Journal Article

Female Characters in Suat Derviş’s Novels / Suat Derviş’in Romanlarında Kadın Karakterler

Şehriban Kaya

2018

Overview

This article aiming at evaluating female characters in Suat Derviş’s novels, also identifies her position in the historical stages of female literature. From the beginning of the debate on the women and literature relationship in the 1920s to the 1970s in which female literature was constructed as a literature of their own, Suat Derviş continuously wrote novels, literary criticisms, newspaper writings and existed with her author identity. In general, most of the Suat Derviş’s novel characters are female characters whose gender and class positions are combined by Suat Derviş. These characters, in which gender and class positions are combined, are also settled in an historical period: the collapse of the Ottoman Empire which evolved into the modern Repyblic of Turkey radical social change and transformation process. When we closely look at the female characters in Suat Derviş’s novels, we face; weird women in her gothic novels, lonely and desperate women who are in the upper class of the disappearing Ottoman society, opportunistic women believing in that everything could bought and sold, and mothers who have lost their children. The most striking finding is that Suat Derviş working as an author and journalist gave almost no place to working women in her novels.

• Publisher: Cyprus International University
• Subject: female characters / novel / Suat Derviş / woman literature