The reflections of sexual politics in Kate Chopin's The Awakening, Zora Neale Hurston's Their Eyes Were Watching God and Sevgi̇ Soysal's Walking

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T.C.

SELÇUK ÜNİVERSİTESİ SOSYAL BİLİMLER ENSTİTÜSÜ

İNGİLİZ DİLİ VE EDEBİYATI ANABİLİM DALI İNGİLİZ DİLİ VE EDEBİYATI BİLİM DALI

THE REFLECTIONS OF SEXUAL POLITICS IN KATE CHOPIN’S

THE AWAKENING, ZORA NEALE HURSTON’S THEIR EYES

WERE WATCHING GOD AND SEVGİ SOYSAL’S WALKING

ECE ÜN ÖZDEMİR

YÜKSEK LİSANS TEZİ

Danışman

YRD. DOÇ. DR. SEMA ZAFER SÜMER

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taken” and my friend Şeyma ACAR for our sisterhood, and for her great supports in this process. Finally, thanks to my husband Mehmet ÖZDEMİR, my brother Emre ÜN, and my parents Tülay and Cengiz ÜN for their understanding and supports.

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T. C.

SELÇUK ÜNİVERSİTESİ Sosyal Bilimler Enstitüsü Müdürlüğü

ÖZET

Bu çalışma, Kate Chopin’in Uyanış, Zora Neale Hurston’ın Tanrıya Bakıyorlardı ve Sevgi Soysal’ın Yürümek romanlarında cinsel politikanın yansımalarını incelemektedir. Cinsel politika teorisi, cinsiyetler arasındaki güç farklılıklarının nedenlerini ve sonuçlarını inceleyerek; cinsiyetler arasında eşit olmayan güç dağılımını ortaya çıkaran bir methoddur. Bu teori ayrıca ataerkil sistemin yapısını da ortaya koyar. Öte yandan, edebiyat bireylerin yaşamını yansıtan en önemli kaynak olduğundan dolayı, cinsel politika teorisini de etkili bir şekilde anlamamızı sağlar. Ayrıca seçilen romanların farklı sosyal ve tarihsel yapıdan olması, ana karakterlerin yaşamlarının cinsel politikayı yansıtması eşit olmayan güç paylaşımının belirli bir yere ya da zamana ait olmayıp, evrensel olduğunu ve ataerkil sistemin kendisi kadar eski olduğnu kanıtlar

Anahtar Kelimeler: Cinsiyet, Cinsellik Politika,, Edebiyat, Ataerkillik, Kate Chopin, Zora Neale Hurston, Sevgi Soysal

Öğ renci ni n Adı Soyadı Ece ÜN ÖZDEMİR Numarası 104208002004

Ana Bilim / Bilim

Dalı İngiliz Dili ve Edebiyatı

Programı Tezli Yüksek Lisans Doktora

Tez Danışmanı _{Yrd. Doc. Dr. Sema Zafer SÜMER}

Tezin Adı Kate Chopin'in '' Uyanış '',Zora Neale Hurston'ın ''Tanrıya Bakıyorlardı '' ve Sevgi Soysal'ın '' Yürümek'' romanlarında Cinsel Politikanın Yansımları

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T. C.

SELÇUK ÜNİVERSİTESİ Sosyal Bilimler Enstitüsü Müdürlüğü

SUMMARY

This study analyses the reflections of sexual politics in Kate Chopin’s Awakening, Zora Neale Hurston’s Their Eyes Were Watching God, and Sevgi Soysal’s Walking. The term “sexual politics” is a method that reveals the unequal amount of power between sexes by examining the reasons and the consequences of power differences between sexes. This theory also puts forward the structure of patriarchy. On the other hand, as literature is the most important source that reflects the lives of individuals, it enables us to understand the term sexual politics effectively too. As the novels are from different historical and social context, the lives of the main characters reflecting sexual politics, prove that unequal sharing of power between sexes does not belong to a particular place or time, but it is universal and it is as old as the patriarchal system itself.

Key Words: Gender, Sex, Sexual politics, Literature, Patriarchy, Kate Chopin, Zora Neale Hurston, Sevgi Soysal

Öğ renci ni n Adı Soyadı Ece ÜN ÖZDEMİR Numarası 104208002004

Ana Bilim / Bilim

Dalı İngiliz Dili ve Edebiyatı

Programı Tezli Yüksek Lisans Doktora

Tez Danışmanı _{Yrd. Doc. Dr. Sema Zafer SÜMER}

Tezin İngilizce Adı

The Reflections of Sexual Politics in Kate Chopin’s “The Awakening”, Zora Neale Hurston’s “Their Eyes Were Watching God” and Sevgi Soysal’s “Walking”.

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In her book Sexual Politics Kate Millett analyses the relations of sexes in terms of power. She also examines the roots of patriarchy by sociology, biology, religion, psychology, economics and education. By stating real meaning of politcs is power, she underlines that the relations of sexes have also been established in terms of power in every society throughout the history. If we study gender relations from this perspective, since power entails oppression of one group to the other, and controlling the submissive ones, we can see that patriarchy in fact is the most oppressive system. As masculine power is the key element of patriarchy, helding and controlling the power are attributed the males; while passivity, submissivness, and fragility are related with females.

On the other hand, for individuals, especially for women who are accustemed to being submissive, finding freedom but more importantly living free is very difficult without getting through the conventions, habits, and things that are accepted natural. If they accomplish to see lies and facts about the system and want to make a journey to themselves, they become outsider to everyhing, and as in all oppressive system freedom requires heavy payment.

As literature is the best way to reveal the lives of individuals, by analysing the reflections of sexual politics in Kate Chopin’s The Awakening, Zora Neale Hurston’s

Their Eyes Were Watching God, and Sevgi Soysal ‘s Walking, we can understand

the effects of sexual politics in a social frame, because these three novels are from different cultures and different historical contexts. Thus, we can see that pressure on women is universal as sexual politics takes its roots from patriarchy, which is the most powerful and widespread system.

In the first chapter titled The Analysis of Sexual Politics, explains the basic definition of sexual politics by analysing the term body. This chapter also puts forward the differences between the meanings of gender and sex, by analysing the word “nature” of biology. In this chapter we see that who controls the power is also controls the past and the future by referring George Orwell and Micheal Facoult. Therefore we understand what power means.

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In the second chapter, titled Personal Backgrouds of the Authors the lives of Kate Chopin, Zora Neale Hurston and Sevgi Soysal are studied. While analysing their personal backgrounds, we can see that sexual politics of their times and countries made them outsiders like their novel characters too.

