The benignant and malignant female image in Tanzimat and Servet-i Funun Turkish novels

Good and evil, like male and female, are profound concepts that exist in a relationship of opposition yet complement each other, serving the wholeness of the universe. These concepts, which have been debated throughout human history, are particularly addressed within the context of the problem of evil, a central focus of philosophy and theology. It is thought that these male-dominated definitions of good and evil, concretized through mythological, theological, and literary narratives, and employed within a patriarchal social and historical framework, were transmitted from generation to generation and from culture to culture through the management of knowledge and culture. When considered in the context of modern Turkish literature, the Tanzimat and Servet-i Fünun periods, during which the pulse of Ottoman modernization in sociological and cultural terms can be felt, mark a time when the first examples of the novel genre began to be produced by Ottoman-Turkish intellectuals. In general, it is possible to observe the changes in the social dynamics of the period, the shifts in perceptions of good and evil due to epistemological ruptures, and more specifically, the reflections of these changes on women. Therefore, in this study, the criteria by which female characters in period novels are labeled as benevolent or malevolent were explored, and the question of whether patriarchal ideology exists in a panoptic manner was investigated.