Dreams beyond Control: Women and Writing in the Ottoman Empire since Asiye Hatun’s Diary
Dreams beyond Control: Women and Writing in the Ottoman Empire since Asiye Hatun’s Diary

Summary/Abstract: Asiye Hatun, a woman from a Balkan town in the 17th century, recorded her dreams in letter form, written to her Sufi şeyh. She is the only woman of the pre-Tanzimat period whose first-person narrative has been published to date. Her letters open the door to the realm of autobiographical writings of the Ottoman women. The paper will present a discussion of Ottoman women’s writing since Asiye Hatun and explore how women’s writing treated gender relations and autobiographical details under the impact of acute social, political and cultural changes that ultimately lead the way to the disintegration of the multi-ethnic Ottoman Empire, focusing on Asiye Hatun, Fatma Aliye and Ayşe Zekiye, three women of challenges. The approach to the sense of individualism and the appraisal of the self by these three women writers will be examined in greater depth using the theoretical perspectives provided by some key theoreticians of female autobiography in particular and women’s history in general, and feminist psychoanalysis.

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