In the third chapter, titled Social and Historical Backgrounds of the Novels for the

Reflections of Sexual Politics I have studied Victorian Construction of Gender in the

first section for Kate Chopin’s The Awakening as it also gives us some cultural elements of Victorian woman such as “Angel in the house” concept in Victorian period. In the second section, by analysing Black womanism in Early twentieth

century, I tried to reveal that black women have been exposed not only racial

discrimination, but they have also suffered from sexual discriminition both by white and black men. This section is also important to understand masculine oppression in Eatonville and what means Janie’s silence in tems of the history of black womanism. In the third section I have studied Gender Consturction of Turkish Society After

Foundation of Turkish Republic by giving some information about modern new

woman image of early republic days. As Turkish culture is a mixture of East and West cultures, relations of male and females also reflect cultural chaos of the country. As the sexual problems of Ela and Memet are highlighted in Walking, I also studied sexual issues of Turkish individuals under the effect of new social images of Turkey after foundation of Republic.

In the fourth chapter titled The Analysis of Sexual Politics in Kate Chopin’s The

Awakening firstly, I have tried to study the diagnostic feature of the novel for the

sexual politics. By this section refering theVictorian Period, I have analysed the ideal woman image of Victorian culture is also reflected by Creole women, especially by Adele. On the other hand, by examining the other characters after general picture of the novel I have tried to study the key elements of sexual politics such as power, oppression, submission. In this chapter finally I have studied Edna’s understanding and rejection process of patriarchy by performing different women roles of the society with the effect of of Adele and Mademoiselle Reisz. Edna’s way out from

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patriarchy is over with suicide. Consequently, I have also analysed Edna’s suicide on with regard to sexual politics.

In the fifth chapter, titled as The Analysis of Sexual Politics in Zora Neale Hurston’s

Their Eyes Were Watching God I have tried to illustrate sexual politics in black

society. In this chapter we can see that sexual oppression is not confined to white people. It can also be seen in black society, even if they have already suffered from racial oppression. On the other hand, Janie’s relationship with Logan, Jody and TeaCake become ironically both obstacles and guides for her journey to horizon. Therefore, I have examined the dominance and authority of the male characters over Janie. Finally, in this chapter I have tried to analysed Janie’s struggle to be herself in her journey to horizon. She has experinced so many events, and with her journey we find a chance to observe how the black women are made the others two times both racial and sexual.

In the sixth chapter titled as “The Analysis of in Sexual Politics Sevgi Soysal’s

‘Walking’, shows that how sexual politics effect the lives of both sexes by regulating

individuals on behalf of patriarchy, and how sexuality becomes distorted in the shade of these politics, and causes unhappiness on people. Therefore, by analysing Memet’s character development process, we can see that patriarchy makes the males victims of it too. Memet becomes too obssesive to his sexuality, but on the other hand he can not find the meaning of his life . In final section, I have tried to examine Ela’s way to herself despite cultural and sexual hegemony. While Ela is walking through the system to herself, in her journey we can also see the effects of oppressive society on women.

Finally, in this thesis I purpose to demonstrate how individuals, especially woman, are affected negatively by the same elements of patriarchy with sexual politics. As a result of this; although they are from different ages and cultures, we find similar reflections of sexual politics in the novels. We also see that Edna, Janie and Ela have similar main problems with themselves, because of patriarchy. In their understanding and rejection processes, we also take a journey to ourselves

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CHAPTER ONE: THE ANALYSIS OF SEXUAL POLITICS 1. 1. BASIC DEFINITION OF SEXUAL POLITICS

When we hear the term “Sexual Politics”, at first we feel complicated that if it is related with either sexes or politics.We think that politics is very serious area as we consider that political things include political parties, ideologies, the words that ended with "ism". If we try to define politics for people, it may be the most difficult issue to understand. For that reason how we combine this two exterme word is up to how we define "sexual " and "politics" . If we look up Oxford dictionary for the meaning of "sexual politics", it says: "The principles determining the relationship of the sexes; relations between the sexes regarded in terms of power.” (en.oxforddictionaries./definition/sexual_politics)

For that reason we ask ourselves such questions: " What are the principles? Is it such an important thing that it also determines relationship between sexes? How can we define it in terms of power ? By the way, what is power? All the answers to those questions are related with very important area of feminst literary critisism.

In this sense, Kate Millett, who is the writer of the cult book of feminist movement, Sexual Politics, is one of the most important figures of the second wave feminism.Millett, in her book Sexual Politics, explains the meaning of the term:

The term “sexual politics‟ can strike a bit absurd to any lay reader. The question can at once strike in his mind – Can the relationship between the sexes be viewed in the political light at all? The answer depends on how one defines politics. Politics can be defined as methods or tactics involved in managing a state or government. This is a set of stratagems designed to maintain a system. The term “politics‟ shall also refer to power structured relationships and arrangements whereby one group of person controls another group. If we view patriarchy in this light we can

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conceive it as a similar type of "political‟ institution perpetuated by such techniques of control. (1969: 45) .

This is how Kate Millett views the system of patriarchy in the light of politics. Millett’s title Sexual Politics reflects her view of "patriarchy", which she sees as “pervasive and which demands a systematic overview – as a Political institution.”. (1970: 50) Patriarchy subordinates the female to the male or treats the female as an inferior male, and the power is maintained directly or indirectly in civil and domestic life to restrain women:

Kate Millett has pointed out that the situation between the sexes now, and throughout history, is a case of that phenomenon Max Weber defined as "herrschaft‟, a relationship of dominance and sub-ordinance sexual politics obtains consent through the "socialization‟ of both sexes to basic patriarchal politics with regard to temperament, role, and status. (Mackinnon: Weber, 1996: 30).

From this perspective, aggression, intelligence, force, and efficacy are the features attributed to the male. Passivity, ignorance, docility,“virtue”, and ineffectuality, on the other hand, are attributed to the females by the patriarchy according to Millett.(1969: 75). So that Millett’s book popularised both the phrase “sexual politics” and widened the term “patriarchy” beyond its original definition. Patriarchy, argues Millett, is a “political” institution and sex a “status category with political implications”. Moreover, patriarchy is the “primary” form of human oppression, without whose elimination, other forms of oppression – racial, political or economic – will continue. (Millett, 1969: 65).

On the other hand, according to R. W. Connell, sexuality is part of the domain of human practice organized (in part) by gender relations, and "sexual politics" is the contestation of issues of sexuality by the social interests constituted within gender relations. "Gender politics" is a broader term embracing the whole field of social struggle between such interests.(1987: 45).

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According to Mackinnon on the other hand, heterosexuality, as the dominant social institution that organises people into sex-based categories, relies on socially constructed aspects of maleness, and manages materially as "male dominant behaviour" and femininity as "female subordinate behaviour".The theoretical centring of sexuality shows how women's subordination through the law, family, biology,or any other area is consequence, not a foundation, of male power. Questioning hetero-normative social relations, revealing them as ideologically maintained and constructed, is to consider the ways in which sex is put to political use.( 1996: 27). Therefore, the hierarchical characters attributed the sexes as “natural” also must be questioned from this viewpoint.

