A Serbian Woman in a Turkish Harem: The Work of Jelena Dimitrijević (1862-1945)

Author(s): Celia Hawkesworth

Source: The Slavonic and East European Review , Jan., 1999, Vol. 77, No. 1 (Jan., 1999),
pp. 56-73
Published by: the Modern Humanities Research Association and University College
London, School of Slavonic and East European Studies

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SEER, Vol. 77, No. i, January 9ggg

A Serbian Woman in a Turkish

Harem: The Work ofJelena
Dimitrijevic ( 862-I 945)
CELIA HAWKESWORTH

THE TURN of the century in Serbia was an age of paradox for women:
more and more of them were receiving a sound education and were
able to see themselves on a par with their colleagues elsewhere in the
world, but at the same time, the educational level of the great majority
of women in the region was extremely low. Many educated women
committed themselves to the cause of spreading literacy and generally
improving the quality of ordinary women's lives throughout the region.
But, as opportunities opened up for the most ambitious, so the gap
between the ends of the spectrum widened. It was difficult for the
highly trained women, who began to form a small but impressive elite
in this period, to identify with the broad process of involving women in
the spread of literacy, when their actual level of achievement was
inevitably so low. As far as verbal art was concerned, for the majority
of women their only experience of literature was the oral tradition
which remained a vehicle of expression in printed form in the
magazines beginning to appear in this period, often with the intention
of conveying an educational or moral message in a traditional and
familiar form.' The gap between individuals with advanced education
and the growing female readership was then filled largely with an
increasing body of 'trivial' literature, tales of love and adventure, the
most popular of which combined both elements, often in an historical
context.
Nevertheless, the beginning of the twentieth century saw a real
explosion of women's activity of all kinds: women engaged themselves
in the promotion of ideas of women's suffrage; in social and charitable
work and education. There were ever greater opportunities for women
to qualify for professions and enter various fields of scholarship; a range
of different women's journals emerged; the growth of an identifiable
feminist movement may be traced. All these activities offered new

Celia Hawkesworth is Senior Lecturer in Serbian and Croatian Studies at the School of
Slavonic and East European Studies, University of London.
1 A similar use had been made of the traditional forms by eighteenth-century didactic
writers, writing for a male readership. It is likely that the twentieth-century adoption of this
technique was a spontaneous process evolving from the prevailing circumstances rather
than a conscious imitation of the earlier age.

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 THE WORK OF JELENA DIMITRIJEVIC 57

opportunities to a host of women. However, only a very small number

of their names are known to the cultural history of the region today.
The first forty years of the twentieth century represent a real 'golden
age' for women throughout the region, but this was virtually forgotten
in the aftermath of World War II and the distorting effects of communist
ideology. The beginning of its rediscovery continues to be a revelation
to subsequent generations.
Some insight into the nature of this activity may be gained by looking
at the range of women's magazines that began to be published in this
period. Magazines dedicated to women first appeared in Serbia in the
mid-nineteenth century. These were on the whole concerned with
providing practical information on such matters as hygiene, the
upbringing of children and the management of money. They tended
also to have a strong moral tone. The kind of 'education' aspired to in
their pages was intended to assist women in fulfilling as successfully as
possible the duties which society and family placed upon her: those of a
good mother, wife and housekeeper.
The fact that many of the first publications did not survive beyond a
few issues reveals something of the gap between the perceptions of the
educated few and the reality in which they were trying to work. When
the I 897 almanach Srpkinja was published, it was expected that it would
be bought, perhaps in multiple copies, by all the various women's
organizations by then in existence, but in the event some of them,
including the largest, did not buy a single copy. A new almanach, with
the same title, a substantial and invaluable source of information on
this period, was published in I913.2 It offers a comprehensive account
of the situation of Serbian women on the eve of World War I, including
an unsigned survey of women's magazines. The author complains that,
despite the relatively large number of titles, there was still none that
could be called a real women's paper, as any such paper 'would have to
be edited by an intellectually strong woman and to have only women
contributors'. It is true, the author continues, that women are
occasionally asked to contribute to 'mainstream' journals and alma-
nachs, but only if there are insufficient other contributors and only at
their own expense: they are expected to pay the costs of correspondence
and postage themselves, unlike the male contributors, who may be less
educated and qualified than they are. By way of illustration of this
particularly unfair discrimination, the author remarks that in the
preceding ten years only four books by women had been published
normally and paid for in Serbia, while one of the most productive
women of the age, Jelica Belovic-Bernadzikovska, had published six
substantial studies in the last six years in German scientific journals, all

2 See Srpkinja, Sarajevo, 1913, p. 22.

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58 CELIA HAWKESWORTH

of which had been normally paid for, without anyone enquiring as to

the gender of the author.
At the beginning of the twentieth century in Serbia there were seven
weekly, fortnightly or monthly women's magazines, and most newspa-
pers had a regular supplement devoted to women. By contrast, not a
single publisher produced any edition, not even of the most popular
kind, intended for a female readership. This fact in itself conveys
something of the gulf between prevailing perceptions of 'high' culture
and the trivial literature considered appropriate for the consumption of
women.
A dominant feature of the fiction published in women's magazines
produced at this time was a strong didactic tendency, one aspect of
which was the moral note struck even by much of the verse published
in their pages:
The stories in women's magazines insisted on the incalculable value of
virtue, honour, diligence, reason, and those who possessed such qualities were
rewarded with -happiness, tranquillity, prosperity. Even when they favour an
emancipated type of woman, who is usually shown as a fighter for free,
extra-marital love, the narrators tend not to grant such a heroine peace and
contentment, but rather regret and restlessness, sometimes even death.3

