Leaked Woman Profiles From Palace: Abdulhamid’s Daughter: The Tragedy Of An Ottoman Princess
In this article I’ll be covering the depiction of the East through Western eyes, East’s perception of West and reflections of the East on to the work through the novel Abdul Hamid’s Daughter: The Tragedy of an Ottoman Princess. It was first published in English in the year 1913. This work was written in collaboration with a Western intellectual who claims that she is sympathetic towards Ottoman society and Ottoman ladies. The work is generally about tragedies of princess’ and women of palace, and since the narrator and the main story have Turkish origins, Ottoman’s view towards itself and West can be observed. Yet this text shouldn’t be understood as East making itself more Eastern. First, we can’t see Melek Hanoum’s drafts and we can’t know for sure that how Grace Ellison shaped things to attract attention of the readers. Therefore, to define Eastern and Western perceptions in the novel and to determine how information from East was shaped and written in the hands of west is one of my aims in writing this paper.
Summary Of The Novel
Princess Ayşe is Abdülhamid II’s daughter. As Ellison emphasises in prolog, she was a woman suffering from loneliness and feeling of imprisonment like all Ottoman princesses. She was also preparing to get married to her childhood friend Ethem Pasha, and at the very beginning of the novel, they get married. Abdülhamid himself wanted her to marry Ethem Pasha who she had been seeing since her childhood and feeling close to. Yet Ottoman princesses usually marries to a pasha or high rank officer whom they don’t know as a result of their restricted social life. And in this marriage, they are unlikely to be happy. Whereas if Ayşe marries to Ethem whom she knows and loves since childhood certainly will be happy.
Bored with her life as Sultan, Ayşe finds happiness only in her cousin who’s Murat the Fifth’s daughter Leyla Sultan’s continuous visits to palace. Leyla is well educated, polite and well-spoken. A charming woman with her grace and beauty. Yet she has a bleeding wound deep inside. Because she is the daughter of Murat V who was dethroned and sentenced to lifetime in prison with his family by Abdülhamid. She witnessed her father’s fade away to death with her own eyes. So that friendship between children of men who are hostile to each other like that seems impossible. Everyone in the palace and narrator of the novel Dilfeza are aware of that.
But Ayşe and Leyla has great time and Ayşe feels more attached to Leyla day by day. In that time, Ayşe gets sick. Ethem Pasha brings her the best doctors, yet for whatever the reason is, Ayşe gets worse instead. In that moment people in palace gets suspicious of a love between Ethem Pasha and Leyla, seeing their interesting interactions but can’t be sure of it or they just don’t want to believe. They make sure of it when Ethem Pasha’s concubine who is in love with him, Cavidan, finds letters of Ethem and Leyla between Ethem Pasha’s documents. As well as uncovering the love between Ethem and Leyla, this event proves that Ethem and Leyla are the ones who secretly poisoned Ayşe. Concubines who finds out this, can’t stand those actions taken against their beloved Ayşe Sultan and revolt. Leyla and Ethem Pasha get caught and left to Abdul Hamid II’s mercy. After all these Ayşe goes into depression.
As Leyla answers to Abdülhamid’s question as to why has she done it, she calls him him as the usurper of throne and tells him that she knows Abdülhamid’s heart only beats for Ayşe. She adds that she wanted to take away the honour of the Abdülhamid because Abdülhamid always says that his greatest honour would be seeing Ayşe happy. And that’s the very reason she destroyed Ayşe and Ethem: her only aim was to just to incapacitate and humiliate Abdülhamid even if it’s just for an hour. At the end of the novel it’s told that Leyla was murdered — but we know it doesn’t happen in real life. Ethem is said to be exiled yet we don’t know if that happened for sure, too. In the third chapter of the novel and in ending of the book, Dilaver who is one of the agas in the palace tells to the narrator of the novel, Haznedar Dilfeza that:
“-Dilfeza, Leyla really took his revenge. Because for the first time, Sultan cried.”[1]
Grace Ellison’s Look Towards Abdülhamid II And Her Motive Of Telling This Story On The Basis Of Summary
Grace Ellison describes in her prologue how she got Melek Hanoum’s drafts and how she waited Abdül Hamid to die or to be dethroned in order to come to Turkey. Being someone who had lots of information about Abdül Hamid, as someone who actually saw some of the people that became characters of the novel and someone who lived in era of second constitutional monarchy, after drawing the panaroma of that era and padishah, she expresses her real motive in writing this:
“…and after a hundred years, how weird and impossible it’ll look. –In that time, poets will say- A mean sultan was living in a gloriously beautiful palace of Bosphor coasts. He gained so much influence and strength that, everyone in that vibrant realm, shivered before him (…) At night while fear slipped away the sleep out of his eyes, sultan orders master aga to assemble the concubines and they, there, in front of him barefeet with wiggling veils trying to tame the wild look on his eyes.
