sempozyum_bildiri_kitabi

and to break the established pattern in the lives of the women in her family. The role education
undertakes in this story is certainly related to the modernization project that gained impetus after
the establishment of the new state; access to education was an opportunity this project provided for
women and eventually made women’s entrance into the public sphere possible. As the daughter of a
dedicated teacher, Kutlu had an encouraging intellectual environment at home. Her parents firmly
believed in the transforming power of education and passionately supported their children’s
schooling.23 She remembers her father’s claim that he would do anything for his children’s schooling
and how her mother strongly agreed with him adding that education was the only way out for their
children.24
Gender issue emerges as an extremely enormous concern zone in the narrative. As they are
portrayed by the author, Kutlu’s parents seem to be certainly more liberal in their dealings with their
children compared to most people in their circle; they recognize both genders’ right of education and
are proud of their daughter’s academic achievements. Yet there are times they experience inner
conflicts and, as a result, exhibit contradictory attitudes. There is an extraordinary father figure in the
narrative: a well‐educated, open‐minded man of an artistic bent who always treats his only daughter
with love and appreciation. When it comes to his wife, however, his attitude changes; although he
recognizes his wife’s intellectual capacity, he does not give up traditional male privileges and
enforces upon her the conventional female role. Hence we see that he has an inner conflict in his
expectations from the successive generations of women of the family‐‐namely his wife and his
daughter‐‐ and this paradoxical attitude was quite common among the intellectuals of the time. On
the other hand, the mother is a strong and realistic woman who married at the age of fourteen; yet
she was able to develop a sense of balance between her own needs and societal expectations.
However, when she becomes overwhelmed with her domestic responsibilities, she demands help
from her daughter. She thus partakes in the reproduction of traditional gender roles which had been
limiting her life and diminishing her being all through her life. Both parents recognize girls’ rights of
education; yet when they have to make a choice because of the limited funds of the family, they give
priority to their male children. When Kutlu graduates from high school, they tell her: “You are a girl.
Your education is less important,” for the boys will later “be obliged to look after a family.”25
Apparently even a family with strong commitment to progress and education blunders when it
comes to internalizing the values of a new world and ideology. Kutlu’s life narrative demonstrates
that it is almost impossible to avoid the pressure of traditional gender roles and expectations and
accordingly both the role models offered by the parents and the behavior patterns repeated within
the family are contradictory and biased.
As she enters adolescence, gender becomes an increasingly controlling force in her life. From then
on, young Ayla’s attempts to define herself outside of the traditional role of domesticity will
continually be thwarted. Gender discrimination is not only something that she witnesses around her
any longer; it becomes her firsthand experience. Even in her relatively progressive family, being an
adolescent girl is a repressive and restraining experience; in addition to her mother’s increasing
demands for help with domestic work and responsibilities, she also has a difficult relationship with
her overbearing older brother who gradually becomes an oppressive male influence in her life.
Different from her father who never discriminated against his daughter, her teen‐age older brother
demands full submission and often treats her like a female slave. When she refuses to comply, she
pays for it by being viciously beaten by him. “Like all the girls, I was not happy with my sex,” she
confesses.26 As an adolescent girl, she realizes that her gender is a burden that crushes her both
physically and emotionally. She bitterly concludes that “growing up and social tolerance was applied
inversely proportional for [her] sex”; on the other hand, it was the exact opposite situation for the
male members of society.27 When she looks back after an interval of half a century, she remembers
a young woman she had never seen but whose lamentation she heard constantly when the young
bride and her husband moved into a neighboring house. This woman lived in that house for years
without ever being seen outside and cried like a mournful “scops owl” repeating the exact same
words days and nights, “I won’t stay; I will go.”28 Her description of this woman as an anguished bird