Representation of the female body in Adalet Ağaoğlu's Ölmeye Yatmak and Leylâ Erbil's Tuhaf Bir Kadın

Abstract

ABSTRACT Adalet Ağaoğlu's Ölmeye Yatmak (Lying Down to Die, 1973) and Leylâ Erbil's Tuhaf Bir Kadın (A Strange Woman, 1971) are significant examples of Turkish literature that situate the female body within Turkish national history and discourse. 1 Their protagonists lock themselves in hotel rooms where they get closer to their body and sexuality, and reveal critical insights related to their society, particularly laying bare the intriguing relationships between different ideologies such as Islam, modernization project and socialism. I argue that these novels dauntlessly show the flawed, conflictual and oppressive nature of these ideologies in their attitudes towards women and their bodies, which is emphasized through the protagonists' problematic and unstable relationships with these discourses and their bodies. As the protagonists begin to voice their repressed sexual desires and reclaim the female body as a source of pleasure and autonomy, a space to break away from imposed configurations of womanhood is created.