Constructions of Femininity in Nationalist Women’s Literature during the Transition from the Empire to the Republic: Novels by Halide Edib Adıvar and Müfide Ferit Tek (1912–1924)
This study aims to explore the constructions of femininity and their subsequent transformations in the nationalist women’s literature during the transition from the Empire to the Republic by focusing on the novels of two nationalist female authors —Halide Edib’s New Turan (Yeni Turan, 1912), The Shirt of Flame (Ateşten Gömlek, 1922) and Strike the Whore (Vurun Kahpeye, 1923), and Müfide Ferit’s Aydemir (1918) and Propellers (Pervaneler, 1924). Locating women as central figures in the nationalist projects, these novels point at a diversity of roles assigned to women, and the limitations of their participation as well as the extraordinary circumstances required to transcend them. Female characters are situated within delicate balances —between tradition and modernity, East and West, freedom and virtue—and are often depicted as detached from other women and familial ties to preserve these balances. Such constructions allowed the authors to portray female protagonists as saviors, theorists and inspirational sources of the nationalist movement, engendering a literary space of freedom and agency for women. The Republican novels, Strike the Whore (Vurun Kahpeye) and Propellers (Pervaneler), however, hint at the closure of that space, and the employment of a different discourse on women within state-based/post-independence/ post-colonial nationalisms.
İmparatorluk’tan Cumhuriyet’e Geçiş Döneminde Milliyetçi Kadın Yazınında Kadın Kurguları: Halide Edib Adıvar ve Müfide Ferit Tek Romanları (1912-1924)
İmparatorluktan ulus-devlete geçiş döneminin iki milliyetçi kadın yazarının, Halide Edib’in Yeni Turan (1912), Ateşten Gömlek (1922) ve Vurun Kahpeye (1923), Müfide Ferit’in Aydemir (1918) ve Pervaneler (1924) romanlarını inceleyen bu makale, milliyetçi kadın yazınındaki kadınlık kurgularını ve bu kurguların değişimini incelemeyi amaçlamaktadır. İncelenen eserlerde milliyetçi kadın yazını, bir yandan kadın karakterleri merkeze alırken bir yandan da kadınlara atfedilen milliyetçi rollerin çeşitliliğini, kadınların milliyetçi projelere katılımının sınırlarını ve bu sınırların aşılabileceği istisnai durumları ortaya koymaktadır. Bu milliyetçi romanlarda kadın karakterler geleneksel ile modern, Doğu ile Batı, özgürlük ve namus arasındaki hassas bir denge üzerinde ve bu dengenin korunması adına diğer kadınlardan ve ailevi bağlardan uzak olarak kurgulanmışlardır. Böylece kadın yazarlar, romanlarında onları milliyetçi hareket içinde kurtarıcılığa, düşünürlüğe, ilham kaynaklığına kadar değişik rollerde anlatabilmiş ve onlara bir özgürlük alanı ve faillik sağlayabilmişlerdir. İncelenen eserler arasında ulus-devlet sonrası yazılan Vurun Kahpeye ve Pervaneler ise bu alanın kapandığına ve ulus-devlet/sömürgecilik/bağımsızlık sonrası milliyetçiliklerin kadınlarla kurdukları ilişkilerin farklılığına dair ipuçları içermektedir.
Studies on gender and nationalism underline the profoundly gendered character of nationalism and reveal that national projects aiming to build nations, nation-states and ethnic groups are simultaneously gender projects, operating on various levels and constructing multiple images of women. In those projects, women are portrayed simultaneously as mothers, victims, symbols, subjects and preservers of the nation. Emerging in tandem with an Ottoman feminist movement in the early twentieth century, Turkish nationalism utilized this repertoire and encoded the nationalist project as a gendered project necessitating the formation of a new woman as a modern companion to the modernizing men of the empire. Hence, modernization, nationalism and feminism became the key pillars that characterized the ideological debates, cultural production and politics of the final decades of the empire.
Given such a background, this study aims to explore the constructions of femininity, their transformations and limitations in the Turkish nationalist women’s novels during the transition from the Empire to the Republic. Despite their differences in literary styles and political orientations, Halide Edib Adıvar and Müfide Ferit Tek were two female authors who were considered nationalist literary pioneers by the founding fathers of Turkish nationalism. Analyzing Halide Edib’s New Turan (Yeni Turan, 1912), The Shirt of Flame (Ateşten Gömlek, 1918) and Strike the Whore (Vurun Kahpeye, 1923), along with Müfide Ferit’s Aydemir (1922) and Propellers (Pervaneler, 1924), this study points at a multiplicity of roles designed for women in nationalism though none of these female characters attained leadership positions.
Themes of desexualization, sacrifice, subordination of individualism for the survival of the nation and the depiction of ideal women characterize these early nationalist novels written during the transformation from the empire to a new nation-state. While these novels depicted “new woman” with a certain degree of familiarity with Western culture and modernity, these characters were meticulously crafted on a balance between tradition and modernity, East and West, as well as liberation and chastity. The authors maintained this delicate equilibrium by depicting these women without a nuclear and parental family structure. With the exception of Propellers (Pervaneler), all female protagonists in these novels lacked any significant relationships with other women, lost their mothers early in life and lacked sisters or female companions. In the absence of any meaningful interactions with women, ‘other women’ served the function of being educated, emancipated by the protagonists or becoming jealous of them. Nationalism, it appears, embraced some women while disregarding women’s potentials for building bonds of sisterhood. The more elevated their position in the nationalist projects, the more isolated they became from other women and familial ties, often accompanied solely by a man with a similar ideological framework. Their ‘elevation’ to the nationalist roles and missions required disconnecting from the world of women.
The female figures in Adıvar’s and Tek’s nationalist novels were engaged in a multiplicity of roles, including serving as nurses during times of war, being political orators in the political meetings, and even contributing theoretical perspectives to a fictional nationalist movement in its early stages. These diverse roles allowed female protagonists a space of activism, mobility and agency amidst the great transformations of history—such as the dissolution of an empire, a nationalist struggle for independence, and the formation of a nation-state. Nevertheless, the grand finale —lynching of the female protagonist by the townspeople—in Strike the Whore (Vurun Kahpeye), a Republican novel, insinuates that the unexpected and chaotic activism of these heroic women in the nationalist cause was over and the second war, which would be against the tradition and bigotry, would be fought by men and the masculine state. In Propellers (Pervaneler), another Early Republican novel, female characters were portrayed as social problems to be solved, and subjects requiring discipline and control by nationalist men. These two novels of the Republican period signify the beginning of a new period for women in nationalism in which the nascent nation-state began recruiting women to predesignated nationalist roles by the directives of the founding fathers; rather than women recruiting themselves. Consequently, they underscore the employment of a different discourse on women within state-based/ post-independence/post-colonial nationalisms.
