Vying with the Men

Biographers deployed attributes according to gendered preconceptions, too, simultaneously accepting and challenging gender stereotypes. Isabella I of Spain (1451–1504) “combined men's rational intelligence with women's fine qualities. She was distinguished by probity and piety, and the beauty of her countenance was matched by the goodness of her disposition. She was the color of pale wheat, her eyes were blue and her hair blond. She was tall, and as famous for her gentleness and gracefulness as she was for strength of will and sincerity of resolution.”^[86]

Comparisons of other sorts contributed to an implicit exemplarity. Female subjects “vied with the men in all their accomplishments”^[87] and “surpassed male peers.”^[88] Aspasia of Miletos (fl. fifth century B.C.x) “did things the strongest of men could not do. . . . There thronged to her door scholars, poets, philosophers, mathematicians, and men of eloquence.”^[89] The “Famous Women” frequently have men “thronging” to their doors, drawn as much (suggest the texts) by brilliance as by beauty, perhaps indicative of how biographies that constructed exemplary women were also helping to shape notions of a new masculinity appropriate to nationalist ambitions. Similar is the claim that men listen to, and learn from, these women, that it is their knowledge above all that constitutes their authority. ‘‘A’ءisha bt. Abīī; Bakr, “most eloquent of the folk of her age,” was one: “Having memorized more than anyone else the Hadith and Qur’ءān, . . . the hearts of the men were in accord about obeying her and responding to her call.” Jamīī;la al-Sulamiyya taught male singers, and to her they attributed their skill.^[90]

To compare across genders, of course, was to invite stereotyping. George Sand “for her entire writing life took a name characteristic of men as her own emblem. Even so, you would not be able to distinguish her from them [i.e., men] in self-possession and composure, evenness of emotion, loftiness of thought, and towering strength of judgment.” Defined according to characteristics gendered as “male,” Sand stands above other French female writers grammatically as she is situated against them through the deployment of superlatives. Yet the text hastens to distance Sand from suspect motives for her “masculine” preferences. Thus it confirms the social context in which she lived and wrote as one difficult for independent women. “The reader should not assume that her adoption of this male name signified any sort of weakness on her part, or that she was [unfairly] shielding herself against the violent attack and disparagement of an age that took no heed of women or their writings, or that she wrote what a woman's pen would be abashed to inscribe.”^[91] Then the text invokes her as model.^[92]

French journalist Caroline Guebhard, “Madame Sévèrine” (1855–1929), refused a government post with the reasoning that she was “still a woman.” The magazine explains: “By that she meant she was sensitive and gentle, not finding a position agreeable at a time when people were being oppressed.” She chose to “serve her nation” from outside the government.^[93] Qualities called “female” thus take on political meaning and efficacy, although simultaneously they reify gender distinctions. Biographies also perform this reification by generalizing about “female” qualities and motives. Women write “from sentiment,” claim biographies of English writer Ellen Thorncroft and French writer Myriam Harry. In the first case this is posed as a compliment; in the second, as critique, as the biographer finds fault with Harry's writings on Arab society. Another strategy of reification is to assert that a subject “transcends” female qualities. De Sévigné “was a woman but she held fast and strong to the scepter of literature.”^[94]This can afford an opportunity to criticize local belief. If men established the foundations of scientific study, comments a biography of Maria Agnesi, women participated, too, “and reached a level the sons of the East can scarcely believe.” Agnesi is remembered “as the greatest of men are.”^[95]

Furthermore, a few biographies insist that a woman's fame is not the result of her being an exceptional woman but rather because of qualities that transcend or blur gender boundaries. ‘‘A’ءisha bt. Abīī; ‘‘Abdallāh al-Aysar's fame was not solely the result of her being “a princess or woman sharing in rule, but rather because of her strong personality and lofty example, her sublime spirit and brave heart as she faced each danger.” In pointing this out the biographer hazards the danger of solidifying boundaries by highlighting their existence. He relies on gendered labels as he lauds her further. “The brave princess was able to escape from prison through her initiative, boldness, and [the sort of] courage that creates heroes from men.”^[96] As male approval becomes a signifier of female greatness, commercial success and economic power draw male applause. Scholars and writers crowded around “the famous Mrs. Frank Leslie” (1828–1914; we never learn her given name) after her businessman husband's death propelled her into the publishing business. “She left them gazing at her reverently as she sat with the great men of business on their knees before her.” She was “the epitome of initiative, the example of seriousness who made the great look small.”^[97]

The comparison to men is by no means exclusively a modern biographical phenomenon. It occurs in transmitted anecdotes about ‘‘A’ءisha bt. Abīī; Bakr, al-Khansā‘‘ and, says Roded, Umm al-‘‘Izz Nudar bt. Ahmad (A.H. 702/1302 C.E.–A.H. 730/1329 C.E.), more pious and knowledgeable in the law than most men,^[98] who does not appear in extant issues of any magazine. Yet the repetition of this motif in magazines—its insertion into general statements of women's equality to men in intellect, energy, and articulative ability—carried a specific message historicized by its publication context. To emphasize women's worth being proven through male admiration or successful competition with male peers is double-edged to say the least. A deeply patriarchal notion, it yet offers vicarious self-validation, as Janice Radway and Rachel Brownstein suggest in their otherwise very different studies of how female readers and female heroes interact.^[99] If it might reify the gendered isolation of certain qualities as “male” or “fe-male” by reinscribing them in gendered categories, a strategy of comparison could also question the categories.

Thus, lives of eminent women as inscribed by Zaynab Fawwāz and by editors in the early women's press followed medieval biographical dictionaries in emphasizing received notions of women's “proper” attributes. Yet it was easy to find in the traditional sources attributes that could strengthen women's sense of self and lead them on to new paths. To repeat endlessly—and therefore to attempt to normalize—such attributes as “bold initiative” and “eloquence” in new discursive contexts was to work toward legitimizing new subjectivities by taking up the terms of the old. It was a reverse discourse that could be both expansive and constricting. Repeating these attributes and linking them to the idea of comportment and moral strength furthered the notion of imitation that the rhetoric of exemplarity implied as its goal. New and old mingled, for if these qualities were to be inculcated and exercised in new contexts, they were not to diminish old and familiar virtues, however unstable the correspondence between virtue and action might be. As Hampton comments, “The question of exemplarity involves the way in which texts are public artifacts, documents designed to affect the public sphere. As such, their depictions of the relationship between models of action from the past and readers in the present are inevitably marked by transformations in the public space addressed.”^[100] Those who would fix a canon of exemplary qualities by constructing a canon of exemplary women had to respond to definitions of contemporary gendered space that were contested in public discourse.