Women and history in Halide Edip Adıvar's short stories

Halide Edip Adıvar is a writer who addresses the social issues of her time in her works and meticulously examines the psychology of individuals. Although Adıvar's life and works have been the subject of academic studies, there are few studies on her short stories. Upon examining Harap Mabetler (1911) and Dağa Çıkan Kurt (1922), which collect Adıvar's stories, prose poems, and travel writings published in magazines and newspapers, as well as the posthumously published Kubbede Kalan Hoş Sada (1974), it becomes evident that Adıvar's texts contain her thoughts and discussions on history. In Adıvar's aforementioned works, fifteen texts reconstruct historical events, characters, and realities. These stories treat the past, present, and future within the framework of women. It is evident that nationalism, an effective ideology in Adıvar's time, influenced the events and characters in the texts. The approach of New Historicism emerged by questioning the traditional understanding of history. This approach, which focuses on texts in the fields of history and literature, is thought to offer convenient tools to make sense of the phenomena observed in Adıvar's stories. Therefore, this thesis analyzes the sample, which was selected based on various criteria, in the context of New Historicism and nationalism theories. The analysis concludes that the triad of author, work, and period mutually produce and transform each other in a cycle. Keywords: Halide Edip Adıvar, historical story, history, New Historicism, gender, nationalism