Utopian Works By Two Feminist Writers: Herland and Yeni Turan
Utopian Works By Two Feminist Writers: Herland and Yeni Turan

Author(s): Senem Üstün Kaya
Subject(s): Politics / Political Sciences, Social Sciences, Psychology, Essay|Book Review |Scientific Life, General Reference Works, Geography, Regional studies, Library and Information Science, Sociology
Published by: Transnational Press London
Keywords: Feminist utopians; Herland; Yeni Turan; the ‘New Woman’; social reform comparative analysis
Summary/Abstract: Utopian novelists have provided alternative worlds for readers while criticizing the vices of current systems in their societies. Women writers, particularly, have tended to use utopias as vehicles to represent female struggle for emancipation in patriarchal societies. Notable feminist utopian writers, thus, have depicted a better life for women who are reduced to the secondary status and othered. The American author Charlotte Perkins Gilman and the Turkish writer Halide Edip Adıvar are distinguished examples of the female utopian novelists in world literature. In Herland (1915), Gilman both eliminated and criticized the American concepts of inequality, sexism, rivalry and capitalism by creating a land which is governed by women. Similarly, Adıvar created a utopian political party, Yeni Turan, to express her ideals about the new Turkish women in Yeni Turan (1913). Therefore, this study aims at presenting how Gilman and Adıvar similarly depicted utopian visions in their novels to convey their social reform ideals and advocate women’s rights in patriarchal societies. Within this scope, based on the comparative analysis of Herland and Yeni Turan, in this study, it is concluded that Adıvar and Gilman similarly conveyed their ideals about women, who could educate new generations for prosperous nations within utopian visions.

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