CHAPTER 5 – TWO SHIRTS OF FLAME
191
characters find themselves in a desert far away from everything and everyone
(Fragment B). The Anatolian landscape with its grey villages far from any other
place forgotten oppressed and oppressive (Fragment A) is a physical representation
of the emotions of the characters. It is exactly the world of
Yaban.
As Halide Edip
perceived
50
, Yakup Kadri created an Anatolian novel from his inner self, not from
the passing circumstances of the war.
Fragment A ends with a long rumination on the condition of women which can be
compared to one of Ahmet Celal’s more briefly expressed thoughts in
Yaban
51
. The
female condition is a consistent preoccupation of Yakup Kadri. The longing for
maternal love in Fragment C is consistent with Ali Serdar’s
52
contention about the
attachment to their mothers which he finds in the protagonists of
Hüküm Gecesi, Bir
Sürgün
and
Yaban.
One of Yakup Kadri’s earliest published short stories
Baskın
53
contains an episode very similar to that of Fragment A in which a crowd of angry
townspeople break into the house of an adulterous woman
54
. His valedictory novel
Hep O Şarkı
(Always the Same Ballad, 1956) presents a story of unfulfilled love set
in the Istanbul of the Tanzimat period in a narration from the mouth of the female
sufferer.
50
Adıvar 1924, xx
51
Karosmanoğlu 2006, 57, Jacobson 59-60
52
See Chapter 4 above
53
Kudret II, 112-116
54
See Chapter 4 above
CHAPTER 6 – VURUN KAHPEYE
192
The subject of this chapter is Halide Edip’s
Vurun Kahpeye
(“Strike the Whore”).
This first appeared in serialised form in the newspaper
Akşam
in 1923 and then in
book form in 1926. This was of course before the change of the alphabet. It is a short
novel of about 140 pages whose plot unfolds in an unnamed Anatolian village during
the War of Independence. The heroine is a teacher from Istanbul named Aliye – a
significant choice of name because it means “exalted”, a suitable epithet for her
moral qualities and eventual martyrdom. She has come to teach the new ways and
ideas and confronts great difficulties: corrupt bureaucracy, superstition and religious
fanaticism, the grip of reactionary and conservative notables, ignorance, poverty,
abysmal living conditions, cruelty and injustice. The main weapons with which she
confronts these difficulties are a strong character, a refusal to compromise, honesty,
enthusiasm for what she wants to achieve, great courage and bravery, love both on a
personal level and for society generally and a passion for the things she want to
achieve.
Aliye was an orphan from a young age (like the authoress herself, although Aliye has
lost her father as well). She is a beautiful young woman, her visible beauty reflecting
her spiritual inner beauty.
Vurun Kahpeye
is an overtly nationalistic novel; not only
does it take place during the War of Independence (with references to historical
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