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reason that has pushed Feride to Anatolia. He leaves Feride in Zeyniler to reappear
unexpectedly in Kuşadası near the end of the story.
In the various posts where Feride later works, she impresses the locals by being hard
working, clever and beautiful. She meets various people who influence the course of
the story. In every place she goes, she meets both people who oppose her and her
progressive ideas and people who support her. Reşat Nuri makes sure that there is a
balance between opponents and supporters, “bad” characters and kind ones.
8
After the grim environment of Zeyniler the rest of the places where she goes are
described as rather picturesque and lively. The pattern of the novel is a succession of
episodes defined by Feride moving from one teaching post to another (and itself
perhaps imposed by the serial nature of the original publication). In each, there is
invariably an intrigue against her by some of the provincial people and a
confrontation with their way of thinking. The provincial characters who appear are
not only peasants but drawn from a range of society. Curiously while three of the
five are named places, Izmir, Karşıyaka and Kuşadası, two are veiled by initials as B
and Ç.
Although she was brought up in a comfortable and rather westernised way, Feride
respects the customs of the local people and covers herself when it is appropriate.
Her honour and good name are very important to her. She simply leaves one of her
posts because the local people give her the nickname of
Gülbeşeker
(Rose Jam) on
8
Kudret II, 269 expresses a similar view
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account of her exceptional beauty. She also quits another of her posts, because, Şeyh
Yusuf Efendi, having fallen desperately in love with her and having hopelessly
expired, she was given, blameless though she was, another nickname,
İpek böceği.
(Silkworm).
Through all this her passionate love for Kâmran never ceases but she refuses to
acknowledge it. Encountering Doctor Hayrullah Bey again in Kuşadası near the close
of the story and having become a nurse in the hospital into which her school has been
converted, she vehemently denies being in love with the fiancé whose existence the
doctor had persuaded her to confess and, to prove it, insists on proposing marriage to
a mutilated soldier in the hospital. Fortunately this goes no further and Doctor
Hayrullah Bey is able to bring about a happy ending.
First of all Doctor Hayrullah Bey and Feride must contract an unconsummated
marriage to stop local tongues wagging about their close association. And the diary
breaks off on the eve of their marriage with an expression of undying love for
Kâmran.
By a nice twist the story resumes in the voice of a narrator and we soon learn why.
Feride had fallen ill and delirious, and Doctor Hayrullah Bey, having ascertained
Kâmran’s identity from her diary, sends it to him as proof of her pure and
uncompromised love. On his deathbed Dr Hayrullah Bey makes Feride promise to
return to Istanbul to see her family. It is now inevitable that she is reunited with the
now widowed Kâmran, who has a son, Necdet, under the very tree under which they
first kissed.
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