The overall impression left by reading the literary contributions in both

prose and verse to these magazines is not unexpectedly mediocre: while
they include many more names of women writers than have survived
in literary history, there is little of enduring interest. What is important
is that so many women should have begun to wish to express themselves
artistically. And the magazines are of very great interest for the
comprehensive picture they give of women's lives, social conditions in
general and women's place in society. A few women who were regular
contributors stand out as exceptions, however. And one of the first of
these to make an individual mark isJelena Dimitrijevic.
Born in I862 in Krusevac, Jelena Dimitrijevic was one of the most
remarkable figures of this age. Married in i 88 I, at the age of nineteen,
to an army officer, she moved to Nis, where he was posted, and lived
there from i88i to I898. In I892 Dimitrijevic published a long poem
in the local dialect, which caused a sensation in Nis and clearly
demonstrated her talent for languages. The following brief outline of
her biography conveys something of her extraordinary independence
of mind and spirit: 'Poet, short-story writer, novelist, folklorist, fluent in
several languages, companion of many prominent figures, she travelled
over all the continents and in her sixtieth year set out on a voyage

3Ibid., p. I39.

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 THE WORK OF JELENA DIMITRIJEVIC 59

round the world.'4 From Ni', she settled in Belgrade, associating with
people educated in Europe, reading, and attending lectures by the
finest minds of her time. Despite her exceptional qualities and her
prominence in the cultural life of Serbia during her lifetime, when all
the best known literary critics wrote about her work and her novel JNove
(New Women, I9I2) was awarded the presitigious Matica srpska prize
for literature, Dimitrijevic was completely forgotten after her death
until her Pisma iz NiBa o haremu (Letters from Nis about the Harem), first
published in I 897, was reissued in a facsimile edition in I 986.
Her first poems appeared in the literary journals Otazdbina (Father-
land) and Vila (The Nymph) and immediately attracted attention, as
being unusually explicit and sensual for conventional notions of
women's love poetry. Critics made the inevitable comparision of her
work with that of Sappho5 and there was much speculation as to who
the signatory 'Jelena' might be. 'The story has sprung up somewhere
thatJelena is a Turkish woman6 who has run away from a harem [ ...]
It is easy to imagine thatJelena is a creature from the Far East, because
her poetry is such a lively and faithful reflection of oriental lushness and
sensuality, and has such an eloquent imprint.' In fact, this tone was
entirely in keeping with the late Romantic interest in exotic, oriental
themes which were then in vogue in Serbian culture and characterized
the verse of a whole group of poets and short story writers. What was
quite new in jelena's' case, however, was the fact that these poems
were written by a woman. To be a woman writer was a rarity in itself,
but for a woman to write in such a way was truly worthy of note: 'She
has chosen to write about the Turkish way of life, or, more precisely, of
love for Turkish women [. . .] she has therefore created a new mode, a
new, original work of poetry.'7
Jelena Dimitrijevic had the good sense or good fortune to choose a
husband who would understand and appreciate her independent mind
and spirit. In an age when only the most basic educational opportunities
were widely available for girls, she taught herself French, English,
Russian, Italian, Greek and Turkish. Her great appetite for learning
and natural curiosity are clear both from her many journeys and also
from her decision to publish her accounts of them.

4 I am endebted to Slobodanka Pekovic of the Institute for Literature in Belgrade, who

wrote the afterword to the facsimile edition of Pisma iz Ni&a o haremu on which I draw freely
here, for all her help and advice, and for this brief biography (hereafter Pisma iz Ni&a).
5 It is symptomatic of the position of women writers throughout Europe, particularly
before the twentieth century, that Sappho is the first model of a woman poet to occur to
many commentators. The implication is that they know nothing of the whole long tradition
of European women's writing.
6 That is, Muslim.
' Pavle Popovic, 'PesmeJeleneJov. Dimitrijevica', Knjizevnipregled, I895, 7, p. 220.

