Women Centered Change On The Axis Of Modernization/Westernization And The Look At Women In Ahmet Mithat Efendi's Novel “Vah”

There have been major changes in the Ottoman Empire’s social life due to the effect of Westernization/modernization attempts that started with Tanzimat and the influence of newspapers and magazines supporting this initiative. The topic of woman, the role of woman and the perception of woman in society that will gain a different dimension with the Republic have started to change for the first time in this period. In parallel with the Westernization/modernization attempts, ever-increasing freedom in female-male relations, the change in family life and house layout have become the topics of Turkish narrative (story and novel) beginning from Tanzimat. Ahmet Mithat Efendi, who has a significant role in the settlement of novel in Turkish literature as a genre, often included in his novels the negativities of superficial modernization in social life (conflicts and funniness, unnatural and parvenu characters etc.) and their everyday reflections. His novel Vah, published in 1882, is one his novels in which moral degeneration that emerged as a result of false Westernization was dealt with, in the context of male-female relations and around a female hero. In this article, in the axis of westernization/modernization, the woman-centered change in the Turkish novel will be evaluated on the line of novel elements in the example of Ahmet Mithat Efendi's novel “Vah” (such as case, person, time, space and narrator), and in the novel the topics such as the approach to woman, the handling of woman issues, values and definitions for woman will be examined through feminist literature criticism