sempozyum_bildiri_kitabi

trapped and caged in the house and also of a bird of the shadows and the dark reveals the extent of
the impact of this gloomy memory upon her psyche. She thus becomes more and more aware of
women’s victimization in society and realizes that she will not be exempt from it.29 It is this growing
awareness that leads her to question women’s lot: “There were so many unhappy women around.
Did growing up mean to see more and more miserable women around?”30
When she goes to Ankara at the age of seventeen, Kutlu has the idea that she is moving to a new
stage in her life where she will have more autonomy and new opportunities for self‐development.
However, she soon realizes that this will not be the case since one of her paternal uncles lives in
Ankara and considers himself responsible for her. Unfortunately, his understanding of responsibility
is despotic control over her entire life. Gradually he becomes an enormously oppressive presence in
her life and a destructive emotional strain on her spirit. It is as if her brother gives his place to her
uncle and as the agents of patriarchy they take turns reminding her that she is a female and it
automatically gives them power over her. At the end of her first year in Ankara, although she
successfully completes her courses, she feels that she has already lost zest for life. She feels
emotionally exhausted and spiritually aged although she is only eighteen yet. She writes: “For ten
years the men I am not obliged to have erected a scaffold into the center of my life . . . and have
started to frighten if not kill me. All the fears, apprehensions, distress that I have experienced so far
have started to generate serious trouble. I did not do any harm to them. I did not ask anything from
them. The origin of their anger was the same: my being.”31 She understands that despite her
parents’ affection and support, a girl‐child is still vulnerable; social and cultural values and forces can
hurt deeply or even make her awfully ill, body and soul. In her relationship with her despotic uncle,
she feels trapped “like a scorpion surrounded by fire.”32 Although she goes back home, she is still
intensely depressed during the summer break; however, her parents take sides with her when the
next conflict arises rather than with her uncle and it becomes a turning point in her life. She feels
liberated and gradually becomes healed. Later on, as a young woman, she goes beyond witnessing or
experiencing discrimination; she is then able to analyze the situation socially and culturally and
locates the origin of oppression in her own life in particular and in women’s lives in general in “the
social values that justifies male violence against women.”33
Despite their conflicts and contradictions when it comes to gender issues at home, in the final
analysis Kutlu’s parents emerge as beneficial figures and affirmative forces in her life. As she
recreates her past in her narrative, she underlines their individual contributions to her intellectual
and emotional development and acknowledges their positive impact upon her character and life. She
thus makes a choice in how to remember them. As she looks back into her past as an adult, her
attempt is to understand her parents as individuals and since she knows that they were also made by
the social and cultural forces surrounding them, she is able to approach them with empathy and
appreciation. “I now realize how hard my mother’s job was and how she endured the things that I
never could,” she writes thinking of her mother as a very young woman with extremely limited
financial means but huge domestic responsibilities.34 Yet her mother emerges in her memory as a
woman who knew how to smile against all odds, defying all kinds of restrains and misfortunes she
experienced throughout her life. Kutlu recognizes and cherishes her strength and, as a woman,
chooses to identify with her resilience and exuberance. On the other hand, she remembers her
father as a man “who was able to see the beauty in almost everything in the world” and who eagerly
shared it with his daughter. In her recollection, as she can still hear his soft voice and sees him “with
his exceptional long hair greatly unusual for his time and his profound wisdom and compassion
suffocated in the narrow streets of a provincial town,” she understands his frustration and
resentment.35 Hence she chooses to identify with his father as an intellectual and also as an artist
with a powerful sense of beauty. In her narrative Kutlu manifests that as a woman, as an intellectual,
and as an artist she has been nourished by both parents and she willingly claims her inheritance from
both.