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 6o CELIA HAWKESWORTH

Dimitrijevie's work is remarkable in two ways: first for its explicit focus
on women in general and then for its particular interest in the fate of
women in the East, both in their traditional social structures and in the
process of their emancipation from them. Her first works are concerned
with women in her immediate surroundings, in the 'exotic' setting of
southern Serbia, still dominated entirely by the Turkish way of life.
This applies particularly to her Pisma iz Nisa (I897), but also to the
stories she published in I 90 I and I 907. She then explored the situation
of Muslim women in the transitional age they were living through at
the turn of the century, when individuals had to decide whether or not
to discard the veil, to pursue education and a generally more
independent life style, including choosing their own life partner.
Dmitrijevic explored this issue in her novel, Nove. In the light of her
experience of the East, developed also in her two volumes Pisma iz
Soluna (Letters from Salonica, I9I8) and Pisma iz Indije (Letters from
India, I 928), she turned her attention also to the behaviour of American
women, in a long short story, 'Amerikanka' (The American Woman,
I 9 I 8), and Novi svet iii u Americi godinu dana (The New World, or A Year
in America, I934). In her last published work, Sedam mora i tri okeana.
Putem oko sveta (Seven Seas and Three Oceans. A Journey round the
World, I 940), she expanded her impressions from all her journeys, with
a wealth of new material and the maturity of a woman of exceptionally
wide experience.
The fact that Dimitrijevic, a Serbian woman, was given access to the
immensely private life of the harem is an eloquent testimony to the kind
of trust she inspired in her Muslim woman friends and neighbours.
Indeed, one reads Pisma iz Ni?a, with a little unease, in that it is in a
sense a betrayal of that trust, but Dimitrijevic must have weighed that
fact against the value of giving her fellow Serbs some insight into the
private life of the Muslims among whom they lived, but for whose way
of life and views they showed on the whole little interest or no
understanding. For Dimitrijevic, the presence of Muslims, 'Turks', in
Nis was not a source of outrage, but of fascination, a fact to be explored,
with her characteristic nonjudgemental curiosity. She evidently had
enough confidence in the strength of her friendships with the women
concerned to believe that she could justify the value of making their
private lives public.
The work is arranged as a series of letters to a friend, conventionally
addressed simply as 'My dear N. . .'. It opens with a brief 'explanation'
of the impulse for Dimitrijevic to explore the lives of her Muslim
neighbours in Nis: on hearing that Dimitrijevic was to live there, 'her
dear friend M', now deceased, exhorted her: 'Get to know the Muslim
women, observe their customs, especially their weddings, and describe

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 THE WORK OF JELENA DIMITRIJEVIC 6i

them to me.'8 Dimitrijevic thus absolves hers

curiosity: it is no more than a duty to her late friend. Such ajustification
also suggests that Dimitrijevic was not alone in her interest and could
be sure of a readership for her book. This is all the more likely also
because the tone of the volume is that of an interested observer rather
than a zealot, with a mission to preach to her fellow Christians.
Moreover, Dimitrijevic does not miss an opportunity to express her
patriotic rapture at the recent liberation of areas of southern Serbia
from Ottoman rule, and there is consequently no doubting her
credentials as 'a good Serbian woman'. Dimitrijevic dreams of a time
when the remaining territories will be restored to Serbian rule and the
Muslim women will acknowledge the weight of their guilt: she
'generously' attributes to them the ability to understand the Christian
Serbs' position, while Dimitrijevic herself inevitably sees things only
from her own, Serbian, point of view. Nevertheless, the tone of her
writing conveys real trust in her Muslim compatriots' judgement,
respect and, above all, affection. Dimitrijevic scatters her text liberally
with Turkish expressions, especially terms of endearment in addressing
her friend at the beginning and end of her letters, taking evident delight
both in the richness and variety of these expressions of affection
themselves, and also in her own linguistic prowess. Welcomed into one
Muslim house in particular, Dimitrijevic responds with admiration and
respect for the head of the house who is the 'commander, master, saint;
obeyed, respected and feared by all'. This is one of the very few
references to men in the whole volume.
The greater part of the text is devoted to a detailed account of a
Muslim wedding, which must have been an invaluable anthropological
and ethnographic source when it was first published. Dimitrijevic is
involved in the whole process of the wedding, from the first approach
on behalf of the young man to the prospective bride's family. She gives
detailed descriptions of the furnishings, clothing, food, songs, dances --
every aspect of the ritual accompanying the marriage. With the
curiosity of a born ethnographer, she observes and records every
smallest detail. One passage which stands out is the young man's aunt's
lyrical speech praising the intended bride to her nephew and recom-
mending her to him. It reads like the verbatim rendering of a traditional
oriental song of praise which is evidently a feature of Muslim culture
that Dimitrijevie particularly admired. While Dimitrijevic's attention
is focused on her observations and she hardly mentions her own
reactions, there are a few occasions which are worthy of note. She
describes being met in the street one day by two Muslim women who
curse her for daring to intrude into the privacy of the Muslim way of

8 JelenaJ. Dimitrijevic, Pisma iz NAisia o haremima, (fototipsko izdanje), Belgrade, I 986, p. 3.

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62 CELIA HAWKESWORTH

life and expose it to the world. Dimitrijevic defends herself by

maintaining that she is passing their secrets on to one woman friend
only and by saying that in any case she has permission from the highest
local authorities.9 The women take her at her word. On another
occasion, describing the way the Muslim women greet each other,
Dimitrijevic writes that she herself has never bowed to any woman the
way they do themselves, nor has she curtsied although she has
practised alone in the privacy of her room.'0 One morning she confesses
herself astonished to be woken by her maid at about five o'clock in the
morning to be told that a large company of women has assembled in
her garden with rugs and equipment for making coffee -behaviour
that is clearly unexpected from the perspective of her own culture." A
particularly revealing passage describes one of the ceremonial evenings
of the betrothal process when Dimitrijevic decided to take another
Serbian woman along with her, thinking that it would be good to have
someone to share the experience with. She quickly realizes her mistake
when her companion begins to mock the unfamilar customs they
observe. One of the Muslim women present notices, turns to her and
gently remarks: 'Madam, do you not realize that those who do not
know how to respect what is unfamilar cannot love what is their own?'
Dimitrijevic's companion responds to Dimitrijevic: 'They are conceited
and stupid. I hate them."l2 The woman's primitive reaction serves to
highlight the openness of Dimitrijevic herself who is distressed and
embarrassed on behalf of her Muslim hosts. In addition to giving a
comprehensive account of a Muslim wedding, the volume also includes
numerous revealing observations about the Muslim way of life,
particularly the lives of Muslim women, which counteract prevailing
prejudices. Thus for example, Dimitrijevic remarks: 'If I ever heard
someone say "Evil as a Turk", I would smile and remember my present
neighbours. I went to see them the day before yesterday: the father was
shelling peas; his son hanging out nappies (who knows, he may even
have washed them, so that his wife should not tire herself). The father
was untroubled, but the son was a little embarrassed, explaining that
his wife did not feel well and could not lift her arms.'"3 Dimitrijevic
never heard of a man beating his wife and quotes the Cadi as saying
that beating one's wife was very easy, but unworthy of a man. She did
find the men extremely jealous, however, and noted that this made
their wives dishonest. Her clearest criticism is of the restrictions on the
women's independence, they fact that they had to ask their husband's

