths.” Orientalism: A Reader.
Ed. A. L. Macfie.
Williams, Linda. Viewing Positions: Ways of Seeing Film.
Yeazell, Ruth
Bernard. Harems of the Mind: Passages of Western Art and Literature.