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Вестник СПбГУ. Востоковедение и африканистика. 2023. Т. 15. Вып. 4
Carnivalesque Reading of Halide Edib Adivar's The Clown and His Daughter
V. B. Yilmaz
Social Sciences University of Ankara,
2, Hukumet Meydani, Ankara, 06050, Republic of Turkiye
For citation: Yilmaz V. B. Carnivalesque Reading of Halide Edib Adivar's The Clown and His Daughter. Vestnik of Saint Petersburg University. Asian and African Studies, 2023, vol. 15, issue 4, pp. 702-713. https://doi.org/10.21638/spbu13.2023.406
Halide Edib Adivar (1884-1964), prominent and revolutionary Turkish writer, wrote her novel The Clown and His Daughter in 1935 in English. With a colourful story of Rabia's psychological, social, and physical development, Adivar undertakes a meticulous re-examination of the social categories of her native land during an empire's rapid moving into a state of a republic. This study will claim that Adivar's novel The Clown and His Daughter is a purely carnivalesque piece of work if analysed in terms of Bakhtin's concept of the carnival. Mikhail Bakhtin rests the importance of the carnival sense of the world upon the transcending of every possible barrier between all living creatures in the universe. The theory of the carnival is infused with the atmosphere of freedom, excessiveness, challenge, rebirth, and bodily priorities. In a car-nivalistic world, where a king can become a slave, an old woman can die while giving birth to a baby, or a man can unite with the whole world while consuming food. Bakhtin discusses such images under the term of the grotesque — an image of the bodies that constantly change from one form into another. Adivar's novel, in the same vein, focuses on the underlying unity between genders, communities, religions, races and human beings and animals. The setting and the characters in Adivar's novel can be recognised as carnivalistic because of their eccentricity, tendency to subvert social norms, and the urge to be able to feel the unity with the whole world. This study will conclude that Adivar's aim in writing this novel was to reveal the fundamental principle of a Turkish society — its social wealth that is indelibly marked by its endless varieties, differences, and fluctuating reality.
Keywords: Halide Edib Adivar, The Clown and His Daughter, Bakhtin, carnivalesque. Introduction
Born to witness a great change in her country, Halide Edib Adivar (1884-1964) became one of the most important novelists in Turkey. Born into an ambiguous environment where the father had several wives but at the same time propagated a western lifestyle by sending his daughters to the American College in Istanbul, Edib got used to the sense of uncertainty and instability. What is more, Edib witnessed the dissolution of the Ottoman Empire and an instant establishment of a new republic, which sharpened the sense of uncertainty and change in her life. Indeed, a Turkish playwright, Haldun Taner once said that Halide Edib had a polyphonic intelligence (as cited in [1, p. 133]), which can be associated with Bakhtin's concept of polyphony — the ability to encapsulate various voices and differences. This sense of uncertainty and polyphony can be felt in her novel The Clown
© St. Petersburg State University, 2023
and His Daughter, which was firstly written in English in 1935 and then in Turkish under the title of Sinekli Bakkal.
The population of the Turkish Republic, the largest part of which was grossly immersed in Islamic and Ottoman systematic teaching and preaching, had to accept the reality of the revolution and be tolerant towards the winds of change blowing from Europe. As Thackeray once said after his visit to Istanbul, once a country felt European spirit, it will never eradicate it (as cited in [2, p. 1067]). So the country that Halide Edib pictures in her novel embraces this European spirit mentioned by Thackeray. Actually, as this study puts forth, Edib's aim in this novel was not to focus on the portrayal of the process of European lifestyle's infiltration into the Turkish world; her aim was to depict the Turkish community that already possessed the differences, that was already multi-cultured and multi-layered.
The Clown and His Daughter portrays the protagonist Rabia's life from childhood to adulthood and reconceptualises the ideas of religion, marriage, authority and society in general by focusing more on the ways through which these so-called stable and fundamental institutions are mocked, ridiculed and undermined. Yet, what should be stressed here is the fact that this mockery, ridicule and undermining is not done precariously; everything that the novel's world presents is a natural piece of a Turkish culture, be it the rigid religious doctrine or the subversion of it. Edib's aesthetic aim in writing this novel seems to be the urge to transmit her immediate surroundings to paper. At this point, it is possible to maintain that Edib's The Clown and His Daughter lends itself to a consequential Bakhtinian carnivalesque reading because of the novel's characters and setting.
Russian thinker, philosopher, literary critic and scholar Mikhail Bakhtin (1895-1975) has been widely accepted in literary circles as one of the important critics, or even as the only critic, of the concept of carnival. Emerson correctly states: "Bakhtin was devoted to the carnival idea throughout his life. He associated it not only with the medieval feast and the public square but with a more general spiritual freedom" [3, p. 54]. For Bakhtin, the medieval carnival gatherings were the prototypes of people's opportunities to stay away from everything that restricted them socially, physically or spiritually. It was the temporal and physical space when people could subvert, mock, transcend, and question everything that they had in their normal life. However, being aware of the fact that the carnivals of the medieval period have been dead for a long time, Bakhtin focuses on the influence of the medieval carnivals on literary works. And as Emerson states, carnival was "most readily translated into cultures and times distant from its original inspiration" [4, p. 162]. It can also be argued that some literary works have the sense of carnival in them despite the fact that the author was not influenced by the medieval world or medieval carnivals directly. Therefore, it can be said that such works bear similarity to the medieval carnivals' atmosphere. While focusing on Dostoevsky's and Rabelais' works in his Problems of Dostoevsky's Poetics (1929) and Rabelais and His World (1965), Bakhtin contextualises his theory of the carnivalesque. If medieval people used to spend their ordinary days in a "monolithically serious and gloomy" atmosphere, by being "subjugated to a strict hierarchical order, full of terror, dogmatism, reverence, and piety", the holiday mood for them was
the life of the carnival square, free and unrestricted, full of ambivalent laughter, blasphemy,
the profanation of everything sacred, full of debasing and obscenities, familiar contact with
everyone and everything [5, pp. 129-130].
