Harriet Beecher Stowe Had Moorish Slippers

Résumé du livre

"Harriet Beecher Stowe Had Moorish Slippers: The Oriental Roots of Domesticity" is an attempt to chart the nineteenth century relationship between the creation of woman's sphere, the gender segregated world of American elite women, and the Oriental Renaissance as revealed through references to oriental fascination in the biographies of Harriet Beecher Stowe and her family. The resulting theory is that the restriction of women to the domestic sphere can be seen as an incomplete imitation of Eastern women's culture, an idea which was imported and emulated as Europe and America increased their participation in the Ottoman-controlled global market. The first chapter, "Forges and Footes" highlights the changing place of women in the Beecher family tree, from the very public role played by British immigrant Hannah Beecher to the secluded life led by Roxana Foote Beecher, Harriet's mother. This section also shows that the Beecher children inherited their ambition from their mothers' families, whose relatives included several politicians and military leaders. Lyman Beecher managed to constrain his children's efforts to the pulpit and the pen. The second chapter, "Moorish Slippers" discusses the political and economic interactions of the West with the East, ending with the Europe poised to dominate the Ottoman controlled trade routes. Samuel Foote, Harriet's maternal uncle, was very cosmopolitan and an expert on Islamic and Catholic cultures. He gained his expertise by immersing himself in the many languages and cultures of the Mediterranean and Latin America. Using primary sources, the author demonstrates that other sea captains and mariners also had opportunity to acquire cultural knowledge if they felt so inclined. Harriet's Moorish slippers, a gift from her uncle, represent centuries of international trade and Western exposure to the then dominant Eastern cultures. The third chapter, "Nights in Araby" expands the West's exposure to the East through a discussion of the Oriental Renaissance, especially in the European literary realm. This exploration finds that Harriet Beecher Stowe was representative of a general fascination with the Arabian Nights. Several of the great English and American writers admit to loving and outright mimicking the stories in the tales. Scholars of the Oriental Renaissance period were also extracting factual knowledge from the Arabic sources, knowledge later used and augmented by the West in the Industrial Revolution and the later drive to build empires. The fourth and fifth chapters, "Startling Facts" and "Hoops and Harems" focus on the links between Eastern and Western women's culture. The fourth chapter explores Samuel Foote's claim that "Turks are more honest than Christians" in the treatment of women. Various forms of Western polygamy were practiced by relatively prosperous Western men, as noted by writers from Foote's lifetime. The last chapter finds four points which characterize a backward society in regards to the way in which women are treated according to American missionary philosophy. These four points are shown to directly apply to nineteenth century American culture. The conclusion of this thesis is that domesticity is the West's imitation of Eastern harem culture. Several writers of the time agreed that Western women of the era were trained to live in imitation harems. Evidence accumulated in this thesis suggests that Catharine Beecher and other pro-woman writers recognized this harem lifestyle and sought to acquire the legal rights women had in Islam for women in the West.