In this sense, to understand the term “sexual politics” better, we must understand the "given" role of sexes by patriarchy, the discussion whether biology is a destiny or not is also stem from those consequences that Mackinnon has mentioned. So that body also gain political meaning in this sense.

1.2. BODY: EITHER A CAGE OR MICROCOSMOS OF EVERYTHING From past to present there has been always a well-known saying which defines us biologically, psychologically and philosophically. That is "human nature". Is there a such a thing? if so, how do we describe it? Are we describing the natures of real people? There are always such questions when we are questioning this term. As a result there have been always various explanations to this questioning with different norms. Ironically, It often creates some dogmas even in scientific areas. Ruth Hubbard (1990: 139) criticises this in her book Theories of Women

Subudination. She says that human nature does not describe people. It is a

normative concept that embodies historically based beliefs about what human beings are and how they should behave:

Biologists' claims about human nature are embedded in the ways they learn about and describe living organisms. Most biologists, like other scientists, accept the notion that nature can best be described in terms of

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different levels of organization. These levels extend from ultimate particles, through atoms and molecules, to cells, tissues,and organs, to organisms considered individually, and then to groups of organisms societis.Biology nowadays is concerned with the range of levels from atoms and molecules through organisms, and also with groups of organisms and their relations with each other over time (evolution) and space (animal behavior and ecology). (1990: 140).

When biologist are doing these, they also organize these in terms of sexes. According to American Psychological Association.(apa.org/topics/sex/). “Sex refers to a person’s biological status and is typically categorized as male, female, or intersex atypical combinations of features that usually distinguish male from female.” There are a number of indicators of biological sex, including sex chromosomes, gonads, internal reproductive organs, and external genitalia.(Hubbard, 1990: 139). At this point,in his essay Biological Bases of Sex differences Bobbie S.Low emphasises that:

The biological underpinnings of sex differences are considerably more complex than it might at first seem. In no species are “males” and “females” fully identical, despite huge variation in the logistics of sexual reproduction. What, then, is meant by “biological causes?” It is not simply “genetic” or “hormonal” or a “difference in chromosomes.” Rather, sex differences, however mediated, arise from past evolutionary and ecological pressures. Specific environmental pressures favor particular complexes of behavioral, physical, and physiological traits— and these evolved phenomena are the proximate triggers of differences. Under most conditions, these selective pressures lead to a (sometimes striking) divergence of the traits shown by each sex ( Low, 2004: 3).

If these differences are results of evolutionary and ecological pressures,can it change or can biology be a destiniy as Freud says? Related to this question, biological determinism is exactly that: “the belief that biology determines such

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characteristics as behavior, ability, likes, dislikes, etc. Biological determinism is the theory behind the phrase: “boys will be boys.” "girl will be girls". This phrases are associated with “boyish” or "girlish" behavioral characteristics, which we can all easily identify, that are believed to be essential and natural in boys or natural in girls. (Hubbard 1990: 140). So that as Freud say "biology can be a destiniy" gains scientific validity according to biodeterminists and effects so many things in social domain.

For instance in nineteenth century and twentieth centuries, biologists have asserted so many biodeterminist explanations for differences in women's and men's access to social, economic and political power. Among them are Darwin's descriptions of greater "power" and more highly developed weapons of males, acquired over eons of evolution through competion among males for access to females. In addition to this Darwin claimed, females sharpened their skills at choosing the most suitable among their admirer and acquired coyness and the other trick needed to charm the best males (Hubbard, 1990: 141).

At this point we also must remember the Darwin's theory of “sexual selection” from his discussion in “Sexual Selection in Relation to Man” in his well-known thesis On The Origins of Spices. He says that evolution by natural selection happens when there are heritable differences among types of organisms in a population and, as a result of these differences, some types leave more offspring than others. This leads to changes in the frequencies of those different types of organisms in a population.(1871, vol. 1 255).

Darwin remarks two kinds of sexual selection: male-male competition and female choice. This twofold characterization of sexual selection remains standard in current biological literature ranging from academic publications to textbooks to the popular press. Darwin notes that “the male is generally eager to pair with any female” whereas females tend to choose the most attractive partner ( Hubbard: Darwin, 1990: 139).

Darwin considered the competition among males “for the possession of the other sex” to result in the improvement of sensory and psikomotor features and the

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development of strong passions. Nevertheless, Darwin believed that male-male competition was generally thought to improve the species, female choice resulted in the development of beauty without availabilty: “a great number of male animals have been rendered beautiful for beauty's sake” (Darwin 1859, 371); “the most refined beauty may serve as a charm for the female, and for no other purpose. (1871, vol. 2 92).

(Several feminist scholars, most especially Ruth Hubbard, have clearly noticed the close parallels of Darwin's account of eager males competing with one another for access to silent and choosy females with Victorian gender values. It is also noted that the activity of choice Darwin attributed to females is caused by a female anxiety with beauty and as such often has negative consequences for both male survival and the species itself. (Low, 2004: 10)

On the other hand, as most scientist criticise biodeterminist’s claims that the fundamental elements of human nature can be idetified in all people’s traits regardless of their cultural or historical differences, Social constructionism theory that social identifiers, like race and gender are created by society rather than biology, has arisen as an anthesis to biodeterminist ideas.

Social constructionism is accepted a much stronger way of thinking in defining behavior and other social characteristics. Though social constructionists have different opinions on the effect of society or biology over male/female characteristics, a popular opinion is that “though there are some innate biological differences between men and women, society is overwhelmingly more influential in the long term.” (Bonnie, 2011: 24)

Therefore, according to social constructionists, society and culture create gender roles, and these roles are accepted as ideal or appropriate behaviour for a person of that specific gender. On the other hand, if we look up definition of gender we see that, gender refers to the attitudes, feelings, and behaviors that a given culture associates with a person’s biological sex. Behavior that is compatible with cultural expectations is referred to as gender-normative. .If we sum up distinction between

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gender and sex,we can say that sex is biological, gender psychological or cultural rather than biological connotaions. As Judith Butler says:

Sex is a biological categorization based primarily on reproductive potential, whereas gender is the social elaboration of biological sex. Not surprisingly, social norms or heterosexual coupling and care of any resulting children are closely intertwined with gender. But that is far from the full story. Gender builds on biological sex, but it exaggerates biological difference, and it carries biological difference into domains in which it is completely irrelevant. (1991,63).

We can say that, gender is not something we are born with, and not something we have, but something we do – something we perform (Butler, 1991: 63) but social roles, we have been given by patriarchy, have been accepted as nature of sex differences.

