Kadın otobiyografilerinde benliğin keşfi: Halide Edib Adıvar'ın memoirs of Halide Edib ve Edith Wharton'ın a Backward Glance adlı eserleri

Autobiography is a statement of reconstruction of self. In his/her autobiographical narrative, the writer interprets the memory traces already transformed by personal expectations, prejudices and needs, and fictionalizes the past in the context of socio-cultural factors, linguistic tools and literary traditions. Autobiography in the conventional sense is based on the legitimate story of an autonomous, rational, and independent man. When the autobiographical text and the writer?s actual experiences are questioned, a paradox emerges that also proves the originality of woman?s story. The paradox is that of choosing between the account of writer?s life-story mirrored in the text or the shared experiences of community that has passed through similar stages. The female writer, in an effort to represent the voice of woman which resists the feminine roles imposed by the patriarchal society, expresses her specific consciousness and approaches to life. The gender-based distinction observed in autobiographical writings results from the environmental conditions and conflicting social dynamics that modify the course of psychological development in boys and girls. Girls tend to continue the relational patterns they have internalized in their early formative years and define themselves as part of their lifelong relationships, whereas boys make efforts to form an independent identity determined by their strong ego boundaries.In this study, the autobiographies of two women writers are selected: Halide Edib Adıvar?s Memoirs of Halide Edib and Edith Wharton?s A Backward Glance. Remarkable parallels between their lives and the significant roles they take in the social change and cultural transformation of their country make them worthy of comparison. To explain the writers? stages of individualization and to display how they describe their distinctive selves, textual identities are retrospectively analyzed and broken into parts, and their past experiences and relationships are examined within the framework of familial, social, cultural and psychological factors, and these fragmented parts are arranged into a new whole to reinterpret and realize the discovery of the selves. Released from the shadow of male writers, Halide Edib who describes her journey of self-discovery in all its aspects, and positions herself as a distinctive ?subject? taking full responsibility of her words and life Edith Wharton on the other hand underlines the career path of an art laborer in her autobiography, leaving almost invisible footprints as if to preserve the silence identified with woman, and remains merely an ?object? of her work and fails to surpass the traditional norms in order to be accepted by the society as a writer.