That tyrant –poet will say- had a heart of stone. None of the five hundred marvelously beautiful women couldn’t manage to make his stone heart tremble.
Wait reader! Poet deceived you. You’ll see how that heart of stone tremble with the name Ayşe, his daughter.”[2]
As we can deduce from these words, one of the reasons why she wrote this novel — and for me, the most essential one- to write this novel is to show the soft spot of a tough padishah like Abdül Hamid the Second who encircled himself with walls: Sweetness of exposure.
How Was The Novel Written? What’s Melek Hanoum’s Part? How Realistic Is The Novel?
The first part of the novel is written by Grace Ellison. In this part, Grace Ellison’s visit to Ottoman palace and Ayşe Sultan are mentioned. Ellison hands out information about Pre-Constitutional and Post-Constitutional Ottoman society and palace nobles. The second part is written by novelizing translations of Melek Hanoum’s drafts. It is formed by two separate chapters and ending where Grace Ellison starts to talk again and summarizes the case.
Melek Hanoum wrote an Ottoman princess’ life that she knew closely, and then, handed it out to Grace Ellison who was one of the writers she met in England. Ellison wanted to come to Istanbul to see the actual heroes of the book, and that’s how the first part of the book was formed.
It’s said that the novel is based on true events. When we try to reach the second and the third sources to prove the reality of these events, we come out empty handed. In various sources there are some information about similar events taking place, but all of those are nothing but records of gossips of that era’s elites.
Furthermore, the name Leyla Sultan is a name that was changed in Novel. Murat the Fifth has four daughters. Their names are Hatice Sultan, Fehime Sultan, Fatma Sultan and Aliye Sultan. It’s likely that the name which is mentioned in the book as Leyla Sultan is Hatice Sultan. Moreover, information we have from the book about sisters’ life, makes us think that Leyla Sultan –who was married with Ali Vasıf Bey, an unimportant state officer- is Hatice Sultan in real life.
Through The First Part Of The Novel Grace Ellison’s Opinions About Ottoman Princess’ Life
The first part is a short part where Ellison who comes to Istanbul after the declaration of constitutional monarchy and in here she shares her opinions about visiting Ayşe Sultan, speaking to her and Ottoman palace life. In this part, she also shares her thoughts about Ottoman daily life, women’s daily attitudes and specifics of Ottoman society. Firstly, she mentions two separate high societies in Ottoman society. First of these is the high society which consists of ambassador’s wives, the other one is Cemiyet who comes together only in big events like holidays, and it consists of Ottoman princess and high officers’ wives. State of these two societies who can’t come together and the gap between them before constitutional monarchy are mentioned. She also states that Ottoman princesses doesn’t have an important role, only Sultanas who are mothers to padishah are important.
Comparisons between Western high society women and Ottoman princesses form the main theme of the work. After mentioning important roles that Western queens or princesses have in social life, she states how boring and meaningless is the life of Ottoman princesses, and she adds that most of the population does not even know for sure that they even exist. She underlines that princesses were unable to rule their fate by following lines:
“-If an English women really wants something, she always gets it. English women exists herself, an Ottoman princess’ fate is on Allah’s hand.”
This part is the only part where we can detect something in the context of Orientalism. Since this is the only part where Ellison shares her own thoughts about the society she meets during her visit. The first of these i Ottoman and Eastern societies’ flamboyant speech. She notes that this is not more intimate than a simple “good morning” or “hello”. Then she draws attention to exaggerated versions of these expressions.
“I began to lose my patience. I started using elegant callings of the East:
-Little Fatma, houri of my heart, my soul, my life, my clove, my rose, would you really want me to be satisfied by seeing this princess?
-Of course, why wouldn’t I, heart of my heart?”[3]
On the other hand Ellison mentions Turkish women as greedy for jewelry.