Kate Millett also says that although the external genitala (penis,teste,scrotum) contribute to the sense of maleness,no one of them is essential for it,not even all of them together. “Gender is determined postnatal forces, regardless of anotomy and pschyciology of external genitalia.” (1969: 56). She notes that there is no differentiation between the sexes at birth. Psychosexual personality is therefore acquierd and learned:

The condition existing at birth and for several months thereafter is one of psychosexual undifferentiation. Just as in embryo,morphologic sexual differentiation passes from a plastic stage to one of fixes immutability, so also does psychosexual differentiation become fixes and immutable-so much so, that mankind has traditionally assumed that so strong and fixed a feeling as personal sexual identity must be a term from something innate,instictive, and not subject to postnatal experince and learning.The error of this traditional assumption is that the power and permanence of something learned has been underestimated.The experiments of animal ethologists on imprinting have now corrected this misconception (1969: 75).

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From Millett’s perspective, we can say that social conditions are may be the most important things that create our identities and two different cultures as a woman and a man.

Therefore, our life experinces also gain different meanings.Nevertheless, we must try to answer that what basic biologic element of male supremacy and women subordination is that make hard to overcome every unjust “natural” hiearchies between male and female :

The chief symbol of male supremacy, that marks men as superior and women as less than human, is the penis.The penis itself can not be considered remarkably powerful,although this is not to discount the very real violence inflicted upon women and children's bodies.But socially,the power of penis is as phallus,a social construction,notbiological,natural or inevitable. The symbolism and representation of phallus is dominant within cultural discourses; within language, imagery, traditions and practices: Those who have penises are automatically "human;those who do not,are not,.and the penis is the central symbol of "human" status under male supremacy,the chief pleasures and desires of those conditions centre around the penis because the penis means sex,the chief pleasures and desires of male supremacist conditions are those of sex (Thompson, 2001: 45).

Consequently, as Mackinnon also says meaning of femaleness, femininity, becomes to mean attractiveness to men, which means sexual attractiveness,which means sexual availability on male terms"(1982: 531) as in Darwin's theory of Sexual Selection. On the other hand, as Kate Millett points out :

In contemporary terminology, the basic division of temperamental trait is marsheled along the line of agression is male and passivity is female. All other temperamental traits are somhow-often with the most dexterous ingenuity-aligned to correspond. If agressiveness is the trait of master class, docility must be the corresponding trait of subject group. The usual hope of such line of reasoning is that 'nature', by some impossible outside

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chance, might still be depended upon to rationalize the patriarchal system (1969: 58).

Masculinity, as the socially consructed expression of maleness, operates materially as male dominant behaviour" and femininity as "female subordinate behaviour" (Jeffreys, 2003: 44). From social constructionists perspective, we can say that biology is not a destiniy but rather a politic way of thinking of the determinist about gender roles are human nature and a result of this, we can not change male's supremacy and women's subordination. However, wtih this biodeterminist theory, male hegomony on women has gained scientific validity for many years regardless of the function of power in patriarchal system and hegemonic masculinity in every domain of life, even in science. Therefore we must also discuss function of power in terms of sexual politics.

1.3. POWER IN TERMS OF SEXUAL POLITICS

"Who controls the past controls the future. Who controls the present controls the past."(George Orwell -1984)

We all born without names, without colours, without memories and without roles. That is, we do not know what kind of life is waiting for us. However, after we were born, systematically, we learn our gender roles, live different lives as a girl and boy. As a result we are raised up in different culture as a boy and girl. All the emptiness in us are filled with patriarchal ethics and roles:

Because of our social circumstances, male and female are really two cultures and their life experiences are utterly different-and this is crucial. Implicit in all the gender identity development which takes place through childhood is sum total of the parents', the peers, and culture's notions of what is appropriate to each gender by the way temperament, character, interests, status, worth, gesture,and expression. Every moment of the child's life is a clue to how he or she must think and behave to attain or staisfy the demands which gender places upon one. In adolescence the merciless task of conformity growes to crisis proportions,generally cooling and settling the maturity (Millett, 1969: 16) .

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Because of these two-edged cultures, individuals assume that everyhing results from their nature. As their subconscious are also shaped according to this judge from their childhood, women assume that their living space must be in private sphere. Therefore, the term outside becomes unfamiliar to them. On the other hand, men assume that they must be like a god in their cosmos. Like a god, they think that controlling, managing, and creating the world are their duties.

Thus, everything seems as if natural in a manipulated world. We call this "patriarchy" and there is also another way of patriarchy that is heterosexuality, “through which male dominance is organised and maintained” (Mckinnon, 1982: 531) “As a political system heterosexuality functions more perfectly than oppressive systems such as apartheid or capitalism”. ( Jeffrecy, 2003: 32).

As Kate Millett says patriarchy is a political institution, dependent on women's emotional, sexual and physical labour, and functions oppression of women.(Millett, 1969: 42) With this political institution, we must also know that the real meaning of politics is owning power, and power has been always basic matter of all relations throughtout the history. Modern philosopher, Micheal Foucault also says :

Genealogy of modern power challenges the commonly held assumption that power is an essentially negative, repressive force that operates purely through the mechanisms of law, taboo and censorship. This 'juridico-discursive' conception of power has its origins in the practices of power characteristic of pre-modern societies. In such societies power was centralized and coordinated by a sovereign authority who exercised absolute control over the population through the threat or open display of violence (1978: 81)

As the growth and care of populations became the chief issues of the state, new mechanisms of power emerged which centered around the administration and management of 'life'. (Foucault, 1978: 83) According to Foucault, this new form of 'bio-power' combined around two spheres. One pole is related with the efficient government of the population and focuses on the management of the life

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processes of the social body. It contains the regulation of some issues such as birth, death, sickness, disease, health, sexual relations and so on. The other pole, is 'disciplinary power', targets the human body as an object to be manipulated and trained. (Foucault ,1978: 32) and in addition to this in the first volume of The

History of Sexuality he describes how, in the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries,

sex and sexuality became highly important political issues in a society concerned with managing and directing the life of individuals and of populations. From Foucault’s perspective, the spread of bio-power is basicly related wiith the social science discourses on sex and sexuality which reproduced during this period. He asserts that these discourses tended to understand sex as an instinctual biological and psychic drive with deep links to identity and the result of this are related with effects on the sexual and social behavior of individuals. (Foucault, 1978,110) . On Foucault's account, we can say that managing and directing the life of individiuals are also the main points of sexual politics,but how managing and directing life can gain volunteers from societies is controversial. Related to this, Kate Millett claims:

Sexual politics obtains consent through the "socialization" of both sexes to basic patriarchal polities with regard to temperament, role, and status. As to status, a pervasive assent to the prejudice of male superiority guarantees superior status in the male, inferior in the female. The first item, temperament, involves the formation of human personality along stereotyped lines of sex category ("masculine and "feminene"), based on the needs and values of dominant group and dictated by what its members cheris in themselves and find convenientin subodinates. This is complemented by a second factor, sex role, which decrees a consonant and highly elaborate code of conduct, gesture, and attitude for each sex. In terms of activity, sex role assigns domestic service and attendance upon infants to the female, the rest human achievement, interest, and ambition to the male. The limited role allotted the female tends to arrest her at the level of biological experince. (1969: 26)

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So that in many cases the power relations are immediately present in personal life, In following statement As MacKinnonn claims that:

The sexualisation of aggression or eroticisation of power and fusion of that with gender such that the one who is the target or object of sexuality is the subordinate, is a female, effemenized if a man, is relatively constant. And that hierarchy is always done through gender in some way, even if it is playing with gender or reversing gender or same-gendering. It is still all about gender. Gender hierarchy is either being played with or played out. The hypothesis would be that the practice of misogyny as sex may have been present all along (MacKinnon: Dworkin, 1982: 123). Especially by "sexualisation of agrression" or "eroticisation of power", the oppression caues rape and pornography. These are other instruments of using and showing male power and gender hierarchy. As Dworkin states that:

The word rape comes from the Latin word rapere, which means “to steal, seize, or carry away. ”Women, in those bad old days, were chattel. That is, women were property, owned objects, to be bought, sold, used, and stolen—that is, raped. A woman belonged first to her father who was her patriarch, her master, her lord. The very derivation of the word patriarchy is instructive. Pater means owner, possessor, or master. The basic social unit of patriarchy is the family. The word family comes from the Oscan famel, which means servant, slave, or possession. Paterfamilias means owner of slaves. The rapist who abducted a woman took the place of her father as her owner, possessor, or master....This motif of sexual relating—that is, rape—remains our primary model for heterosexual relating. The dictionary defines rape as “the act of physically forcing a woman to have sexual intercourse. ” But in fact, rape, in our system of masculinist law, remains a right of marriage. A man cannot be convicted of raping his own wife. In all fifty states, rape is defined legally as forced penetration by a man of a woman “not his wife. ” When a man forcibly penetrates his own wife, he has not committed a crime of theft against

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another man. Therefore, according to masculinist law, he has not raped. And, of by law to inhabit his domicile and submit to him sexually (Dworkin, 1976: 96).

Related to this, objectifying of women is also a political way of exchanging power throughout the history. As we know from history, kingdoms also made agreements, use diplomatic relationship by exchanging "daughter of kingdom" and at this point rape gains importance, because as we understand from the statement rape, basically means "carring away" without giving "price" or compensation. At the same time, rape is made possible by the ways men are taught to understand their sexuality. “The way they are encouraged to develop a sense of sexual entitlement and to regard women as props for indulging it.”(Dworkin, 1976: 79) And these are instruments of crucial political issues in a society, and concerned with managing and directing the life of individuals and of populations as Foucault says. On the other hand, in some kind of rapes the women is viewed as an act of aggression against the males of the specific race, class, or nationality. Eldiridge Cleaver in Soul on Ice has described this sort of rape with the confession of a black man :

I became a rapist. To refine my technique and modus operandi I started out by practicing on black girls in the ghetto. . . and when I considered myself smooth enough, I crossed the tracks and sought out white preyI did this consciously, deliberately, Rape was an insurrectionary act. It delighted me that I was defying and trampling upon the white man’s law, upon his system of values, and that I was defiling his women—and this point, I believe, was the most satisfying to me because I was very resentful over the historical fact of how the white man has used the black woman. I felt I was getting revenge.(Dworkin: Cleaver, 1976: 80)

In this sort of rape, women are viewed as the properties of men who are, by virtue of race or class nationality, enemies. Women are viewed as a chattel of enemy men. This kind of rape is seen especially in war times. As Cleaver’s testimony makes also clear, the women of one’s own group are also viewed as chattel,

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property, to be used for one’s own purposes and becomes an instrument to prove power of one group to the other. On the other hand, according to Dworkin when a black man rapes a black woman, no act of aggression against a white male has been committed, and so the man’s right to rape will be defended and most rape is intraracial that is, black men rape black women and white men rape white women because rape is a sexist crime. Men rape the women they have access to as a function of their masculinity and as a signet of their ownership (1976: 82) .

Pornogoraphy is also another tool for sexulalisation of aggression because as Dworkin says the norm of masculinity is phallic aggression. Male sexuality is, by definition, intensely and rigidly phallic. "A man’s identity is located in his conception of himself as the possessor of a phallus; .the choice of what men call a “sexual object”—but their common valuation of women consistently reinforces their own sense of phallic worth.” (Dworkin, 1990: 56). and this phallic agression can be stable by pornography.

Related to Dworkin’s ideas, Kate Millet notes that patriarchal societies typically link feelings of cruelty with sexuality, the latter often equated both with evil and power. She adds that this is apparent both in sexual fantasy reported by psychoanalysis and that reported by pornography.The rule here associates sadism with the male("the masculine role") and victimization with the female("the feminene role"). and she resembeles the frission of watcher with the exicitement of racist society because she thinks that unconciously both crimes may serve the larger group as a ritual act,cathartic in effect and rises hostility (Millett,1969:93). Consequently, since women are seen as inferior, submissive,passive object of men's world, their bodies also gain political quality in power relations and sexuality can not be diverted from sexual politics:

Although of itself (sex) appears a biological and physical activity,it is set so deeply within the larger context of human affairs that it serves as a charged microcosm of the variety of attitudes and values to which culture subscribes (Millett, 1969: 23).

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As a result of this, sexuality creates its own subcultures. As Foucault has noted ,our discussions of "sex" are all "highly articulated around a cluster of power relations."(1978: 56). Foucault also believes that “sex has been hidden, it has been made into such a taboo subject that we have to be ashamed to talk about it.” (1978,70). From this perspective,we can also say that who has power also can reproduces sex and sexuality, since who controls us is also determines who we are and also what we think. Thus, sexuality and sex can be used for the sake of nationa by governera. For instance, For politicians, who also controls militaries, more people, especially males, mean more soldiers who can fight for securing their power or showing off their power. We can give Hitler's Germany as an example for this. because Hitler use sexuality for his "selected" "uber" German race, and women became "brood things" in power relations :

There is a brood-mare theory of women implicit in all Nazi pronuncments and Hitler's statement in Mein Kampf that the "aim of feminine education is invariably to be the future mother" has a special irony when one remembers how closely linked is population growth with the ambitions of military state; more children must be born to die for country. (Millett, 1969: 162).

