Abstract
Social Gender in the Stories of Sâmiha Ayverdi
The concept of social gender is a set of stereotypes that society expects from men and women, shaped in line with the physiology of men and women, living conditions, political, social, cultural and economic developments. In the historical process, the dominance of the patriarchal structure in the society causes social gender roles to limit women more than men and to position women according to men. Sâmiha Ayverdi (1905-1993), who made a name for herself in Turkish literature with her novels, takes her place in Turkish storytelling with thirty-six stories in her book called Mâbedde Bir Gece, published in 1940. While the stories are shaped around the main themes of love, meaning and search, there are traces of the reflections of social gender perception on men and women in many stories. These traces often guide the attitudes and behaviors of the people in the story against various events. While the roles of femininity and masculinity shaped by the society in the stories sometimes create conflict with the individual's inner world and conditions and drag the individual into an impasse, sometimes they commodify the individual by reducing the individual to the body with a utilitarian understanding. In this study, the reflections of the concept of social gender in Sâmiha Ayverdi's stories will be examined in the context of the institution of marriage, body and masculinity.
Keywords
Sâmiha Ayverdi, story, social gender, women, male