“(…) Their grandmothers gave them a greed to jewelry.”[4]
Status Of Turkish Palace Women Through The Second Part Of The Novel
We know that the second part was shaped via the notes that Melek Hanoum sent. But this part is novelized, not as a bunch of notes. This is the main part of the work. Love fights among princesses seem like an authentic Eastern story. Maybe that’s the reason what Ellison is excited about or thinking that it would attract Western readers’ attention. Narrator of the novel is Haznedar of Princess Ayşe, Dilfeza whom Ellison admired in the course of her visit to princess.
One of the most salient parts of the novel that explains state of the palace women is where Cavidan Kalfa speaks of the concubines in the palace. Things mentioned in these lines are also in use for Ottoman princess. In this part, we see that notes that were sent from an Ottoman were translated into something that could look pleasing in the eye for Western minds. Even though some of them were real, some were fantasies or fictions. Having such an exotic description in a novel which was written by drafts that were sent by an Ottoman lady who knows the Ottoman domestic life and life in palace can only be explained by Grace Ellison factor.
“Only embroidery, (…) living months without seeing a fresh face, impatiently waiting for holidays, (…) seeing ships passing by through our windows, waiting sun to rise from east and set to west, (…) not feeling a life, a rise, always reading same things same Persian literature, thousand years old Arabian literature, not knowing what public thinks about this life of imprisonment, never going to that sea we watch, never going to woods the public speaks of, or not seeing the big cities we heard about, being a quiet, characterless being and failing to find a space of hand span in this world…”[5]
I think the following lines are the most remarkable ones that describe Princess Ayşe’s tragedy. Princess feels that something was missing in her life yet she had been living a life so isolated that she can’t even describe what that missing thing was. In fact, it can be said that because of the style the princess had been raised; she doesn’t even know that there is a chance to think of a different life. She says: “Farfetched, I want things that are so farfetched that in fact I don’t know what I want.”[6]
Attitude In The Ending Of The Novel And Grace Ellison’s Look On Ottoman Society And Abdülhamid II.
The end of the novel narrates what happens a few years after the fiction part is finished. First it’s being said that the Constitutional Monarchy started to show its complete effect. In the following paragraph, dethroning of Abdülhamid II is being pictured. He is shown as miserable. Ellison who curses with heavy insults to Abdülhamid II in these lines, describes Sultan and daughter in the house in Thessaloniki where Abdülhamid II’s house confinement persists, pictures them as blaming each other in an emotional atmoshpere. Ayşe’s words in the novel seems like they are said for her father, not for herself:
“My sin might be as big as an ocean, yet your forgiveness is far more greater than that my Allah![7]
Remark
The novel tells not only the imprisoned life of Abdülhamid II’s daughter Ayşe Sultan, but all the women in palace as well. Two women, one Easterner and one Westerner takes part in the writing of the book. Main text is based on Melek Hanoum’s notes. Because the story is being told takes place in Ottoman palace and since the narrator is the treasurer of Ayse Sultan Dilfeza, the novel turns into a text consisting of Easterner look on the East. The only place where the Westerner effect is seen is the part where Grace Ellison’s visit to Istanbul is told. These few pages, which doesn’t have anything related to East’s look onto the West, have the perception of the palace women’s perception of West as a whole. That’s because they don’t know the West. Even sultans can see the people outside of the palace for only few hours during special days. As a defence against the perception of West as a whole, united, single unity, Ellison makes some corrections. For example, she says the women who hunt are only the Germans, they are the barbaric ones, not the others.
We can’t know for sure if the events in the novel actually took place. For example, we don’t know whether Ayşe Sultan was really poisoned or not. Yet we do know that Leyla Sultan wasn’t murdered. Which hints us that some things in the story are fiction. Since we are unable letters, we can’t exactly know how and which things Ellison changed in Melek Hanım’s drafts in order to make it more attractive for Western readers. Yet, for me, this bears no importance whatsoever. This is a literary text where East narrates East and I read on the basis of this fact, which is the only thing we know for sure.
[1] Grace ELLİSON, Melek HANOUM, Abdülhamidin Kızı, transl. İrfan Konur Gürgen, Hilmi Kitabevi, Istanbul 1938, p. 123.; All quotations were translated into English by me from the Turkish version of the work.
[2] Cf. ELLİSON, HANOUM, op. cit., p. II.
[3] Cf. ELLİSON, HANOUM, op. cit., p. 3.
[4] Cf. ELLİSON, HANOUM, op. cit., p. 5.
[5] Cf. ELLİSON, HANOUM, op. cit., p. 56.
[6] Cf. ELLİSON, HANOUM, op. cit., p. 64.
[7] Cf. ELLİSON, HANOUM, op. cit., p. 128.