As William Reich also states in The Mass Psychology of Fascism :

the mystical idealization of chaste motherhood is a particualarly efficient means not only of utterly equating sexuality with procreation but also of suppressing and inhibiting female sexuality altogether and converting it into a state-directed process of human reproduction for what were often lethal state ends. (Millett: Reich, 1969: 165)

As a result of this, sexuality has always been an instrument of patriarchy to direct, to reproduce, to reshape and to control submissive ones for the sake of power. Thus, patriarchy turns into the strongest ideology in a political sense. It strength not only come from its tangible oppression, but more importantly, it gains volunteers from both genders with its intangible oppression that makes the individuals to think that everyhing is natural and normal. If they begin question

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behind the walls, and reality of their lives, the system also turns everything into an enemy for the individuals. Moreover, the enemies not only come from outside but also inside that reserves something that is resisting against the awakening of the individual.

CHAPTER TWO – PERSONAL BACKGROUNDS OF THE AUTHORS 2.1 LIFE AND WORKS OF KATE CHOPIN

Catherine (Kate) Chopin was born as Catherine O'Flaherty in St. Louis on February 8, 1850. As Kate's family on her mother's side was of French origin, Kate Chopin grew up speaking both French and English at home. As a result She grew up not only as bilingual but also as bicultural, and the effect of French life and literature on her can also be seen in her writings.

In her life, Chopin experinced so many tragic events. For instance, from 1855 to 1868 Kate attended the St. Louis Academy of the Sacred Heart, a Catholic boarding school in St. Louis. Only two months later after this, her father was died in a railroad accident. For the next two years she lived at home with her mother, grandmother, and great-grandmother, all of them widows. In this period, Kate developed a very close relationship with both her mother and her great-grandmother. Her great-grandmother, Victoria Verdon Charleville supervised her education, and taught her French, and music. (Valkeakari, 2003: 52). Thus, Kate grew up with smart, independent, single women.

Kate learned at an early age about strong and unconventional women in the maternal line of her family history Madame Charleville was able to tell Kate tales dating back to the time when life in St. Louis was part of the American frontier experience. The cultural tradition that Madame passed on to her great-granddaughter included, for example, stories of the early "frontier brides" of the Charleville family, and the story of Victoire Verdon, Madame Charleville's mother. (Toth 1999: 34-40).

By matarnel family education Kate Chopin’s unconventional thouhgts were shaped. According to Neale Wyatt : “Living in such a family must have

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influenced her view on women and made her very sensible of women thinking and desires”. (KateChopin.org: Wyatt, 1995). She also reads fairy tales, poetry, classic and contemporary novels. Sir Walter Scott and Charles Dickens were amongst her favourite authors. (Valkeakari:Toth, 1999: 45)

Kate Chopin also went to the Sacred Heart Academy. According to Emily Toth the nuns in there were famous for their intelligence, and Kate was top of her class. She attended so many social events and became very popular in St. Louis high society. She also became interested in the movement of women’s suffrage although she never became politically very active. (Toth, 1999: 63)

From 1867 to 1870 Kate kept notes of essays, poems, diary entries, and copied extracts, and in 1869 she wrote Emancipation: A Life Fable, her first story. In 1870, at the age of twenty, she married Oscar Chopin, twenty-five, the heir of a wealthy cotton-growing family in Louisiana. Like Kate, he was of French catholic background. He admired and adored his wife,especially her independence and intelligence, and “allowed” her uncommon freedom. (Valkeakari, 2003: 53). After their wedding they lived in New Orleans where she gave birth to five boys and a daughter, all before the age of twenty-eight. Unfortunately, Oscar died of swamp fever there in 1882 and Kate took over the running of his general store and plantation for over a year. When all these events happened, she was only thirty two years old (KateChopin.org: Wyatt, 1995).

In 1884 she moved with her family back to St. Louis where she found better schools for her children and a richer cultural life for herself. Shortly after, in 1885, her mother died. After all these tragic events Dr. Frederick Kolbenheyer, her doctor and a family friend, encouraged her to write, as a curing method. With the effects of targic events in her life ,Chopin's motivation in writing had arisen from a personal experience in a "vast solitude" in which she made "[her] own acquaintance":

About eight years ago [i.e., around 1888] there fell accidentally into my hands a volume of Maupassant's tales. These were new to me. I had been

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in the woods, in the fields, groping around; looking for something big, satisfying, convincing, and finding nothing but— myself; a something neither big nor satisfying but wholly convincing. It was at this period of my emerging from the vast solitude in which I had been making my own acquaintance, that I stumbled upon Maupassant. (Valkeakari: Chopin, 2003: 56)

Guy de Maupassant so speacial for her that, she thinks that she is influenced from his writing style. She thinks that she has found life in his writing.

I read his stories and marveled at them. Here was life, not fiction; for where were the plots, the old fashioned mechanism and stage trapping that in a vague, unthinkable way I had fancied were essential to the art of story making. (Valkeakari: Chopin, 2003: 57)

Chopin realized the importance of putting life into a character, and how much more important it is to create the character than writing highly structured plots. She knew that life was what produced such characters. She accomplished to see the life itself and put it on her woks. Chopin's first short story, A Point at Issue! was published when Kate was thirty-nine. “Over the next fifteen years, until her death in 1904, she published two novels and wrote almost a hundred stories and sketches " (Toth: Inge, 1999: 91).

Chopin's stories were published in periodicals such as Vogue, Harpers, Century,

Saturday Evening Post, Atlantic, and various newspapers of St. Louis and New

Orleans. Chopin achieved a greater sense of public success when Houghton Mifflin Company published Bayou Folk, and "She was welcomed in more than a hundred press notices as a distinguished local colorist" (Seyersted, 2003: 25). Her second collection, A Night in Acadie, was published in Chicago in November, 1897, but received less notice than her first collection. However, Chopin's art was still praised by critics. "Her prose style was always lucid and unadorned; her stories were ironic, lush, and sensual in a manner more French than American" (Valkeakari: Toth, 1999 188).

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Refering to her existential questions, Chopin wrote the two-line poem I Wanted

God . : "I wanted God. In heaven and earth I sought,/And lo! I found him in my

inmost thought."(Valkeari: Toth, 2003: 196).

In 1899 her most famous and controversial novel The Awakening, was published. According to Tuire Valkeakari (2003: 198) in The Awakening , she reveals so many cultural items and sexual politics of her time and she tells it from the aspect of a woman, Edna, who can not find a place for hersef as “A Solitary Soul” (the novel’s original title). In addition to this Toth also analysed that:

Chopin's 1899 poem also "The Haunted Chamber" further illustrates the author's empathy towards the Ednas of her era and her subtle critique of Southern sexual politics. Chopin wrote "The Haunted Chamber" just after reading the proofs for The Awakening .. In The Haunted Chamber, The Awakening, and several other writings, Chopin examines the connection between Southern belles' occasionally self-destructive, "irrational" behavior and the rigidity of the Southern definition of women's place in society” (Valkeakari : Toth 1990a: 324; Toth 1999: 218)

By this connection we can say that The Awakening is a diognostic novel which both reflects and examines the the position of the woman of Chopin's class and era.

