Women’sStudies ht. Forum, Vol. 12. No. 2, pp. 183-198, 1989 Printed in the USA. 0277-5395/89 $3.00 + .oo D 1989 Rr@mon Press plc THROUGH EACH (YTHER’SEYES: EGYPTIAN, LEVANTINE-EGYPTIAN, AND EUROPEAN WOMEN’S IMAGES OF THEMSELVES AND OF EACH OTHER (X362-1920) MERVAT HATEM Department of Political Science, Howard University, Washington, DC 20059, U.S.A. Synopsis-This article attempts to analyze the images that Egyptian, Levantine-Egyptian, and European women produced of themselves and of each other. These images help us understand the sources and the causes of tension that existed among them then and continue to the present. Because all of these images were partially inspired by cultural nationalism, their critique allows one to assess how European and Egyptian women were influenced by modern national ideologies and rivalries. It prevented them from using each other’s experience to push for a more radical critique of their own societies. INTRODUCTION The importance of cultural nationalism in understanding the history of the relations be- tween Middle Eastern and European women, their problems, and the related images they have of themselves and of each other has yet to be recognized and explored. The present study will attempt to show how the writings of European Orientalist and Egyptian na- tionalist women, during the period from 1860 to 1920, presented idealized and partial images of one another. Because they viewed each other as alien, they were not able to relate to each other’s experiences, learn from them and to integrate them into an under- standing of the dilemmas that were also their own. European women writers saw Egyptian women as largely circumscribed by seclusion through the harem institution. In contrast, Egyptian women envied European women’s unrestricted freedom. The relationship be- tween these images and the reality experi- enced by those two groups of women was far from simple or direct. As far back as the 186Os, Egyptian and Levantine women had increased their access to private education Revised paper presented to the Seventh Berkshire Conference on the History of Women held at Wellesley College on June 19-21, 1987 at Wellesley, Massachu- setts. and to missionary schools (Yahya, 1983, Chapter 4). During the ‘Urabi revolution, Egyptian women, of all classes, played an important role in supporting the revolution (Broadly, 1980, Chapter 28). The signifi- cance of these changes was not reflected in the images produced by the European wom- en writers. Similarly, the writings of Egyp- tian and Levantine women did not appreciate how the European women who settled in Egypt and those who married Egyptian men, were privately and publicly restricted by the European as well as the Egyptian patriarchal rules that made them unfree. The images of the “secluded” and “un- free” Egyptian woman as well as those of “free” and “publicly visible” European wom- an are curiously related. They focus the dis- cussion on external appearances and not their meaning and/or their underlying reality. They also project onto the other what is feared the most in oneself. By thinking of themselves as all powerful and free vis-a-vis Egyptian women, Western women could avoid confronting their own powerlessness and gender oppression at home. For Egyp- tian women, the defense of Islam and some of its restrictive institutions allowed them not to own their power to transform society. They were critical of the liberty of Western women which was not put to the explicit ser- vice of the family and society. Similarly, Western women avoided the discussion of 183