9Ibid., letter 4, pp. 27-28.

'1 Ibid., letter 6, p. 53.
I Ibid., letter i6, pp. i85-86.
12 Ibid., letter 1 2, p. I 36.
13 Ibid., letter i 6, pp. 202-03.

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 THE WORK OF JELENA DIMITRIJEVIC 63

permission to go out, although she also observes that they did not
themselves complain. The experience of familiarity with the Muslim
way of life described in this text stayed with Dimitrijevic, providing the
stimulus for her journey to Salonica to observe the phenomenon of the
emergence of the 'new women' in her novel devoted to that issue.
Dimitrijevic's prose works show her to be a fiction writer of
considerable talent when she has a story to tell, and with an excellent
ear for dialogue. For the most part, however, she is driven by a desire
to record faithfully her experiences, particularly of ways of life which
differ from her own. These factual accounts are brought to life by the
kind of evocative portraits, well-observed detail and faithfully repro-
duced dialogue, enlivened by words and phrases from the local dialect,
that also characterize the prose fiction of her day, much of which she
had read in several languages. Of the 'four short stories' published in
I9OI and 1907, only one, 'Fati-Sultan', is developed as a real piece of
fiction, although it too is undoubtedly based on a true occurrence,
elaborated into a popular local tale. The other three are all similar in
style and approach to Pisma iz Ai?a. Jul-Marikina prikaznja' 14 describe
the narrator's visit to an elderly lady, Jul-Marika, in a typical wealthy
house in Nis. The 'story' which forms the substance of the piece, is the
old lady's own, told in her own words, with abundant dialect (so much,
indeed, that it is hard for the outsider to read), but the narrator places
it in context, with an elaborate build-up and detailed description of the
whole scene, the festive meal, the old lady's clothes and the two
women's conversation. Jul-Marika is a typical representative of the
weathly Christian upper class, who adopted Turkish dress and
furnishings as a matter of course. The 'story' is itself no more than a
vivid and faithful evocation of a way of life, filled with nostalgia for the
'old ways' and the evident endeavour to retain the memory of a passing
way of life, as fully and freshly as possible.
'Fati-Sultan','5 on the other hand, is a dramatic tale of love, death
and vengeance. Set among the Albanian community of southern
Serbia, it tells the tale largely from the point of view of the main
character, Fati-Sultan. Engaged to a handsome 'Arnautin', Ismail, who
is killed as he rides home from visiting her family, she is then betrothed
to the son of Shemsi who is suspected by Ismail's family of being the
murderer. On the eve of her wedding, Fati-Sultan is kidnapped by
Ismail's family. The climax of the story is the scene in which Fati-Sultan
appears at a public hearing where she is herself to choose between
Shemsi's son and her kidnapper. When the hearing is being arranged,
Fati-Sultan's mother encourages her to make up her own mind,

Jul-Marikinaprikaznja, Belgrade, I 90 I. (First published in JNova iskra.)

15 Fati-Sultan, Belgrade, 1907, pp. 7-148.

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 64 CELIA HAWKESWORTH

stressing that it is possible for her to be freed of both obligations if she

so wishes. Fati-Sultan, by now fatally ill with tuberculosis, is cheered by
the prospect of being able to make her own decision. The hearing is
admirably described, with the tension steadily built up to a peak of
breathless anticipation. When, finally, Fati-Sultan chooses to stay with
her kidnappers, in the house where her beloved Ismail grew up, Shemsi-
Pasha's shame is compounded by the fact that he has been disgraced
by a woman. The story is skilfully told, admirably constructed, full of
atmosphere and evocative scenes. The choice of theme is clearly
indicative of Dimitrijevic's delight in the young woman's freedom to
take at least a measure of control over her life.
The other two pieces, 'Safi-hanum' and 'Mejrem-hanum',16 are
anecdotes from the life of Muslim women in southern Serbia,
acknowledging their human qualities of compassion and infectious zest
for life. Like much of Pisma iz Ni?a, these sketches exude delight in the
Muslim women's joys, respect for their way of life and, in the case of
'Mejrem-hanum', awe of their profound faith. The tone of all four
'stories' is appealingly naive in that the author is unselfconsciously
prepared to reveal herself as ignorant and awkward in the company of
the women she describes. She tends not to comment on her material or
analyse it, but simply describes her experience directly and engagingly.
Dimitrijevic's masterpiece, the 295-page novel JNlove is a remarkable
work, well-received and acknowledged at the time of its publication,
but subsequently forgotten. While fiction remained for Dimitrijevic
primarily a vehicle for conveying her experience of unfamilar ways of
life and she published no more fiction after this work, her literary
technique is competent, the story line, while perhaps in places
melodramatic, is well managed and individual passages are admirably
written. As a novel it is at least as successful as Stankovic's Soplka which
has remained in the Serbian literary canon since its publication.'7 One
can only conclude that the reason for the neglect of Nove is the fact that
the novel is focused entirely on women and a specifically women's
issue, notably the theme of the tension between traditional Muslim
attitudes to women and the new perspectives offered to the daughters
of prosperous families through education, reading, learning foreign
languages and meeting visitors from Europe. In the novel's focus and
its serious endeavour to see inside the Muslim culture that was a major
component of the history of the region for 500 years, the novel is a
unique occurrence in Serbian literature. This is not to suggest that a
reader must have a particular interest in Muslim women to appreciate

