Şatodaki Kadın Adlı Romanın Foucaultcu ve Feminist Okuması

Öz

Anne Brontë’nin Türkçe’ye Şatodaki Kadın veya Wildfell Konağı Kiracısı olarak çevrilen The Tenant of Wildfell Hall adlı romanı, on dokuzuncu yüzyılda ataerkil toplumun gücünü ve kadınlardan daha üstün görülen erkeklerin yaptıklarını meşrulaştıran uygulamaları eleştirir. Romanın kadın kahramanı Helen, zalim ve ihmalkar kocasından dolayı çocuğuyla evden kaçmakla hem kendi ayakları üzerinde kalarak yaşayabileceğini hem de Arthur gibi bir baba olmadan çocuğunu iyi bir şekilde yetiştirebileceğini göstermekte ve dönemin ataerkil düzenine ve söylemine karşı çıkmaktadır. Romanda temsil edilen kadınlara yönelik erkek baskısını ortaya koymak amacıyla, bu çalışmada feminist eleştirinin yanı sıra Michel Foucault'nun eleştirel teorileri de kullanılmaktadır. Bu bağlamda çalışma, Helen gibi kadınların toplumsal hayatta ve kanun önünde erkeklerle eşit olması gerektiğini ima ederken romanın ataerkil düzeni yıktığını iddia etmektedir. Kahramanın Viktorya dönemi anlayışının aksine rasyonel, yaratıcı, çalışkan ve kendine güvenen bir kadın olarak tasviri ışığında, bu çalışma erkeklerin kadınlara üstünlüğünün burjuva toplumunda oluşturulan ataerkil söylemden kaynaklandığını ortaya koymaktadır.

Anahtar Kelimeler

• Anne Brontë
• Şatodaki Kadın
• Feminizim
• Foucault

A Foucauldian and Feminist Reading of The Tenant of Wildfell Hall

Öz

Anne Brontë, in her novel The Tenant of Wildfell Hall, criticizes the power of the patriarchal society in the nineteenth century and the practices that legitimize the actions of men considered superior to women. Helen, the female protagonist of the novel, shows that by running away from home with her child due to her cruel and neglectful husband, she can both stand on her own feet and raise her child well without a father like Arthur, and thus opposes the patriarchal order and discourse of the period. In order to illustrate male oppression on women represented in the novel, this study employs critical theories of Michel Foucault as well as feminist criticism. In this respect, the study claims that the novel subverts patriarchal order while implying that women like Helen should be equal with men in social life and before the law. In the light of the protagonist’s portrayal as a rational, creative, hardworking and self-confident woman contrary to Victorian conceptions, this study reveals that the superiority of men over women stems from the patriarchal discourse created in the bourgeois society.

Anahtar Kelimeler

• Anne Brontë
• The Tenant of Wildfell Hall
• Feminism
• Foucault

Kaynakça

1. Althusser, L. (1984). Essays on ideology. Verso.
2. BBC News. (2020, January 11). Anne Bronte novel inspires Scarborough art exhibition. Retrieved November 9, 2021, from https://www.bbc.com/news/uk-england-york-north-yorkshire-51077578
3. Beauvoir, S. (1956). The second sex. Lowe and Brydone.
4. Bellamy, J. (2005). The tenant of Wildfell Hall: What Anne Brontë knew and what modern readers don’t, Brontë Studies, 30, 255-257.
5. Berry, L. C. (1996). Acts of custody and incarceration in “Wuthering Heights” and “the tenant of Wildfell Hall.” NOVEL: A Forum on Fiction, 30(1), 32-55.
6. Brontë, A. (2008). The tenant of Wildfell Hall. In H. Rosengarten (Ed.), Oxford University Press.
7. Brontë, C. (1994). Jane Eyre. Penguin Popular Classics.
8. Cixous, H., Cohen, K., & Cohen, P. (1976). The laugh of the Medusa. Signs: Journal of Women in Culture and Society, 1(4), 875–893.

9. Colón, C. (2008). Beginning where Charlotte left off: Visions of community in Anne Brontë’s the tenant of Wildfell Hall, Brontë Studies, 33, 20-29.
10. D’Cruze, S. (2004). The family. In C. Williams (Ed.), A companion to nineteenth-century Britain (1st ed., pp. 253-273). Blackwell Publishing Ltd.
11. Foucault, M. (1972). Archaeology of knowledge and the discourse on language. A. M. Sheridan Smith, Trans. Pantheon Books.
12. Foucault, M. (1978). The history of sexuality (Vol. I). R. Hurley, Trans. Pantheon Books.
13. Foucault, M. (1980). Power/knowledge: Selected interviews & other writings 1972-1977 (C. Gordon et al., Trans.) In C. Gordon. (Ed.), Pantheon Books.
14. Foucault, M. (1982). The subject and power, Critical Inquiry, 8(4), 777-795.
15. Foucault, M. (1995). Discipline & punish: The birth of the prison. A. Sheridan, Trans. Vintage Books.
16. Gilbert, S. M., & Gubar, S. (2000). The madwoman in the attic: The woman writer and the nineteenth-century literary imagination (Second Edition). Yale University Press.
17. Greenblatt, S. (2006). John Stuart Mill. The Norton anthology English literature (Volume II, pp. 1060-1070), W. W. Norton & Company, Inc.
18. Greenblatt, S. (2006). Mary Wollstonecraft. The Norton anthology English literature (Volume II, pp. 167-195), W. W. Norton & Company, Inc.
19. Guerin, W. L., Willingham, J. R., Reesman, J. C., Morgan, L., & Labor, E. (2011). A handbook of critical approaches to literature. New York: Oxford University Press.
20. Knapp, B. L. (1991). The Brontës: Branwell, Anne, Emily, Charlotte. The Continuum Publishing Company.
21. Langland, E. (1989). Anne Brontë: The other one (women writers). Macmillan.
22. Le Veness, K. A. (2011). Lessons from the tenant of Wildfell Hall: Recasting the mother, Brontë Studies. 36(4), 344-357.
23. Liddell, R. (1990). Twin spirits: The novels of Emily and Anne Brontë. Peter Oven Publishers.
24. Mill, J. S. (1984). Collected works of John Stuart Mill: Essays on law, equality and education v. 21. University of Toronto Press.
25. Millett, K. (2000). Sexual politics. University of Ilinois Press.
26. Mitchell, S. (2009). Daily life in Victorian England (2nd ed.). The Greenwood Press.
27. Nassaar, C. S. (2004). Introduction to the Victorians: A major authors anthology. In H. Bloom (Ed.), The Victorian novel (pp.91-103). Chelsea House.
28. Oliver, K. (1993). Julia Kristeva’s feminist revolutions. Hypatia, 8(3), 94-114.
29. Šalinović, I. (2020). Women writers of 19th century Britain. Journal of Education Culture and Society, 5(1), 218-225. https://doi.org/10.15503/jecs20141.218.225
30. Showalter, E. (1977). A Literature of their own: British women novelists from Bronte to Lessing (Revised ed.). Princeton University Press.
31. Whipps, J. D. (2017). A historical introduction: The three waves of feminism. In C. Hay (Ed.), Philosophy: Feminism (pp. 3-36). Macmillan Reference USA.
32. Woolf, V. (2007). A room of one’s own. Fall Rivers Press.