Abstract:

Nancy Armstrong claims that the history of the novel is incomprehensible without the history of sexuality and that the domestic novel antedated the lifestyle that it represented. That is to say, the lifestyle that was narrated or created in those novels was reproduced in actual life by the readers. Therefore the novel reorganizes life, society and sexuality. It rewrites, forms or constructs them from scratch with each new novel. The late nineteenth century Turkish novels offer abundant examples to discuss these claims. Especially Ahmet Mithat and his adoptive/literary daughter Fatma Aliye’s friendship and literary products crystallize around their attitudes towards rewriting sexuality. Although both novelists approach female sexuality through the concept of “passively defended chastity,” their ways of weaving sexuality around chastity are different and even contradictory. This article aims at interpreting Fatma Aliye’s approach to the problematic of chastity in her novel Udî. Although Udî has a closure in accordance with the patriarchal order, it nevertheless contains numerous elements that indicate that women’s problems originate from the same order. The novel's closure emphasizes both the irrevocable female chastity and the importance of education for women's subsistence without a man. The emphasis on female education is, however, very symptomatic because educational facilities for women were rare in the Ottoman Empire of the time. Therefore, education for women was a class issue and it was possible only for the upper-class women. Fatma Aliye's Udî conceals this fact with her conformist closure but it reveals the patriarchal exploitation of Ottoman women through the symptomatic development of its plot. In the end, we cannot say that Fatma Aliye is a feminist activist but she has earned "a room of her own" in the history of the Ottoman-Turkish woman with her works, as is evident in Udî.

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