Abstract
The eunuch appears as a major, although little commented on, figure in the Persian Letters published in 1721 and written by Montesquieu (1689–1755). The Letters are based on the observations of Usbek and Rica, two fictional Persian travelers in France. In the writings of Francois Bernier and Jean-Baptiste Tavernier, the eunuchs appeared as degraded, hideous and immoral beings. However, the Protestant traveler, Jean Chardin (1643–1713) took a sociological view of the eunuchs in the Persian harems, opening the way for a reversal of this point of view by Montesquieu. The Letters illuminate the alienation of which the eunuchs were victims. Regularly appearing in the novel, the eunuchs were finally able to give voice to their suffering and revolt. At the dawn of the Enlightenment, the eunuchs of the harem of Usbek in Isfahan are portrayed not only as slaves charged with exercising the power of the absent master but also and above all as dignified figures of respect. They are at once victims of masculine despotism and capable of revolting against injustice done to them, in the same way as the women, the other subalterns, enclosed in their harems.
This is a preview of subscription content, log in via an institution to check access.
Access this chapter
Tax calculation will be finalised at checkout
Purchases are for personal use only
Notes
- 1.
See Gayatri Chakravorty Spivak, “Can the Subaltern Speak?” (1988), text translated by Jérôme Vidal under the title Les Subalternes peuvent-elles parler? Paris, Éditions Amsterdam/Multitude, 2009.
- 2.
Definition given by the dictionary Robert historique de la langue française, accessible on line. On the different functions of eunuchs in the Ottoman empire, see Ehud Toledano, Slavery and the Abolition in the Ottoman Middle East, Seattle and London, University of Washington Press, 1998, p. 20 and following. In As if Silent and Absent, E. Toledano reminds us, furthermore, that eunuchs were “the mediators between the women of elite harems and the male world” (New Haven and London, Yale University Press, 2007, p. 13).
- 3.
According to the traveler Jean-Baptiste Tavernier (whom Montesquieu had read before writing the Lettres persanes), the removal of the testicles concerned White eunuchs (those who stayed outside the harem), while Black eunuchs also underwent the removal of the penis (Nouvelle Relation de l’intérieur du serrail du Grand Seigneur…, Paris, Varennes, 1675, p. 17, quoted by Catherine Volpilhac-Auger and Philip Stewart in Montesquieu, Œuvres completes, under the direction of Jean Ehrard and C. Vopilhac-Auger, vol. 1, Lettres persanes, Oxford, Voltaire Foundation, 2004, Introduction, p. 55).
- 4.
Buffon, in De l’homme (1749), already wonders about “this correspondence between the voice and the generative parts” (Œuvres completes, vol. VIII, Paris, Pourret, 1835, p. 398). See the new edition of this text by Michèle Duchet, afterword by Claude Blanckaert, Paris, L’Harmattan, 2006.
- 5.
See Olivier Marliave, Le Monde des eunuques, Paris, Imago, 2011, p. 8.
- 6.
See the entry harim in the Encyclopédie de l’islam, online edition in English. For a critique of the masculine view of the harem, see Billie Melman, Women’s Orients. English Women and the Middle East, 1718–1918, Ann Arbor, The University of Michigan Press, 1992; and, more recently, Reina Lewis, Rethinking Orientalism: Women, Travel and Ottoman Harem, London, Tauris, 2004.
- 7.
Lisa Lowe reminds us of the link that unites Usbek (always absent from his harem) and his eunuchs who have stayed in Persia. Both incarnate a phallic desire that is eternally unsatisfied: “In the harem world described in the Lettres [persanes], castration coexists always with an idealized memory of possession and power: it is the mark of a state of lack which is characterized by desire that can never be fulfilled” (Critical Terrains. French and British Orientalisms, Ithaca and London, Cornell University Press, 1991, p. 63).
- 8.
All citations translated by Helen Harrison.
- 9.
Muriel Dodds, Les Récits de voyage, sources de l’“Esprit des lois” de Montesquieu (1929), Slatkine reprint, Genève, 1980.
- 10.
“Les Voyages de François Bernier,” in Frédéric Tinguely (dir.), Un libertin dans l’Inde moghole, Paris, Chandeigne, 2008, p. 143.
- 11.
Ibid., p. 144.
- 12.
See Nicolas Boileau, Œuvres complètes, Paris, Garnier-Flammarion, 1969, p. 146.
- 13.
In his Nouvelle Relation…, Tavernier gives a particularly repulsive portrait of Black eunuchs: “A flat nose, a terrible gaze, and a big mouth, fat lips, black teeth spaced far apart from each other […] are advantages for the merchants who sell them” (quoted by C. Volpilhac-Auger and Ph. Stewart in their editions of Lettres persanes, Montesquieu, Œuvres complètes, op. cit., t. I, p. 55).
- 14.
Les six voyages de Monsieur Jean-Baptiste Tavernier, Paris, Clouzier, 1679, t V, p. 706.
- 15.
See Alain Grosrichard, Structure du sérail, Paris, Le Seuil, 1979, in particular p. 183 and following: the author proposes a lacanian reading while showing the link that unites eunuchs to the sultan, an all-powerful figure who paradoxically incarnates an empty centrality. Furthermore, “oriental despotism” was for a long time the object of a largely fantasmic representation in the Occident, a representation that inscribes itself in a discourse whose ideological mechanisms Edward Said has taken apart (Orientalism, 1978; French translation by Catherine Malamoud, Paris, Le Seuil, 1980, reissued 2005).
- 16.
Voyages du Chevalier Chardin, ed. Louis Langlois, Paris, Le Normant, 1811, vol. I, pp. 28, 97, 103.
