Research Information System
Yakin Donem Turkiye Arastirmalari, vol.2025, no.47, pp.243-267, 2025 (ESCI, Scopus)
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.