Constructing male figures in the novels of Halide Edip

Halide Edip Adıvar (1882-1964) wrote total 21 novels till 1963 from 1908 when her first novel Heyulâ was published. The author witnessed the cultural change and conversion of the Turkish community in the historical processes from the 2nd Constitutional Era to the War of Independence, and from the Republic Proclamation to the Multi-Party Regime. Taking place among the significant female authors of the Turkish literature, Halide Edip Adıvar is characterized with her important determinations of the issues of the women who are in an ongoing effort to be more prominent in the public sphere by acting as authors, journalists, lecturers and national deputies. The author however underlined, in her novels, the arguments of the men who supported the absolute or limited public appearance of the women at those years when the gender identities were reviewed. That is why, she wrote such novels as represent the different social groups of crowded population. This study aims at individually and comparatively elaborating the male figures in the novels of Halide Edip on the basis of the physical and social characteristics in terms of the modernization/westernization of the Turkish community. This thesis aims at determining how the author built up the ideal female identity in her novels while elaborating the ideal male identity forming the women and/or formed by the women on the basis of the father-daughter, wife-husband, teacher-student and employer-employee relations. Keywords: Turkish Literature, Halide Edip, character, male figure, novel.