16 Ibid., pp. I5 I-60; I 6 i-8o.

17 Borislav Stankovic, N%ecista krv, Belgrade I 9 I 0, published in English translation as Sophka,
London, 1932.

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 THE WORK OF JELENA DIMITRIJEVIC 65

the work. A great deal of the comment and observation of psychology

is universally valid. This is borne out by the fact that it was possible for
some readers to see it as virtually a metaphor for the position of
educated women in Serbian society of the time.'8
The main protagonists of the novel are young girls 'who live in
Turkey, but dream about France. Every day they read something new
and long for that foreign, unknown, distant world.'"9 The narrator
suggests ironically that their only possible access to such a world would
be through marriage to a man who committed some offence and was
sent abroad into exile. At the same time, there is a constant stream of
foreign women through the house of the main character, Emir-Fatma,
so that she is hardly ever left alone to gossip and dream with her own
friends. It is a confusing situation for the young women, exposed to two
opposing cultures and increasingly uncertain of their place in either.
Following a daring outing with some friends to the shore, where Fatma
catches sight of a young man in a boat who throws her an armful of
roses, her parents' house, with the bars on its windows, suddenly seems
like a prison, and she realizes that she can never see more than a corner
of the sky from her Turkish house: 'God made the sky for everyone,
except for Turkish women.'20 The women in Fatma's family are
interesting, reflecting different types of upbringing and temperament:
the most important are her grandmother, an educated person, who
speaks and writes Persian and Arabic and has travelled widely in the
Muslim world, who wears traditional, national dress but talks freely
with her son and other members of the household and has the
confidence to think for herself; her mother, who also wears Turkish
clothes, knows hardly any language other than Turkish, and is content
to be subordinate to her husband wlhom she loves and respects; and her
aunt who is exceptionally independent-minded and flexible in her
outlook, frequently in the company of foreign women and ready to
offer Fatma fearless support at all times. The main focus of the young
girls' confusion is why their fathers, who wear European dress and
permit their daughters to read works of Western fiction, should hate
Europe so much. It emerges that their daughters' education is a status
symbol for these prosperous men, who do not have the imagination to
foresee the consequences of offering these young girls a taste of such a
different way of life. The problem is particularly forcefully expressed in
a discussion between Fatma's father and her grandmother about the
relative desirability of the young woman being asked her opinion about
the husband her father is to choose for her. Much of the novel is

1 Srpkinja, 1913, pp. 60-62.

" Jelena Dimitrijevic, Nove, Belgrade, 19 1 2, p. 7.
21) Ibid., p. i 8.

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66 CELIA HAWKESWORTH

concerned with the crux of the problem: whether or not women should
give up the veil. The arguments on both sides are well presented, with
the narrator showing sympathy and understanding for those who
subscribe to 'old-fashioned' views. The negative effect of the tradition
on Muslim men is seriously considered: deprived from an early age of
the company of women, the men are left to learn the ways of the world
in the street. All these conflicting ideas are brought into acute conflict
in Fatma's life when she has a direct face-to-face encounter with the
young man from the boat who climbs into her garden one evening
when she is there alone. The chapter describing the young girl's
succession of emotions and her torment of guilt and rapture is
admirably written, encapsulated in the formulation of her central
dilemma: 'She had touched a butterfly, and what had fallen from his
wings was dust.'2' The crisis comes when Fatma understands that the
fiance chosen by her father for her is that same young man: she
overhears a conversation in which he is referred to as 'djemal', which is
her young man's name. However, the word also means 'beauty' and it
is in that sense that it was used. When her aunt manages to come by a
portrait of the proposed fiance and Fatma realizes her mistake, she falls
ill. From Istanbul, where her family takes her for the fresh sea air, she
writes to her beloved French governess, describing convincingly her
state of mind: she cannot disobey her father who, she realizes, would
prefer to let her die rather than go back on his word. The development
of the story is interesting: Fatma is saved from that fate when it is
revealed that the fiance chosen by her father is not all he was supposed
to be. The young man from the boat turns out to come from an
excellent family, and marriage between the ecstatic couple is agreed.
After the wedding, however, it emerges that he has a severe drink
problem and the young people's shame, hurt pride and inexperience
prevent them from helping each other through the crisis, despite their
mutual affection. There is a complex series of developments until the
couple are happily united and travel together to Paris where Fatma dies
of consumption. These adventures are of less interest than the account
of the young people's personal growth through all the constraints
placed upon them by their society and its conventions. The novel is full
of excellently observed psychological insights, a detailed portrayal of
the Turkish way of life, and above all a sympathetic understanding of
the situation of the Turkish 'new women'. It includes several sketches
of different women's lives showing a variety of individual reactions to
their situation. One particularly interesting facet of the novel is the light
it casts on the different perceptions of East and West. For example the
sensuality of the women's dancing in the harem on the eve of Fatma's

