EURİPİDES’İN MEDEA’SI, WILLIAM SHAKESPEARE’İN MACBETH’İ VE ÖZEN YULA’NIN GAYRİ RESMİ ROXELANA’SINDAKİ BASKIN KADIN FİGÜRLERİNİN TEMATOLOJİK BİR KARŞILAŞTIRMASI

Yıl 2023, , 976 - 989, 15.09.2023

Seher Özsert

https://doi.org/10.7884/teke.1353259

Öz

Bu makale, Euripides’in Medea’sı, William Shakespeare’in Macbeth’i ve Özen Yula’nın Gayri Resmi Roxelana’sındaki güçlü kadın karakterlerin tasviriyle tematolojik bir karşılaştırma sunmaktadır. Üç oyunun feminist analizi, kadınların her zaman güç, kontrol ve tanınma arayışında olarak tasvir edildiğini göstermektedir. İktidara olan arzuları ataerkillik tarafından çeşitli denemeler ve sıkıntılarla sınanır. Üç kadın karakter farklı kültürlere ve zamanlara ait olsalar da ataerkil baskı, güç ve tanınmaya yönelik çaresiz arzular gibi ortak temaları paylaşıyorlar. Üç kadının ataerkil çerçeveye göre alışılmadık erkeksi davranışlar sergileyerek beklenen cinsiyet rollerinden saptıkları gözlemlenmektedir. Feminist eleştiri, onların kültürel olarak inşa edilmiş toplumsal cinsiyet rollerinden sapmalarının ardındaki motivasyonları açığa çıkarmaktadır. Karşılaştırmalı edebiyatın bir alt alanı olan tematolojik analizde, feminist eleştirinin yardımıyla seçilen metinler, kendilerine özgü temaları ile birbirleriyle ilişkileri açısından karşılaştırılmıştır.

Anahtar Kelimeler

Tematoloji, feminizm, baskın kadınlar, ataerkillik

A THEMATOLOGICAL COMPARISON OF THE DOMINANT FEMALE FIGURES IN EURIPIDES’ MEDEA, WILLIAM SHAKESPEARE’S MACBETH AND ÖZEN YULA’S UNOFFICIAL ROXELANA

Öz

This paper presents a thematological comparison to the portrayal of powerful woman characters in Euripides’s Medea, William Shakespeare’s Macbeth, and Özen Yula’s Unofficial Roxelana. The feminist analysis of the three plays indicates that women are portrayed as always seeking power, control, and recognition. Their desire for power is tested by patriarchy on several trials and tribulations. Even though the three female characters belong to different cultures and times, they share common themes of patriarchal oppression, desperate desires for power and recognition. The three women are observed to deviate from expected gender roles by exhibiting unconventional manlike behaviours according to the patriarchal framework. The feminist criticism reveals the motivations behind their deviation from their culturally constructed gender roles. Through the thematological analysis, as a subfield of comparative literature, the selected texts are compared in their relation to each other in terms of their unique themes by the help of feminist criticism.

Anahtar Kelimeler

Thematology, feminism, dominant females, patriarchy

Kaynakça

• Barzilai-Lumbroso, R. (2009). Turkish men and the history of Ottoman women: Studying the history of the Ottoman dynasty’s private sphere through women’s writings. Journal of Middle East Women’s Studies 5(2), 53-82. Bernstein, J. A. (2002). Bewitched, bothered and bewildered: Lady Macbeth, sleepwalking, and the demonic in Verdi’s Scottish opera. Cambridge Opera Journal, 14(1/2), 31-46.
• Biderci Dinç, D. (2019). Reading William Shakespeare’s Macbeth as a political text. International Social Sciences Studies Journal 5(30), 903-914.
• Chamberlain, S. (2005). Fantasizing infanticide: Lady Macbeth and the murdering mother in early modern England. College Literature 32(3), 72-91.
• Cixous, H. (1976). The laugh of the Medusa. (K. Cohen & P. Cohen, Trans.). The University of Chicago Press 1(4), 875-893.
• Cixous, H. (1981). Castration or decapitation? (A. Kuhn, Trans.) Signs 7(1), 41-55.
• Euripides. (1963) Medea and other plays. (P. Vellacott, Trans.). Penguin Books. (Original work published 431 B.C.E.)
• Fallaize, E. (2007). Simone de Beauvoir and the demystification of woman. In G. Plain & S. Sellers (Eds.), A history of feminist literary criticism (pp. 85-100). Cambridge University Press.
• French, M. (1992) “Macbeth” and masculinity. In A. Sinfield (Ed.), Macbeth: New casebooks (pp. 16-32). Palgrave Macmillan.
• Isom-Verhaaren, C. (2006). Royal French women in the Ottoman sultans’ harem: The political uses of fabricated accounts from the sixteenth to the twenty-first century. Journal of World History 17(2), 159-196.
• Hall, E. (1999). Medea and British legislation before the First World War.
• Greece & Rome 46(1), 42-77. Levin, J. (2002). Lady MacBeth and the daemonologie of hysteria. ELH 69(1), 21-55.
• Rickert, G. (1987). Akrasia and Euripides’ Medea. Harvard Studies in Classical Philology 91, 91-117.
• Shakespeare, W. (2003). Macbeth by William Shakespeare. B. A. Mowat, & P. Werstine (Eds.). Washington Square Press. (Original work published 1623)
• Showalter, E. (1985). The female malady: Women, madness, and English culture. Pantheon Books New York.
• Stevens, C. (1999). Hélène Cixous and the need of portraying: on portrait du soleil. In R. Barreca, & L. A. Jacobus (Eds.), Hélène Cixous: Critical Impressions (pp. 201-225). Gordon & Breach Publishing Group.
• Uluçay, M. Ç. (1953) Letters from the harem: The letters of Hurrem Sultan. Yeni Tarih Dünyası 2(19-20), 768-769.
• Yula, O. (2017). Unofficial Roxelana: And other plays. University of Chicago Press.
• Woolf, V. (1943) Three guineas. The Hogarth Press.