Female signature in the Turkish novel

Abstract

The twentieth century was a period in which the world changed a lot. These changes did not go beyond the Ottoman Empire, which had recently lived. This article investigates the activity and life of a female writer who was novel writer and representative of the modern Turkish literature. XIX cen-tury Turkish women authors considered feminism as a means of defense for women's rights. Zafar Khanum the author of the first female novel in Turkish literature wrote her novel "Love–Homeland", in 1877. But this work was both primitive and small. Zafar Khanum also wrote only one small novel. For these reasons, researchers do not consider her the author of the first female novel.
The first female novelist of Turkish literature and Islamic world is Fatma Aliya. Her first novel was the "Muhadarat" written in 1891. The essence of the novel is social topics such as the failure of the families that have been started by different pressures, the happiness that a woman can enjoy for the second time. The novel provides a vivid illustration of the life of nobility in the Ottoman society. Fatma khanum was also an active public figure, so she worked in newspapers and magazines.