21 Ibid., p. 86.

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 THE WORK OF JELENA DIMITRIJEVIC 67

wedding is too open for a French woman present who is obliged to turn
her head away for shame. The narrator readily understands that the
Turkish girls experience this sanctioned exuberance as a rare moment
of release in the general constraint of their lives. Another French
woman, as an outsider, is able to remark caustically that one symptom
of the way Turkish women are seen as objects is the fact that, while
men are called 'Sun', 'Lion', and so on, women tend to be given names
which mean 'ruby', 'emerald', 'rose': the kind of ornaments which men
use to adorn their clothing.
While it is clear that the narrator's sympathies are with the 'new
women', the novel explores the topic in all its complexity: the points of
view expressed are fully justified by the individual characterization and
the consequences of a particular course of action emerge from the
development of the plot. In the end, the reactionary older men, such as
Fatma's father, who do not have the confidence to tolerate a dilution of
their authority, are isolated: Fatma's father receives news of her death
in Paris by telegram and, while he remains defiant in front of his wife
and mother, in private he weeps for the first time in his life. But the
novel does not end there. The father, with all he represents, is no longer
relevant: the end of the novel focuses on the remarkable figure of
Fatma's aunt Arif, herself happily married to a 'new man', and the
diary Fatma's husband sent to Arif after her niece's death. The last
words remain, therefore, with the women themselves and the conviction
that, for all the inevitable setbacks and individual disappointments, the
process of emancipation will continue.

As may be deduced from her enthusiasm as a traveller, Dimitrijevic

was intrigued by different ways of life and contrasts between different
people. Her first account of her meeting with the 'New World', the
story 'The American Woman' (I 9 I 8), is told from the point of view of a
male narrator overwhelmed by the phenomenon of a creature who
represents everything that the Old World is not: 'Tall and proud, she
had the appearance of a queen from the New World, who had left it
and come to the Old World to rule over all women.'22 The American
woman's appearance is not particularly striking, although her bearing
exudes confidence and pride in herself; what is so different about her
emerges when she starts to move and particularly, to talk. Then her
true quality is seen: 'Free as a man, but direct and natural as a child.
She, the new woman, reminded me of the oldest, first woman before
she was driven out of Eden.'23 The narrator goes on to formulate his
view of the American woman, somewhat implausibly, but no dou'bt
reflecting Dimitrijevic's own first impressions:

22 Amerikanka, Sarajevo, I 9 I 8, p. 4.
23 Ibid., p. 5.

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68 CELIA HAWKESWORTH

She is a woman such as all women must one day be. When they all become
as sincere as children and free as men, then a man will not see a woman as
his mate, but as his companion. How good it will be when false modesty
vanishes! Women will purify us, they will make us new [...] This new
woman, or rather the woman of the future will determine the behaviour of
the future man, whom she will educate and prepare for companionship
with her.24

This sentimental, utopian tone characterizes the story which is an odd

mixture of an outmoded Romantic style and a modern apprehension
of potentially new ways of being and human relationships.
The letters in Dimitrijevic's next volume, Letters from Salonica, are
addressed to Lujza St Jaksic, a teacher at the Girls' High School in
Belgrade. Of French origin, she seems to have been one of Dimitrijevic's
main sources of inspiration: the author describes a time of great
intellectual friendship and richness that the two women spent together,
and in particular reading French writers who wrote of the East and
awakened their curiosity. Dimitrijevic writes of having two loves: the
East and Europe, but states that the former is the stronger, having
entered her being in her early youth. Dimitrijevic describes her state of
mind when she set off on her journey, her first encounter with a city
that was still part of Turkey: 'I am leaving for Turkey as a cosmopolitan,
but I travel through that country as a Serb: every fraction of my soul is
Serbian.'25 In the light of Dimitrijevic's whole personality as revealed
by her work, this statement should not be understood as defiant or in
any way aggressive; on the contrary, it suggests sensitivity to the
historical reality of her position and that of the women she was to visit.
It also conveys a certain unease. At one point in her stay in Salonica,
some Serbs arrive from Serbia. Her apprehension at the way they
might have behaved is clear from her remark to her friend: 'I can't tell
you how pleased I am that they were well received. They were
wonderfully well received. Unless it only seems so to me because I'm
happy.'26 What strikes Dimitrijevic particularly during her stay is the
fact that she is witnessing a time of radical transformation of traditional
Turkish society. She meets some of the young women of whom she
wrote in her novel. She describes the modifications to the buildings in
the new part of town and the new style of women's clothing, reflecting
elements of the latest European fashions. Nevertheless, she is surprised
by the extent to which the old ways linger on: many women are still
reluctant to be seen unveiled in public. A degree of misunderstanding
is revealed in a conversation she has on entering one house, where she
is met by a woman of European appearance. She turns out to be

24 Ibid., p. 30.
25 Pisma iz Soluna, Sarajevo, I 9 I 8, p. I o.
26 Ibid., p. I9.

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 THE WORK OF JELENA DIMITRIJEVIC 69

exceptionally well educated, her father had wished her to study

medicine, and she was now active in the Committee of Unity and
Progress. Dimitrijevic tells her the reason for her visit to Salonica:
I was going to go to Europe, Hanum, but I changed my direction and came
here, simply because I had read a newspaper report from Salonica, saying
that a new Constitution had been proclaimed and that Turkish women had
now discarded the veil and walked openly with men [ ..] Since I have
known these caged birds for a long time, I wanted to see them as soon as
they were released, to watch them fly, to see whether they knew how.27

