Making the Mediterranean Reflection Italy: Week 3

The role of women in the 16th and 17th century has been previously overlooked in the Ottoman Empire and in Italian society in many ways. In our reading, “Safiye’s Household and Venetian Diplomacy” by Maria Pendani, she analyzes the role of Venetian and European women in the Ottoman Empire, which had been overlooked by her predecessors. Many women in the Ottoman Empire who could obtain power were mostly foreign. Christian boys were kidnapped and converted to Islam, where they were made into slaves and trained as a janissary or were educated to be the high officials of the Ottoman Empire. Others decided travelled to the Ottoman Empire on their own will in an attempt to make a career for themselves. Many of the converts thought that having a strong family tie within the Empire was important, so they would call upon their female relatives join them. “In the upper classes women became more and more important since marriages were used to cement alliances and it was necessary for men to have mothers, sisters, and wives well introduced in the imperial harem” (Pendani, 2000).

Women also had certain “rights” when it came to religion. If a woman was either single or marrying a Muslim man, they would  not have to convert, but if they were marrying a Muslim man for their second marriage, they would have to convert. But despite these rights”and upper class privileges, Venetian women were used to improve the power of Venetian men though the passing of information from the harem or via marriage. Ottoman women had right to dispose of their dowry, go to court, the imperial council, and had more autonomous power in the Empire. As a woman, it was better to be a subject of the Ottoman Empire than in Europe because there were more women rights.

Venetian courtesans in Venetian lands were were used by men as well, but in different ways. In “The Mediterranean Feast” by Clifford Wright stated that courtesans were more than prostitutes . They were educated and cultured to intellectually stimulate the upper class men of Venice. Courtesans were used to preserve pleasure in Venice. Unlike harem women in the Ottoman Empire who were slaves, courtesans were highly paid. Artists even had to pay them more to paint them, than what upper class men paid to be entertained by them (Wright, 2000).

Yesterday, I attended the film screening of “La Grande Bellezza” which I had no idea what to expect when I came in. I did not know that it would have such deep messages within the story line and have such stylistic similarities to French New Wave film such as Godard or Truffaut's work. In this film, the main character, Jep, and his friends, who were part of the Roman elite, enjoyed giant parties, outrageous expositions of art, extensive meals, and the company of strippers. Yet as I watched this film, I realized that Jep was tired of his empty life and kept thinking of his past. Venetian renegades had done something similar. When they had tired of Constantinople, they moved back to Venice to rejoin their loved ones and reconverted. The lifestyle of Jep and his high class friends were much how the upper class Venetians lived. The way Venice is characterized here is comparable to the way life was portrayed in Rome in the film, “La Grande Bellezza.” “Venetian style meant fashionable people who listened to music, engaged in witty conversation, all with proper doses of theater, gambling, drinking, and fine dining” (Wright, 2000).