2.2. LIFE AND WORKS OF ZORA NEALE HURSTON

Zora Neale Hurston was born on January 7, 1903, in Eatonville, Florida, to Reverend John and Lucy Hurston. Zora Neale Hurston , in her memoir Dust

Tracks on a Road says :"I was born in a Negro town. I do not mean by that the

black back–side of an average town. Eatonville, Florida, is, and was at the time of my birth, a pure Negro town–charter, mayor, council, town marshal town." (Hurston, 1942: 27)

In her small town she led a high position as the mayor's daughter and felt that she had a special destiny: "My soul was with the gods and my body in the

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village."(1942: 28) . Zora had a happy childhood, “despite her father. Her mother, on the other hand, urged young Zora and her seven siblings to "jump at de sun." (Hemenway, 1977: 40). Hurston explained, "We might not land on the sun, but at least we would get off the ground." in her memoir, and she tells that:

I used to take a seat on top of the gatepost and watch the world go by. One way to Orlando ran past my house, so the carriages and cars would pass before me. The movement made me glad to see it. Often the white travelers would hail me, but more often I hailed them, and asked, "Don't you want me to go a piece of the way with you?" They always did. I know now that I must have caused a great deal of amusement among them, but my self-assurance must have carried the point, for I was always invited to come along. I'd ride up the road for perhaps a half-mile, then walk back. I did not do this with the permission of my parents, nor with their for eknowledge. When they found out about it later, I usually got a whipping. My grandmother worried about my forward ways a great deal. She had known slavery and to her my brazenness was unthinkable.(1942: 32).

Like the protogonist, Janie Crowford in Their Eyes Were Watching God “She created and tried to pull her horizon like a fish-net. Despite oppression, she tried hard to pull it and tried to reach to her real self. Her biographer, Robert Hemenway,also calls her "a woman of fierce independence," who "was a complex woman with a high tolerance of contradiction." In African–American terms, she was skilled in the art of "masking," disguising her inner life for her own purposes.( 1977: 32) . She is always busy with sharpening her “oyster knife” as she says in Dust Tracks on a Road

I am not tragically colored. There is no great sorrow dammed up in my soul, nor lurking behind my eyes. I do not mind at all. I do not belong to the sobbing school of Negrohood who hold that nature somehow has given them a lowdown dirty deal and whose feelings are all hurt about it. Even in the helter-skelter skirmish that is my life, I have seen that the

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world is to the strong regardless of a little pigmentation more or less. No, I do not weep at the world—I am too busy sharpening my oyster knife.” (1947: 38)

The day her mother died was may be the one of the hardest day in her life and after that she maybe began to disguise her inner life. At Lucy Hurston's funeral, her family "assembled together for the last time on earth." Two weeks later, thirteen–year–old Zora Neale Hurston was forced to leave the only home she had ever known. "With a grief that was more than common," she began a hard life:

After her mother's death, Hurston was not allowed to explore the world on her own terms; instead, she was in a struggle for her very existence. Hurston calls the years, from 1904–14, her "haunted years," because her life was so dismal. Unfortunately, not many records exist from this period of her life, except for the fact that she moved to Jacksonville to live with her sister, Sarah, and brother, Robert. In Jacksonville, she learned that she was "a little colored girl." She was not able to get much education, probably, because she had to work, most likely as a maid; and her father sometimes did not pay for her tuition ( Howard, 1980: 40)

When Hurston was thirteen years old, her family life fell apart. Her mother died, her father remarried, and by the age of 14, Hurston was on her own. Working an series of jobs, Hurston tried for years to earn enough money go back to school. After 12 years, she finally completed high school and gains a year’s tuition for Howard University, “the Negro Harvard,” where in 1921 she published her first story . Hurston's literary career began when she submitted her work to journals and it was accepted. In 1924, she sent her second short Story, Drenched in Light,. The subject of Drenched in Light is Eatonville, which is, according to Hemenway, "her unique subject, and she was encouraged to make it the source of her art."(1977: 36). In 1925, she found herself in Harlem

She was a real intellectuel and had a good sense of humor and sincere person who “walks into hearts”. Hurston used these talents to go her way into the

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Harlem Renaissance of the 1920s, and she met famous poet Langston Hughes and popular singer actress Ethel Waters.

In the 1920's, Hurston's literary and scientific interests in anthropology also arose. She used the knowledge of her native society and its people to deepen and complicate her stories.

Hurston was able to follow her own unique interests. She became intrigued by hoodoo and traveled to New Orleans to see how it was practiced and study the life of the priestess, Marie Leveau. Hoodoo appealed to Hurston, because women were allowed to play a prominent role in its rituals. Perhaps, she simply became her father's daughter, who was seeking an outlet for her spiritual side. ( Walker, 1975: 50).

Despite financial difficulties in her life, she continued to write stories, and in 1925 won first prize in the Opportunity literary contest for Spunk. The late 1930s and early '40s marked the real zenith of her career. She published her masterwork,

Their Eyes Were Watching God, in 1937; Tell My Horse, her study of Caribbean

Voodoo practices, in 1938; and Moses, Man of the Mountain in 1939. (zoranealehurston.com, 2008) As in her novel, Their Eyes Were Watching God, there are years that asked questions and years that answered those questions:

I was only happy in the woods, and when the ecstatic Florida springtime came strolling from the sea, trance–glorifying the world with its aura….It grew upon me that I ought to walk out to the horizon and see what the end of the world was like (Hurston, 1947: 46).

After financial difficulties in her life, when her autobiography, Dust Tracks on a

Road, was published in 1942, Hurston finally received the well-earned acclaim

that had long eluded her. That year, she was profiled in Who's Who in America,

Current Biography and Twentieth Century Authors. She went on to publish

another novel, Seraph on the Suwanee, in 1948 (Hemenway, 1977:60).

After being charged and arrested for molesting a 10 year old boy, the 1940s marked the decline of Hurston’s writing career. And although she was not found

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guilty of the crime, no publisher was willing to publish her work. (Howard, 1980: 53) . The rejections drifted Hurston into deep sorrow, causing depression. She returned to Florida tried to make living by u a number of jobs such as being a substitute teacher, newspaper journalist, house maid and librarian. However, unfortunately, she was not able to make a single career . Her life ended in poverty on January 28, 1960 after suffering a fatal stroke. Zora Neale Hurston was buried at an unmarked grave in Fort Pierce, Florida until Alice Walker discover it.

