터키 문학에 나타난 여성문제-소설 『순수 박물관』속 혼전순결문제를 중심으로-

Abstract

Despite the fact that Turkey adopted modernization and westernization as the Republic's ideology after its establishment and has undergone various social changes, the perception of women's purity has not changed significantly. It regards purity as a valuable treasure that must be preserved prior to marriage, and this perception clearly demonstrates gender discrimination and oppression that only applies to women. Among all of Orhan Pamuk's works published to date, The Museum of Innocence is a novel in which women's issues are addressed seriously in the vast subject of love. This work reveals the contradiction between discrimination and women's perceptions experienced by Turkish women in the 1970s, and it reflects an era in which women are not recognized as autonomous and independent by living individual lives or actively participating in society, and are faithful to husband and child rearing in a compliant and patriarchal society. The conventional wisdom that women who have sex with men without mentioning marriage or hope were also prevalent in the novel's background. Men who are afraid that women will experience pleasure and cling to it as premarital relationships, and women who have premarital relationships but have not married their partners, are chastised as defamed, pitiful women who have been abandoned. Women’s premarital sex is accepted as a religious constraint or moral defect, men, on the other hand, are relatively tolerant of having sex before marriage or meeting other women after marriage. Despite various legal facts in Turkey, women continue to face discrimination in Turkish society as a result of their lack of awareness of women's issues, as well as inhumane old customs and narrow-minded thinking. It could be argued that blaming only women is unjust in Turkey, where honor killings are still carried out on women who have lost their purity or spirit. The problem of discrimination against women in Turkey will have to be improved in the future, recognizing the problems of bad habits and patriarchal society, and only when incorrect customs disappear will men and women be able to live together in an equal society.