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Boudoirs and Harems: The Seductive Power of Sophas

Cevik, Gulen
http://orcid.org/0000-0002-0549-7517
http://rave.ohiolink.edu/etdc/view?acc_num=ucin1554211651786357

Abstract Details

2019, PhD, University of Cincinnati, Design, Architecture, Art and Planning: Architecture.
This dissertation investigates the cultural influences between the so-called East and the West through the harem and the boudoir. This research is the first of its kind to explore the influence of the harem on the development of boudoirs in the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries through the analysis and synthesis of historical accounts of these spaces. The staple ingredient of the French Rococo period (1723-74), the pursuit of pleasure and happiness, produced spaces and furniture with an unprecedented attention to bodily comfort. In addition to Ottoman-inspired furniture pieces such as sopha, divan, lit a la Turque (Turkish bed), lit de repos a la Turque (Turkish bed of rest), canape a la Turque (Turkish couch), veilleuse a la Turque (Turkish sofa), veilleuse a la Ottomanne (Ottoman sofa), and ottomanne (ottoman) to be used in a chamber a la Turque (Turkish room) or elsewhere, there was one space every modern eighteenth-century upper-class woman needed: the boudoir. The boudoir was an exclusive space for females, informed by the late eighteenth and nineteenth-century Western fascination with Orientalism. Encapsulating the experience of colonialism, the boudoir became the site for both the repression and reconciliation of gender roles and biases. Furthermore, the eighteenth-century boudoir was a space where modernization of the interior was underway due to the level of informality, personal privacy, and bodily comfort it afforded to its users. Although both the boudoir and the harem were feminine spaces, men authored most of the primary sources on them. When the aristocratic boudoir reemerged in the more bourgeois nineteenth-century, it also marked the highpoint of paintings depicting bourgeois boudoirs both fictional and authentic. The boudoir genre paintings exposed the awkwardness and the ironies of female bodies disciplined by corsets and placed on soft, Eastern-inspired furniture pieces. The nineteenth-century Anglo-American revival of the boudoir embraced Victorian ideals. Another extraordinary development was the adoption of the boudoir as “budvar” in the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries in the Ottoman Empire. Embellished with Victorian ideals, the re-envisioned boudoir as an active feminine space to manage the household, read, and mother the children was the perfect fit. The adoption of the budvar, in order to replace the traditional harem, became a means to empower modern Ottoman women. This study will thus focus on women, they became agents of reciprocal cultural exchange. The body and the dress was at the center of this exchange. The dress manipulates our sensual relationship to space and furniture as it conceals and reveals parts of our skin. One’s ability to move or restriction of them correlates directly to how the dress envelopes the body. The dress physically determines our pace, movement, and posture, hence our relationship to the furniture pieces we use. The history of the boudoir and the budvar will be complete only with the inclusion of the body and the dress, which envelops it. This study will utilize the dress and the body as a common thread to tie together the history of the harem, the boudoir and the budvar.
Aarati Kanekar, Ph.D. (Committee Chair)
Patrick Snadon, Ph.D. (Committee Chair)
Elizabeth Frierson, Ph.D. (Committee Member)
Joori Suh (Committee Member)
273 p.
Architecture
Boudoir; Harem; Posture; Orientalism; Furniture; Corset

Recommended Citations

Citations

  • Cevik, G. (2019). Boudoirs and Harems: The Seductive Power of Sophas [Doctoral dissertation, University of Cincinnati]. OhioLINK Electronic Theses and Dissertations Center. http://rave.ohiolink.edu/etdc/view?acc_num=ucin1554211651786357

    APA Style (7th edition)

  • Cevik, Gulen. Boudoirs and Harems: The Seductive Power of Sophas. 2019. University of Cincinnati, Doctoral dissertation. OhioLINK Electronic Theses and Dissertations Center, http://rave.ohiolink.edu/etdc/view?acc_num=ucin1554211651786357.

    MLA Style (8th edition)

  • Cevik, Gulen. "Boudoirs and Harems: The Seductive Power of Sophas." Doctoral dissertation, University of Cincinnati, 2019. http://rave.ohiolink.edu/etdc/view?acc_num=ucin1554211651786357

    Chicago Manual of Style (17th edition)

ucin1554211651786357
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This open access ETD is published by University of Cincinnati and OhioLINK.