EAST-WEST CONFLICT IN THE MüREBB？YE NOVEL: IMAGINARY VIEWS OF GENDER

The Ottoman's westernization movement becomes functional in all its aspects during the Tanzimat Reform Era. The Tanzimat intellectual tries to hold the social dynamics harmless against the expansion of Western thought. The intellectuals trying to apply the formulas they produce desire to alleviate the social tension created by the Western development. The study aims to reveal the situation of the people indirectly exposed to the cultural imposition of the Western thought through the novel Mürebbiye by Hüseyin Rahmi. The process of degeneration of the characters and their incapabilities they have experienced against the French governess reflect the East-West conflict of that period. It is necessary to evaluate the sociological, psychological and historical data to show the perspective of East and West. This approach makes it easier to understand in which position the characters in the novel represent. The East, represented by the male characters in the text, loses its will against the West, which it regards as a female dream, while it desires sovereignty over the West. These characters begin to lose their gender identity against Anjel, the image of Western values. Murebbiye reveals the collapse of the conquest policy that the Tanzimat intellectual dreams of. Even the experienced father of the Old East is abstracted from his own self and tradition while desiring to conquer the West, with its own masculinity