- 17.
Ibid., vol. VI, p. 45.
- 18.
Ibid., vol. V., pp. 378–379.
- 19.
Ibid., vol. V, pp. 379.
- 20.
Ibid., vol. VI, pp. 40–41.
- 21.
Thus, for Ancillon, eunuchs are persons “who have a shrill and languid voice, a woman’s complexion, and who only have a little fuzz for a beard; in whom courage and boldness give way to fear and timidity; in a word, whose customs and manners are completely effeminate. If the Eunuch is such a vile and miserable subject in respect to his body, he is worth even less in regards to his mind and heart” (Traité des eunuques, Paris, 1707, pp. 6–7; text re-edited en 2007 in a L’Harmattan edition by Michela Gardini, who shows very well, in her introduction, the particular status of the Lettres persanes, which “offer incontestably the richest repertory of oriental eunuchs, neither men nor women, at once slaves and despots” p. 12).
- 22.
Montesquieu, Lettres perssanes, ed. Jacques Roger, Paris, GF, 1964, p. 28.
- 23.
Translator’s note: In this passage, I have translated “jouir physiquement” as “reaching physical climax,” but the word “jouir” has much more polyvalence than any English equivalent. “Jouir” is “to enjoy,” but it is also “to have an orgasm.” Similarly, the noun form, “jouissance” means “pleasure,” “ecstasy,” and in certain contexts, “orgasm.” Henceforth, I leave these words untranslated in the text.
- 24.
Ibid., p. 250 (letter 148).
- 25.
Ibid., p. 95 (letter 53).
- 26.
Ibid.
- 27.
Ibid., p. 252 (letter 161).
- 28.
On the subversive nature of Roxane’s suicide, see Jean-Starobinski, Montesquieu par lui-même, Paris, Le Seuil, 1953, p. 68–69. For a re-examination of this question, see my article “La chaîne de l’esclavage dans les Lettres persanes”, in Littérature et esclavage, Sarga Moussa (ed.), Paris, Desjonquères, 2010, in particular pp. 56–58.
- 29.
Montesquieu, Lettres persanes, J. Roger (ed.), op. cit., p. 78 (letter 42).
- 30.
Ibid., p. 26.
- 31.
Ibid., p. 58.
- 32.
Ibid., p. 58 (letter 26).
- 33.
Ibid., p. 61.
- 34.
Ibid., pp. 69–70 (letter 34).
- 35.
On this point, see Céline Spector, Montesquieu et les “Lettres persanes”. Paris, PUF, 1997, p. 77 (parallel between Versailles and the seraglio) and Allan Singerman, “ Réflexion sur une métaphore: le sérail des Lettres persanes”, Studies on Voltaire and the Eighteenth Century, n. 185, 1980, p. 184 and following (the eunuch as a metaphore for the courtier).
- 36.
Montesquieu, Lettres persanes, J. Roger (ed.), op. cit., p. 183 (Letter 114).
- 37.
Jean Ehrard (Lumières et esclavage, Bruxelles, éditions André Versaille, 2008, p. 82) refers to the edition of the Lettres persanes produced by Philip Stewart and Catherine Vopilhac-Auger in the framework of the Oeuvres completes of Montesquieu, op. cit., vol. 1, p. 56.
- 38.
Montesquieu, Lettres persanes, J. Roger (ed.), op. cit., p. 33.
- 39.
Ibid.
- 40.
Ibid., p. 35.
- 41.
Ibid., p. 34.
- 42.
Ibid., pp. 35–36.
- 43.
See Carla Coco, Harem. L’Orient amoureux, French translation by Retho Morgenthaler, Paris, Mengès, 1997.
- 44.
Montesquieu, Lettres persanes, J. Roger (ed.), op. cit., p. 33.
- 45.
Ibid., p. 111.
- 46.
Ibid., p. 42 (letter 79).
- 47.
Ibid., p. 45.
- 48.
Ibid., p. 45.
- 49.
Text cited in Variétés II (1930). See Paul Valéry, Variétés I et II, Paris, Gallimard, “Idées”, 1978, p. 186.
- 50.
“Numa one day saw the Eunuch Thelis who had on a skirt, he said that was a woman of evil living condemned to appear that way” (“D’un Eunuque”, Épigramme LII, in Toutes les épigrammes de Martial en latin et en français, 2nd part, Paris, G. de Luyne, 1655, p. 225).
- 51.
“Other women love the eunuch and his feeble delights, / His feminine kisses, without beard and always smooth, /Which give pleasure without fecundity” (Satire VII, French translation by Jules Lacroix, Paris, Firmin Didot, 1846).
- 52.
See above and note 20.
- 53.
Encyclopédie of Diderot and d’Alembert, vol. VII (1751), p. 158 and following (consulted on line).
Author information
Authors and Affiliations
Editor information
Editors and Affiliations
Section Editor information
Copyright information
© 2019 The Author(s)
About this chapter
Cite this chapter
Moussa, S. (2019). The Figure of the Eunuch in the Lettres persanes: Re-evaluation and Resistance. In: Fay, M. (eds) Slavery in the Islamic World. Palgrave Macmillan, New York. https://doi.org/10.1057/978-1-137-59755-7_5
Download citation
DOI: https://doi.org/10.1057/978-1-137-59755-7_5
Published:
Publisher Name: Palgrave Macmillan, New York
Print ISBN: 978-1-349-95354-7
Online ISBN: 978-1-137-59755-7
eBook Packages: Political Science and International StudiesPolitical Science and International Studies (R0)