Nigâr Hanım’ın Günlüklerinde Benlik İnşası: Geç Osmanlı Dönemi’nde Kadın Özneyi Yazmak

Abstract

As an important woman writer, Nigâr binti Osman (1862–1918) contributed to social and cultural change in the nineteenth century Ottoman Empire through her intellect and her writings. From her early work onward, Nigâr Hanım cared about the issue of “writing herself.” Her diaries, kept from 1887 to 1918 evidence this: the diaries are constantly cited but have not been transliterated into the Latin alphabet. From an upper-class woman’s perspective, her writings convey firsthand impressions of the Ottoman Empire’s rapid political and social changes during the nineteenth century. Her diaries reveal her position, daily life, emotions, literary preferences, writing adventures, and quests. From these texts, Nigâr Hanım’s experience of life can be discussed as memory, experience, and testimony. In this study specifically, her diaries will be examined in detail as to construction of the self through this daily written genre, through writing by the female subject, and subsequent inclusion in public literature.