A History of Women's Seclusion in the Middle East: the Veil in the Looking Glass

Ann Chamberlin dedicated A History of Women's Seclusion in the Middle East: The Veil in the Looking Glass to Umm Ismail:

“I never saw her face, […] nor could I […] understand a word she spoke. […] Yet, her quiet confidence […] and the obvious reverence in which she was held by husband, children, friends, and neighbors knocked the flimsy supports out from my brash Western feminism, sending it into a free fall which finally came to rest in this book.”

Harems have an ignoble opinion in the West although they have also been romanticized. Mostly what we know is that we don't know. The separation between male and female spheres of life puzzles us along with its economic feasibility to men in the Middle East who have provided for female members of their families and strangers in the harems without any marital advantages sometimes as opposed to ceding that responsibility to a state which could rarely match their generosity.

Ann Chamberlin majored in Archeology of the Middle East, traveled to Israel, North Africa, Turkey and Jordan. She wrote nine historical novels and is a renowned playwright. She is an American, a wife and a mother.

She has compiled information from pre-recorded and historical sources on women's harems in the Middle East. From archaeological excavations through cave paintings to literary sources and architectural blueprints she has combed through available sources yet did not find much to describe the harem (from "haram" for "sacred" mostly) in more detail except for “there is never any sense, as clings to our Western use of the word, of prison. It is sanctuary, holy, inviolable, not crushed and dominated.”

Ann Chamberlin gathered and reviewed an impressive body of available knowledge and arrived at a conclusion that although not much is preserved historically or open to research to outsiders it seems that the pattern of seclusion might not be oppressive as many have suggested. On the contrary: the seclusion might be empowering.

In the absence of sources this book steers away from the Middle East considerably to look at the human history in general and the movement of humans away from their communities into the industrial centers and the negative results of severing the ties with the community of origin and the difficulties of raising children without the support of a group such as an established community or an extended family.

There are other academic works on the Middle East such as either Jewish Mind or Arab Mind by Raphael Patai, a Hungarian Jew who spoke several Middle Eastern languages and remains a top notch expert in the field. He enriched his theoretical knowledge through real life experience. He was friends with many Jews and Arabs and visited Middle East.

For someone interested in the Middle East and willing to subject themselves to an academic work reading any of Raphael Patai's books might be time well spent but for someone with interest in either Women's Studies or history Ann Chamberlin's work is a good choice. She sees women's seclusion in the Middle East as a natural adaptation to life allowing women to support themselves emotionally and share in caring for their families.

She quotes women from the Middle East who find fitting in with the other members of the harem more important to their life than a good marital match as most time is spent in female company. She also sees harems as female freedom enclaves against the male dominated life on the outside which women find contrary to their and their children's needs and preferences. She sees women's seclusion as a very much pro-family and pro-women social institution where men have no right to interfere but duty to protect and cherish women. She doesn't see harems as a way for women to withdraw or perpetuate stagnant social structures. Ann Chamberlin is highly complimentary of harems.

A lot is said about the current situation of women in the West which Ann Chamberlin finds to be very much unequal and oppressive. Western women most often than not end up single parents without either emotional or financial supports Middle Eastern women might be enjoying. There is also a fair amount of male bashing including quotes from Selfish Cell and author's own personal observations on life. Human biology underscores Ann Chamberlin's deliberations enforcing the view that for women biology is destiny and that there are insufficient protections for women today since most of the old style clan, kinship or extended family ties and supports have been done away with. She stops short of suggesting that currently harems are one of the best ways of dealing with the need to nurture, care for and socialize children known to man.

Very few ethnographers or any other researchers have been to the Middle East and of those, most were men. First hand accounts of daily life in the Middle East on a scale of The Autobiography of an Unknown Indian by Nirad C. Chaudhuri, in case of India, are extremely rare . On top of already existing linguistic, cultural and distance barriers the current travel restrictions don't make it any easier to foster new contacts, develop friendships or conduct new studies. Due to war much more than just the women's sphere is the current "restricted" and " forbidden" to people in the West and not even the sizable immigration wave from the Middle East into Europe has improved our inter-cultural understanding.