Fanny Davis' The Ottoman Lady: A Social History from 1718 to 1918 is a study of urban, upper-class women in the Ottoman Empire (primarily Istanbul) that looks at the social and material universe that these women occupied. Davis concerns herself with an extremely broad and somewhat reified field of inquiry - the Ottoman lady. Her approach is descriptive, rather than analytical. As such, it is difficult to pinpoint her thesis or even summarize her conclusions. Her work attempts to convey a sense of how the elite Ottoman woman lived in the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries - what were the rituals that she went through to mark significant events such as marriage and childbirth, what did she wear, what kinds of physical spaces did she inhabit, and what kinds of activities did she engage in? In addition to providing concrete details regarding these and other matters, Davis' work consistently acknowledges the changes that occurred in women's lives during the 200-year period in question, particularly with regard to education and marriage practices. Although she does not draw an explicit connection between the social position of women and the state, she points to the increasingly active role of the Ottoman state in regulating matters that had previously been considered private, such as the training of midwives, the education of daughters, and the certification of marriage ties.

Because Davis aims to paint a comprehensive picture of the life of the Ottoman lady, she incorporates an impressive range of textual and non-textual sources, including narrative histories, memoirs, Ottoman novels, personal interviews with surviving members of elite families, art and architecture, and Ottoman costume. She employs no specific methodology other than to bring all these sources together in a single volume, which is somewhat impressive in itself.

However, her use of these sources is often problematic. She relies extensively on memoirs by 18th and 19th century European travelers and devotes almost no space to discussing either the value of these travelogues or their limitations. Despite her acknowledgement that many European men wrote about private events that they did not actually witness, she includes several such accounts uncritically. In the case of Charles White's description of the consummation of the marriage of Sultan Mustafa III's sister, Davis defends its accuracy with White's (completely unverifiable) assertion that the account came from “an 'authority not to be doubted.”

Davis implies that her interviews with surviving members of elite families will be used to overcome the limitations of textual sources and provide new insights into Ottoman private life, but these interviews generally play a subordinate role within the text. In the chapter on marriage, for instance, Davis reprints rich and lengthy descriptions provided by European women travelers and Ottoman novelists while using her interview material to provide indirect descriptions of minutiae like the decoration on a prayer rug (footnote 102, page 85) or the color of wedding dresses (footnote 116, page 85). The potential value of the interview material is evident when one examines the memoirs of Halide Edip and Melek Hamin, which depict events unlikely to be witnessed by outsiders and provide insights into the ways in which two Ottoman women perceived their world and its conventions. {For instance, Hanim and Edip’s descriptions of the rituals entailed in the visit of the görücü (lit. "the viewer" - a woman who goes about viewing marriageable women for prospective bridegrooms), Edip’s description of the strains within a polygamous household, and the experiences of both women with unhappy marriages and divorces.} Interestingly, even these accounts are not directly excerpted, but rather are rephrased in the author’s own words, with only selected quotations provided.

As Ottoman elites were likely to have had more exposure to the private details of Ottoman life than were European travelers of either sex, it is unfortunate that Davis did not choose to present their perspectives more fully. Additionally, the great majority of her sources deal only with the lives of women in Istanbul, leaving the reader unsure as to how representative Davis' portrait of the Ottoman lady really is.

Davis tends to separate women's history from the larger history of the Ottoman Empire. Although Ottoman political and economic reforms are periodically mentioned, change in the Ottoman lady's life is most often attributed to undefined processes of 'Westernization.' Davis also tends to separate women's history from family history, focusing on the rituals that marked events like marriage and childbirth rather than examining social and economic implications of these events. While her approach results in a wealth of fascinating personal details collected from different women's lives, the general lack of context for these details makes it difficult for the reader to understand their significance. The Ottoman lady is a curiosity, observed through Western eyes and not permitted to speak directly about her own experience, even when sources exist that would allow her to do so.

Despite its shortcomings, Davis' work synthesizes a remarkable amount of material and sheds light on many important matters considered unworthy of notice by 'serious' historians, including women's costume, handicrafts, and leisure activities. She emphasizes the importance of women's private lives and their interactions & connections with other women. Although the laundry lists of material goods were difficult to slog through, I found it a valuable resource for learning about women in the Ottoman Empire. ( )