WESTERN WOMEN IN HÜSEYİN RAHMİ GÜRPINAR’S NOVELS
HÜSEYİN RAHMİ GÜRPINAR ROMANLARINDA BATILI KADINLAR

Author : Elif DURAN OTO
Number of pages : 452-461

Abstract

Hüseyin Rahmi Gürpınar, known as “hace-i sâni” (Second Master) of our literature, lived between 1864 and 1944. In this period, which witnessed great transformations from the period of Ottoman political reforms to the proclamation of the Turkish Republic, the author produced a number of works into our literature including 41 novels. With his typical attitude considered to be “hace” (Master) the author pointed to certain deficiencies and problems in his works and mostly shared his suggested solutions with the readers within the fiction of his novels. One of the problems mentioned by Gürpınar, who authored his works without any meaningless didacticism, is the Western women’s matter to be regarded as an extension of wrong westernization. These women in novels, who are mostly the ones wealthy families send their children to for education, are sometimes preferred to exemplify the portrait of a scarlet woman. Although various inconveniences caused by this excessive and uncontrolled interest in a foreigner are generally sexual problems, children’s education is regarded as a fairly important issue as well. Gürpınar, in his novels, mostly tries to convey the indirect threat of being a foreigner by using the portrait of western women who could have the role of a tutor or even of a fancy woman. However, by giving examples of positive situations despite regarding the woman’s body as an object from time to time, the author sometimes mentions the issue of ethnocentrism.

Keywords

Key Words: Western Woman, foreigner, tutor, child education, fancy woman

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