Yeni Kadin: Şükufe Nihal
The New Woman: Şükufe Nihal

Summary/Abstract: Şükufe Nihal (1896-1973) published her works in an era of ongoing significant social changes during Turkey's modernization period 1919-1960. She took acting role in many women's societies as the "new woman" of the westernized secular and new nation state based on the nationalist model, wrote articles on women's rights in newspapers and magazines, gave the main role to heroines in their stories and novels, and strived to make women's voices heard in her poetry. She approached woman within the patriarchal sexual stereotypes, in line with the widely acknowledged attitude by the intellectuals of her time. On the one hand she defended the working and education rights for women, and wanted them to be visible in the public sphere. On the other hand, she expected her to return to the domestic sphere to carry out her primary tasks such as „motherhood“, „wifehood“ and „housekeeping“. Reading the dilemma, the traditional identity and mother identity of these "Daughter of the Republic" without a feminist point of view, clashed. In her poetry, "woman's voice" trapped and depressed by this clash between tradition and modernity, is heard.

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