In 1973, when Alice Walker discovered the unmarked grave of Zora Neale Hurston and read her stories, Walker accomplished to be friend of the spirit of Hurston. Hurston was an influential writer in the Harlem Renaissance, but most of her work was not published by the time she died in 1960. She was a forgotten writer until Alice Walker tried to blew the dust away from the covers, and reintroduced Hurston’s work into American literature:

Alice Walker’s re-discovery gave us the priceless story of Hurston’s character Janie Mae Crawford’s journey to the “horizon” despite all difficulties as a proud, independent black woman. Walker also feels that Hurston’s essay, How It Feels to be Colored Me, particularly embodies her womanist perspective. As Walker recognizes: “Zora was a woman who wrote and spoke her mind—as far as one could tell, practically always. People who knew her and were unaccustomed to this characteristic in a woman, attacked her as meanly as they could” (Walker celebrated Hurston’s independent spirit, which blazed it own trail. For this reason, Walker considers her a womanist icon. (Hemenway,1977:70) The work of Zora Neale Hurston, indicates a vision of society in which gender, race, and class do not matter. It is not because Hurston did not care about these issues, but that she wished to reach beyond them. As she wrote in Moses, Man of

the Mountain, , freedom “was something internal The man himself must make his

own emancipation.” (1939: 45). If we can read her novels from this aspect, we can understand better that her heroes not only struggle to the outside, they also struggle to the inside to be free.

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2.3. LIFE AND WORKS OF SEVGİ SOYSAL “I can not kill my soul.” (Tante Rosa)

“We must deal with writing the realitiy, nothing else matters.” (Bakmak/Looking)

Sevgi Soysal was one of those brave intellectuals living in the Turkish Republic between 1936 and 1976. She was born in Istanbul in 1936 as the third child of Mithat and Aliye Yenen, whose German name is Anneliese Rupp, maybe the most prominant person in Sevgi Soysal’s life. Love, more importantly sincerity in love is very important for Yenens, since Mrs Yenen is a mother figure who has loved her husband very much. She has loved so much that she has dedicated herself to this love. The love between Mr Yenen and her is not the ordinary and artificial one. On the other hand there is also so many quarrels in their relationship.

Although Sevgi Soysal has been grown up by such a passionate family, because of the quarrels between her parents, she and her sisters have thought so many times that if only their mother and father had got a divorce.She thinks that no mater how they love each other and have six children, it is getting a difficult marriage and she has seen for the first time that the difficulties of standing somebody and she has understood that one does not have to continue such a exhausting marrige even she or he loves the other one. So that she would reflect this idea in her novels and she would give up her affairs and go her own way so many times in her life. (wordswithoutborders.org/contributor/sevgi-soysal) As a result of these early experiences, she has learnt throwing away the things that impede being an individual and prevent somebody to exist, since she is the person who witneses her mother’s sadness and unhappines. Having a German mother probably also affected her way of thinking. She also understands that being different in appearance, thinking different or different race are not the things to be shamed, but valuable resources not only for the person concerned but also for the whole of society. Sevgi Soysal studied philosophy and drama in Germany, and

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after graduation she returned to Turkey. Her writing career began with several unusual stories published in local or national magazines.( Meral, 2010: 19)

Sevgi Soysal reads the novels of existentialist philosphers such as Jean-Paul Sartre, Albert Camus, Simon de Beauvoir who were very effective in literature between the years 1945 and 1955.Their reflections can be also seen in Turkish literature after 1950s. This period is also the time when Sevgi Soysal began to write. Therefore,it is necessary to look for the roots of her novels,which were written with existentialist and nihilist effect, in such writers’works. (Yüce, 2010: 20)

With this effect, Soysal's first volume of short stories, Tutkulu

Perçem (Passionate Bangs), was published in 1962, the same year that Soysal

began working for the Turkish national television and radio (TRT). She went on to write Tante Rosa, a novel of interconnected stories based upon the life and personality of her aunt, Rosel: “Tante Rosa is like a bottom of a new pair od shoes that she has never stepped on her any livings. Tante Rosa is the only name of the womanly unknown things”. (Meral:Soysal, 2010: 44).

Then she writes her novel, addressing male-female relationships and the issue of marriage, Yürümek (Walking).Yürümek (Walking), she mainly dealt with gender conflicts, social fragility and sexuality, social oppression and ordinary city life in Walking and it was banned upon charges of obscenity and she was also fired from TRT. However, she was aware of the striving for freedom in herself and in people of her period: Sevgi Soysal was born in a period when the women’s movement began to fall in Turkey. However, it was also a beginning era for women who realized that the social gains of them were still on paper, since they were felt neither on public realm nor in private life. As a result of this, they feel need for a different perspective in feminist movement, on purpose of solution.Thus, most of the entellectuels in Turkey such as Sevgi Soysal, were also aware of this need. (Bakır, 2005: 36)

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In 1974, Soysal she won Orhan Kemal Award. for Best Novel for Yenişehir'de

Bir Öğle Vakti (Noontime in Yenişehir). It is a novel in which people from every

social and economic class are portrayed. Thus, it goes beyond giving us a passing acquaintance with the period; it reaches deep into heart of society at that time:

Its characters include a street-seller and his girlfriend from the underclass, a housewife from the middle class and a university professor from the upper class, all of whom find their voices in the novel. The relationships between the main characters, Olcay, Ali and Dogan, have a noticeable political tone. Ali is a young and dedicated communist from the working class while Olcay and Dogan, brother and sister, have socialist interests but belong to the Turkish bourgeoisie. The story of these three characters is tied into to the collapse of an old poplar tree and this appears as the strongest image of the novel. (Meral, 2010: 18)

On the other hand in her novels and stories, political movements of Turkey were neither a background nor a central issue.(Meral, 2010: 20) However, politic chaos between 60’s and 70’s in Turkey and all over the world influenced her inevitably. Therefore, she reflected that effect in her novels both direct and indirect.

The writer was not insensible to the political chaos of the country, but not really involved in it either. A dramatic change in her writing occurred right after the half-coup that happened on the 12th of March 1971. She was detained for about 11 months in the Turkish Military Prison in Mamak/Ankara and, while there, finished her most important works: An Afternoon in Yenişehir and The Dawn. Her memoirs of prison days were also published in a book called Women’s Prison Cell.(Meral,2010: 5) After those experiences, Sevgi Soysal felt oppression of the state that take place in prisons. She lived as a “thought criminal” with political prisoners, and witnessed every sort of torture, rape, humiliation, psychological oppression and inhumanity. (Meral,2010: 5) She reflects all of them in her novel Women’s Prison Cell.

The reflections of sexual politics in Kate Chopin's The Awakening, Zora Neale Hurston's Their Eyes Were Watching God and Sevgi̇ Soysal's Walking

THE REFLECTIONS OF SEXUAL POLITICS IN KATE CHOPIN’S

THE AWAKENING, ZORA NEALE HURSTON’S THEIR EYES

WERE WATCHING GOD AND SEVGİ SOYSAL’S WALKING

TABLE OF CONTENTS