Isabelle Eberhardt: Gender Unveiled

Isabelle Eberhardt (1877–1904) took on a gender to unveil the world of Arab men. Isabelle was born in Switzerland. In the first few years of her life, she lived as a girl, periodically dressing as a boy, something her father did not discourage.1 In fact, Isabelle was raised as a boy, whether this was her choice, or her father’s is unknown.2 Her upbringing as male may have been due to the inferior position of women in Switzerland and the challenge of getting ahead as a woman.3 It is unclear whether she identified as a transgender man, or if she expressed a masculine gender to make her way through the world.4 What we do know is that she wanted a male partner as she eventually settled down with Slimane Ehnni.5

In May 1897 Isabelle and her mother relocated to Algeria, where she converted to Islam, began dressing as a man all the time, and changed her name to Si Mahmoud Saadi.6 In Algeria at that time, women were not allowed to go outside of the home alone, be unveiled, or take part in many activities.7 Some historians, such as Dipanjana Mukherjee, argue that Eberhardt’s conversion to Islam was a reluctant formality, a way to infiltrate the world of Arabic men.8 Other historians argue that she believed that she had been born a Muslim all along and that there was no conversion at all, and that the male role was where she felt most at home.9 Regardless of her motivation, acting as a man allowed her pursue work as a journalist and, as an Arab man, she published a plethora of stories in newspapers in France that discussed her experiences in Muslim territory.10 She was one of the first Western writers to describe the life of an Islamic person from personal experience.11

French colonizers in Algeria did not take her masculine identity lightly. They feared that she was a spy because of the peculiarity of her behaviour and demeanor.12 They asked her why she portrayed herself as a man, she informed them that it was impossible for her to do her work without doing so, an answer that the French military did not expect.13 Eventually, to appease the French colonists’ unease of her gender expression, she married an Algerian soldier and eventually she fell madly in love with him.14 It was Slimane Ehnni with whom she felt secure enough to take on the feminine role, and together they embarked upon a multitude of adventures traversing the desert.15 Despite her efforts to conform to the what the French wanted her to be, disdain continued to follow her until finally an attempt was made on her life.16 Her assassin declared that he was acting for the glory of Allah; others strongly suspected that is was the French who tried to kill her. Soon after the attempt on her life, she was exiled by the French under the premise of her own protection and security.17

Isabelle Eberhart challenged established gender roles of her era. Her success as an explorer and an author in a male-dominated world showed that individuals cannot be reduced to a binary understanding of their assigned gender.18 Her story caused others to re-examine and question the gender dynamics that had been in play up until this place.

Madeleine Wilk (she/her)

Education major