She finds that her hostess is irritated, as are several other women she
meets, by this misguided and misleading report spread by an irrespon-
sible journalist who even claimed to have been in a harem, which was
of course out of the question, as they point out indignantly. The process
of change is necessarily more complex than such a superficial report
could convey. Dimitrijevic was evidently a little confused by the
conflicting signals this highly educated and intelligent woman was
giving. Later, in the street, she met two young women to whom she
expressed her dilemma, and they explained that this fine woman had
not been altogether truthful: while intellectually committed to change,
she did not herself put all her beliefs into practice out of respect and
love for her husband. The fact that Dimitrijevic is ready to share her
own confusion with her readers is typical of her approach, which
conveys above all an obvious eagerness to learn. The work expresses a
real interest and sympathy with the women's position at this time of
transition. She takes delight in her unusual experiences and conversa-
tions. One aspect of her experience is the scope it allows her for
comparison between the different ways of being in the East and the
West: one passage in Nove describes a Turkish woman's perception of
Western culture: 'When I read novels, especially by Zola, and put the
book down, I wash my hands, because I feel that I have physically
defiled myself';28 and the Turkish women's sense of their own dignit
and the affront of being mocked and pitied by foreign women to whom
they open their doors in good faith. Dimitrijevic seeks to understand
their point of view and is ready to appreciate that the intimacy of the
harem provides something which European women lack. For her this is
most vividly expressed in the women's singing: 'The room was filled
with warmth. They all sang, softly, imagining a dear face from a picture
or glimpsed in passing, conjuring him up by their longing into this
infatuated company.'29

27 Ibid., p. 39.
28 Ibid., p. 89.
29 Ibid., p. 91i.

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 70 CELIA HAWKESWORTH

On her journey to Salonica, Dimitrijevic was acompanied by her

husband (whom she mentions only once, in connection with the fact
that he was, understandably, reluctant to enter the women's homes
along with his wife). When she travelled to India, however, she was
alone. Her 'letters' to an unknown addressee convey an infectious
enthusiasm, and a wealth of perceptive impressions which she is eager
to share. There is a certain panache in her independence -she is
ready to talk to anyone she meets about their lives and local politics
but, at the same time, it exposes her to some practical difficulties. One
incident described in detail is her meeting with Tagore. She had wished
to meet 'a great Indian', so, without pre-arrangement she travelled to
his country home, where he was ill with malaria. When he heard that
she had come all the way from Belgrade, he agreed to receive her and
yet she was hurt that he seemed cold and had no friendly words for her
country: 'my soul was offended, and my national self-esteem humili-
ated'. However, he later sent word that he would arrange accommoda-
tion for her overnight, and she realized that what she had thought was
his coldness was in fact her conceit: 'In foreign countries, among
foreign people, where no one knows me such a mood often overcomes
me: I am afraid of humilating myself, or of being humiliated by
others.'30 As in all her works, Dimitrijevic is remarkably open, even to
the point of sometimes sounding naive. She takes herself and her
national dignity very seriously, but is ready to admit her mistakes. At
the end of the volume, she makes it clear that these letters are intendecl
for her young fellow-countrywomen, on the assumption that even
second-hand experience of countries beyond their own borders will
increase their understanding of the world.
A further journey to the East, to Egypt this time, was in fact written
up in the form of a lecture, given at the 'Narodni univerzitet' (People's
University) on 6 May 1929. The text consists of fresh, immediate
impressions rather than a formal lecture and reads more like the letter
form with which Dimitrijevic was so familiar. She gives a particularly
vivid account of her first impressions of the Nile and conveys an
attractive ability to be impressed by her sense of its timelessness and the
weight of history all around her, as well as the visual impact of the
scene.
The Pyramid of Cheops had never seemed so immense as it did that
evening; nor had I ever had the impression that the enormous Sphinx near
it, alone, in the sand, was not gazing into the distance as when it is
bathed in sunlight -but was merely listening, hearing the footsteps of past

30 Pisma zZ Indye, Belgrade 1928, p. 45.

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 THE WORK OF JELENA DIMITRIJEVIC 71

centuries wandering not only in time, but also in space in the desert
moonlight.3 1

