Browsing by Author "Aytemiz, Beyhan Uygun"

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Open Access
Halide Edib-Adıvar ve feminist yazın
(2001) Aytemiz, Beyhan Uygun
Halide Edib-Adıvar, who is acknowledged to be the first woman novelist of Turkey although she has Fatma Aliye and Emine Semiye as her predecessors, is accepted to be an important figure in Turkish feminism and modernism. It should be admitted that she has played an important role in the War of Turkish Emancipation and represented Turkish womanhood in Turkey and abroad. The fact that she is recognized as a leader of and a spokeswoman for Turkish feminism resulted in the acceptance of her being a feminist novelist. However, a close reexamination of her fiction shows that her strategies of constructing femininity and womanhood are in harmony with the patriarchal modes of literary representation. The well-established roles of women and men in patriarchal societies are recreated instead of being challenged in her early work. In order to idealize her woman characters as powerful, active intellectuals, she creates their opposites as passive, ignorant, and self-sacrificing figures who are continually looked down on and criticized by the male point of view of the narrator in such works as Seviyye Talip and Handan. The images of women as “angels” and/or “monsters” in Halide Edib's early work is replaced by the images of women as “comrades” in The Shirt of Flame and Tatarcık. While determining the conditions of women’s existence in the male-dominated society she deprives them of their womanhood and femininity, and presents them as man-like. Thus, women do not pose a threat to men sexually. Halide Edib-Adıvar’s recreation of the phallocratic representation of women in her three novels, Handan, The Shirt of Flame and Tatarcık, is examined in this thesis and the conclusion reached is that the femininity/womanhood of the idealized female characters Handan, Ayşe and Lâle, is underrepresented.
Open Access
Reşat Nuri Güntekin'in romanlarında aşk ilişkileri
(2005) Aytemiz, Beyhan Uygun
This study focuses on the romantic novels of Reşat Nuri Güntekin (1889-1956), who is generally acknowledged as a founding member of national Turkish literature. It investigates the following eight novels of the author in terms of the love relationships displayed in them: Harabelerin Çiçeği (The Flowers of Ruin, 1918), Gizli El (The Secret Hand, 1920), Çalıkuşu (The Wren, 1922), Damga (The Stigma, 1924), Dudaktan Kalbe (From Lips to Heart, 1925), Akşam Güneşi (The Sunset, 1926), Bir Kadın Düşmanı (A Misogynist, 1927), Eski Hastalık (The Old Pain, 1938), and Ateş Gecesi (Night of Fire, 1942). The thesis mainly examines the personal value system and the love relationships depicted in Güntekin’s novels through the perspectives of their narrators and protagonists. It is observed that these characters’ traits almost always gather around a typical narcissistic configuration. Güntekin is consistent in creating characters that are selfcentered, arrogant, and in need of constant admiration. Their lack of empathy towards almost all others in their environment emerges from their insecure childhood experiences and inadequate parental interactions. Such constructions of the self in the novels in turn shape the protagonists’ love and other interpersonal relations, as well as the representation of Anatolia, which is often described as a place of exile. However, important differences are also observed in the novels, especially in the representation of love as experienced by male and female characters. While the author’s male characters seem to be capable of love, his female characters are not. This results in the disunion of the potential lovers, a phenomenon transforming the traditional structure of the typical romantic novel.