Abstract:

The aim of this study is to analyze the novel titled Veba Geceleri (Nights of Plague) by Orhan Pamuk, which was introduced to the Turkish literary polysystem in March 2021, within the framework of feminist theory based on gender construction, and to show the difficulties based on feminist reading from the plurality of reading axes of the novel for potential translations expected to be made into Western languages in the future. The novel can be read as a historical novel set in the fictional Minger Island plotted around the letters the (fictional) character Pakize Sultan, Sultan Murat V’s daughter, wrote to her elder sister Hatice Sultan. The novel also lends itself to a feminist reading as openly stated by the author in the Introduction part of the novel. Social construction feminism argues that the making of gender and gender roles are not natural and biological phenomena, but that each individual born into the world learns these gender roles within the framework of the social values they live in. According to social construction feminism, which argues that the inequality between women and men, constructed both in social life and in the business world, is reproduced by patriarchal society, whereby determining the party in power and social control. A feminist reading of the novel shows that women are restricted to housework and childcare, with all occupations performed only by men, and the sole power holder is men. While all male characters in the novel are introduced to the reader based on their profession or social status, all female characters are introduced by saying whose daughter or wife they are, showing female characters as dependent beings. The marriage of women and the health services they will receive are also found to be determined by patriarchal norms. It is further found that socially constructed gender roles also affect the use of language in the novel, and masculine signs such as "men" or "father", "grandfather" are used in roles that do not specify the gender. In this study, it is recommended with references to specific contexts from the novel that the literary translators and editors analyze the novel through feminist reading prior to the translations of this novel, expected to be made into Western languages in the near future in order to minimize the meaning transformations and loss of meaning that might occur in the use of language in the novel. Besides, certain recommendations for literary feminist theory are also put forward to determine translators’ skopos and deconstruct the patriarchal society in translations of literary texts.

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