Passages such as these reveal a writer capable of composing clear,

communicative prose particularly when her own personality and
sense of dignity do not intrude.
Dimitrijevic reflected on her lengthy experience of travelling in her
two last volumes, both of which have a strong comparative dimension.
Novi svet ili UAmericigodinu dana (The New World, or A Year in America,
I934) returns to Dimitrijevic's favoured form: she notes her immediate
impressions in the form of letters to various close women friends. One
stimulus for herjourney is her interest in seeing Americans in their own
surroundings, since she had observed that people tended to be very
different out of their own context. She was also interested to see
ordinary 'middle-class' Americans, since she had hitherto met only the
rich. This is a substantial volume, covering many aspects of the
American way of life. Two chapters are concerned with American
women. With typical self-mockery, Dimitrijevic writes that she had
expected to find that American women did not look like women: they
would be dressed like men, with short hair and heavy shoes. She would
see them with a cigarette in their mouths, striding with their hands
behind their backs towards voting booths. She had, indeed, come with
many prejudices about the way American women lived and her text is
mainly concerned with dispelling these preconceptions. Many of her
observations also contrast the culture of American women with her
own countrywomen: she is impressed by the Americans' seriousness,
the way they think before they speak, and particularly with their
industriousness and public spirit. On the other hand, some aspects of
their behaviour remind her of other parts of the world: 'When
American women converse, I seem to hear Turkish women talking.
They speak softly, not raising their voice the least bit more than is
decreed by social propriety; they do not interrupt one another [ ...]
Just like Turkish women. 32 However, the content of such conversations
is of course very different. At the same time, Dimitrijevic is struck by
how 'old-fashioned' these 'new women' are in their private lives,
particularly in the way they defer to their husbands. Dimitrijevic finds
a certain childishness in their culture: she notices that both women and
men in America tend to want to be loved and admired by the rest of the
world. Many of her impressions are acutely observed aspects of the
American way of life, which remain valid to this day. Overall,
Dimitrijevic was favourably impressed: she found American women
conventional and cold, but soothing like Greek statues. She

31 Pisma izMisira, Belgrade, 1929, p. 23.

32 NJovi svet, Belgrade, 1934, p. 8i.

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 72 CELIA HAWKESWORTH

appreciated their order, politeness, respect for others and for them-
selves: the most useful lesson she could take back to her fellow-
countrymen was her sense that it was not only ideas which made
women civilized, but the way those ideas were expressed, their
behaviour altogether. She makes one interesting comparison with
English women, whom on balance she preferred, for all their hypocrisy:
'English women say: "We are not cold, just reserved." American
women say: "We are warm, but not demonstrative." '33
Dimitrijevic concludes her chapter on American women with the
following observations:
Of all the cities where I have been, I like Istanbul and London most.
Of all the women with whom I have spent time, I am most interested in
Turkish and American women.
Turkish and American women! What can they have in common?
A Turkish woman is an old oriental woman even when she calls herself
new: conservative, passive, a dead past, and nothing but a past.
An American woman would be new even when she maintained that she
was old out of coquettishness or caprice: progressive, active, the living
present and the future.34

Dimitrijevic's last work, Sedam mora i tri okeana. Putem oko sveta (Seven
Seas and Three Oceans. A Journey round the World, I 940) sums up
the impressions from all her travels and vividly conveys her personality
at this stage in her life: with typical irony and realism, she dismisses
conventional reactions to the notion of a woman 'of her age' travelling.
She is undaunted by any of the uncertainties awaiting her and caps her
dismissal of other people's objections with the remark: 'As far as my
grave goes, what does it matter where it is in India, in China or
Japan, or on a Pacific island since the graves of our finest sons are
scattered all over the globe.'35
In the process of rediscovering the contribution of women to Serbian
cultural life in the first half of the twentieth century, Dimitrijevic has an
important role: her work, particularly Pisma iz NiSa o haremima and iNove,
is of intrinsic interest and her independent spirit is characteristic of her
generation of whom with rare exceptions little is known today. She is
important also in the development of feminist thinking in Serbia. Like
so many women of her generation, Dimitrijevic was involved in
humanitarian and educational work for women. She joined the board
of the Podruzina zenskog drustva (Union of Women's Societies) in
I88I, thereby becoming its youngest member. She worked as a nurse
during the Balkan war of I 9 1 2. She was on the board of the best-known

33 Ibid., p. 84.
34 Ibid., p. 96.
35 Sedam mora i tri okeana, Belgrade, 1940, p. 13.

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 THE WORK OF JELENA DIMITRIJEVIC 73

Serbian women's society, Kolo srpskih sestara (The Circle of Serbian

Sisters), which is still active today. Her involvement in women's affairs
was not therefore theoretical although she was well acquainted with
feminist ideas current in Europe and the United States. Her practical
work and her writing, focused entirely on the experience of women, are
simply the result of what she herself, as an individual, felt to be
important. One passage in Nove reveals an edge of ironic anger which is
not often conveyed in Dimitrijevic's writing but which must have been
a motivating force in all her activity. The passage describes a visit by
the protagonist's feminist aunt, Arif, to a literary gathering in Salonica.
She is disgusted by the crude behaviour and low intellectual level of the
participants who spent the whole evening drinking and talking about
anything but literature.
As she sat there, she felt something unusual: that these men did not forget
for a moment that she was a woman. And she left, her heart heavy with
disappointment, and walked briskly down the street, improvising lines of
verse:
Philistines! a woman still for you is woman,
A thing of wood, a woven cloth,
Infantile, for all her years.
Philistines! a woman still for you is woman,
Still you say: 'That's not for women.'
Boastful of your physical strength
You treat her as your property.
Still you say: 'That's not for women.'
Your mouths are full of: 'Culture, culture'.
Culture soars on every side,
But has not found its way to you.
Your mouths are full of: 'Culture, culture'.36

Interestingly enough, in the article in Srpkinja referred to above, this

poem is used, along with other passages from the novel, to illustrate the
way in which Nove may also be seen as an indirect comment on the
position of educated Serbian women. Therefore, even for those readers
at the very end of the twentieth century, who are not concerned with
the position of Turkish women almost a century ago, the novel may
hold some interest as shedding light on the conditions in which their
own great-grandmothers lived.

36 Nove, p. 254.

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