Weird women's engagement with writing: Heroines as writers in Leylâ Erbil's novels

This thesis discussing Leylâ Erbil's Tuhaf Bir Kadın, Karanlığın Günü, Cüce and Kalan novels, examines how and why "female authorship" is problematized in these texts. By presenting similarities and especially divergences among the texts and among the heroines who are also writing/writers in these texts, this work analyzes how female writer figures and Erbil's fictional settings change, evolve or develop fractures going from first novel to the last. Both female identities and writer identities of these heroines lead society to view them as "other" or "weird" and in a sense impose "madness" upon them. Accordingly, this thesis argues that women manage to exist in the male-dominated society and engage with writing by seizing upon this imposed "madness" and utilizing it as a path to rebellion. This study also asserts that the freedom and rebellion rising as the heroines adopt "madness" are reflected—through Erbil's narrative techniques and textual strategies—both in these women's own lives and in the language, narration and form of texts that are mostly written by them. Thus the thesis depicts that heroines' voice and authority get stronger as we move from one novel to other. These heroines, in fact put their own authority up against the power of patriarchal institutions and ideologies and against the "absolute authority". The fact that these women are "mad", that is, Erbil's choice to give the authority to a "mad" woman, indicates that Leylâ Erbil is criticizing and trying to reverse the power relations that we encounter in all her novels.