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C h a p t e r 5 Femininities Roxanne L. Euben suggests that travel writing transforms “women’s bodies and behavior into a legend, as on a map, by which entire cultures can be decoded.” She finds this a “remarkably consistent schema governing the representation of women” in both European and Islamic travel literature from Herodotus to the nineteenth century.1 Women, in this view, become icons or indices of entire cultures—a shortcut for perceiving foreign peoples. Thus, while the detail in travelers’ descriptions of foreign women will vary depending on the cultural context, the principle guiding travelers’ tales of foreign women remains the same. In this chapter Euben’s statement will be tested by application to descriptions of Mongolian, Chinese, and Indian women in later medieval European travel writing. The primary purpose is to examine what happens when one culture (in this case, Latin Christian and male) turns its gaze to women of an entirely different culture and question what rhetorical purposes femininities played in medieval narratives of eastern travel. How did they support or complicate visions of oriental cultures? Was writing about women an essential ingredient in creating a more satisfying narrative (if we may carry over a metaphor from the previous chapter), or did it add little more than textual seasoning? What brands of femininities did travelers’ accounts leave out, and with what implications? What does foregrounding of particular types and silence on others reveal more broadly about European perceptions of different oriental cultures? I find that while European perspectives on Asian women were not homogeneous , three dominant stereotypes prevailed. Mongolian women were portrayed as hardworking, unattractive, and powerful. Chinese women, on the other hand, were typically said to be attractive and sexually alluring. Indian 102 Chapter 5 women were noteworthy primarily for their exotic qualities, particularly when portrayed as satis. These types helped shape European perceptions of the respective cultures: warlike and formidable; enticing and seductive; marvelous and strange. The absence of a “goodwife” type from depictions of any Asian culture, especially in the case of China where a version of this figure was available to authors had they chosen to use it, may be indicative of the limitations of Euben’s model but on the other hand is not surprising given that medieval travelers had little to say about the private lives of contemporary Chinese. Mongolian Women: “She Vanquished Them All” Every significant medieval account of travel to Mongolia devotes a good deal of space to the hardworking, active women.2 Carpini claims their women make all leather goods—tunics, shoes, leggings—drive and repair carts, load camels, and in all tasks “are very swift and energetic.” Mongolian men, he says, “do not make anything at all, with the exception of arrows,” their main tasks being to tend flocks, hunt, practice archery, and manage horses. On women’s appearance he remarks that although married women wear distinctive clothing and headdresses, he finds it almost impossible to tell unmarried women apart from men. Moreover, “[y]oung girls and women ride and gallop on horseback with agility like the men. We even saw them carrying bows and arrows. Both the men and the women are able to endure long stretches of riding. . . . All the women wear breeches and some of them shoot like the men.”3 The women are chaste and respectable yet they use foul language; they are often drunk yet do not fight each other with words or blows.4 Rubruck observes that Mongol women paint beautiful carts and drive up to thirty of these, tied together, across the countryside; that men and unmarried women are similar in dress and appearance; that women ride astride like men; and that they engage in a wide range of domestic, pastoral, and handiwork duties.5 He finds them unattractive: “The women are astonishingly fat. The less nose one has, the more beautiful she is considered; and they disfigure themselves horribly, moreover, by painting their faces.”6 Meeting Scatatai’s wife he had the impression “she had amputated the bridge of her nose so as to be more snub-nosed, for she had no trace of a nose there, and she had smeared that spot and her eyebrows as well with some black ointment, which to us looked thoroughly dreadful.” On arriving at Möngke’s court he comments that his grownup daughter is “very ugly [valde turpis].”7 Marco Femininities 103 Polo’s Divisament also describes the active lives of Mongol women, although some versions add...

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