Silent Pens, Powerful Voices: The Literary Invisibility of Women in the Nineteenth Century Turkish and Western Literatıre

Abstract

Throughout history, women writers in both Turkish and Western literature have been marginalized and relegated to the background due to the attitudes of men in both social and literary circles. During periods dominated by patriarchal structures, women's writing was often viewed as a “violation of private space”, and their voices were suppressed. Especially in the 19th century, many women writers in Turkish and Western literature were forced to write either under pseudonyms or anaonymously due to social pressures, prejudices against women, and the perception of writing as a “men’s job”. Despite the social pressures of the time, these writers continued their writing, defending both the presence of women in the literary sphere and their right to free thought. Many esteemed women writers, including Charlotte, Emily, and Anne Brontë, Jane Austen, Elizabeth Gaskell, George Eliot, and Louisa May Alcott from Western literature, and Suat Derviş, Fatma Aliye Topuz, Halide Edip Adıvar and Emine Semiye Önasya, from Turkish literature, were able to reach their female readers under male or personal pseudonyms. In this study, the struggles of women writers who, due to the oppressive system of masculine ideology, were overshadowed by their male counterparts and forced to conceal their true identities, were comparatively analyzed within the framework of literary sociology.