The Prototype Kingdom: What Kind of Woman?

Abstract

In 1832, boasting fifteen oil lamps, no more than 10,000 inhabitants and one carriageway to Piraeus, Athens was more reminiscent of a Turkish village than the capital of a country. Twenty-five years later, Athens had 42,972 inhabitants and was being portrayed in an increasingly favourable light by Western travellers, who marvelled at the gas lamps in the city centre and the plethora of cafés, beer halls, bazaars, squares and theatres.¹ This was the city that gave the final blow to Otto’s regime on 10 October 1862, expressing its national frustration at a form of government seen as inharmonious, and an obstacle to social and national progress. People had become gradually tired of the intrigues, internal social immorality, violence and obstacles to national progress of Otto’s regime.² Ballot-rigging in the 1861 national election once again pushed people to the brink. At the same time, continental Europe’s passage from the individual immoral world of aristocracy to popular sovereignty and democracy was transplanted into the kingdom’s borders.³ Greek society became an open window to all the new liberal messages, introducing subtle cultural changes in the ways that members of this society related to each other. By adopting the Italian example, Greek intellectuals translated the Italian fare da se to a Greek context. It was hoped that from the people and through the people, ‘Hellas through Hellenes’, and ‘East through East’, the nation could succeed where the state had failed in fulfilling the Megale Idea.⁴