Medieval people, in other words, had a chance to escape the hierarchical world and indulge in free socialisation during carnival times. Bakhtin traces the characteristics of medieval people's behaviour during carnivals in literary works and conceptualises the term carnivalisation.
Carnivalesque in The Clown and His Daughter
The Clown and His Daughter is a novel about Rabia, a small girl at the beginning of the novel and an adult at the end. Rabia is Tewfik and Emineh's daughter. Emineh's family, specifically her father, the Imam, is strictly religious with a harsh Islamic doctrine imposed on every member of the family. Yet, Emineh marries a young blasphemous man, Tewfik just to give birth to Rabia and divorce. Meanwhile, Tewfik is banished for his so-called anti-political behaviour leaving behind Rabia's upbringing to the mother's and the grandfather's strict inherently religious authority. Being brought up as a religious young woman, Rabia starts to recite the Koran in some social circles and gets the attention of socially powerful political figures like Selim Pasha and his wife Sabiha Hanim. With the return of her father, Rabia decides to live with him and eventually marries an Italian non-Muslim Peregrini, who becomes a Muslim and adopts a new name, Osman. Unlike Edib's early works — Seviyye Talip, Handan, Raik'in Annesi (Raik's Mother), Yeni Turan (New Turan) — which according to Ba§ci, "focus on significant gender-related themes" [6, p. 146], The Clown and His Daughter, as this study argues, mainly focuses on the theme of an inevitability of diversity in a society and, in general, in life.
The Clown and His Daughter is a portrayal of Turkish culture that embraces a great variety of colours. Kantarcioglu quotes Rauf Mutluay for whom Edib's novel is the meeting point of various differences, which create the whole real world [7, pp. 72-73]. Moran thinks that the novel realistically portrays the real life that was dominant during those times [8, p. 120]. Moran also quotes Ahmet Hamdi Tanpinar, who states that the novel brings to the reader everything that is close to him/her. Everything in the novel is from our own world [8, p. 120]. Yet, not everybody agrees that Edib's novel reflects reality. Naci, for instance, states that The Clown and His Daughter is not written for the Turkish readers, as what is described in the novel is not as real as it is. The setting seems to be remote from its reality. Rabia's marriage with a foreigner cannot be true [9, p. 29].
Naci also adds that it was Edib's wish to see a healthy unity of the West and the East in Rabia and Peregrini's marriage [9, p. 29]. In the same vein, Kantarcioglu states that Rabia has the power to unite Turkish-Ottoman-Western culture and that her unity with Pere-grini is her ability to unite Turkish-Islamic and Western culture [7, p. 77]. These views are partly correct; it would be better to define their marriage as the reflection of what already exists. The territory of today's Turkiye, where the novel is set, has been the setting for the life that embraces not only the West and the East, but also a greater variety of differences. And this life is not stable; it is in a continuous flow. That is why Kantarcioglu states that Rabia is a part of people who can accommodate great cultural changes [7, p. 78]. Edib's main point in this novel is precisely this diversity and a fluctuating existence of this diversity. Ozcan claims that because Edib was brought up in a cross-cultural setting, it was her aim to bring opposing forces into a peaceful synthesis [10, p. 133]. Yes, she wanted to show a peaceful synthesis in her work; but it should be underlined that she believed that this synthesis already exists in her country.
In fact, that is why it is impossible to totally agree with Moran who claims that Edib fails to side with any of the ideologies presented in the novel. According to what Moran states in this regard, Edib depicts the negativities of one side, but does not support the other side in an efficient way [8, pp. 126-127]. If the idea of diversity and flux are taken into consideration, Edib's stance between these opposing ideologies is quite understandable. The aim here is not to prove the advantages of one side over the other or to give reasons why she sides with this ideology or the other; Edib's aim was simply to show how everything is changeable and unstable. Under the light of this information, this study will firstly analyse the setting and then the characters in Edib's novel in terms of Bakhtin's carnival.
Carnivalistic setting
The novel's characters and events are based upon the solid background of a religious and patriarchal worldview that is intricately linked to the Turkish lifestyle dominant at that period. It is felt in Rabia's grandfather, Imam's "awe-inspiring dignity" and people's grudging respect for him [11, p. 6] in Edib's novel. Young girls' filial duties are inextricably woven into the depiction of the street of the novel through Rabia's carrying out her tedious chores silently [11, p. 17]. Women's inherently inferior status in a Turkish society of the time is particularly evident when Selim Pasha explicitly states that Rabia should not work in her father's shop [11, p. 125] or when Rakim, Tewfik's friend, states that "women should have no voice in men's affairs" [11, p. 278]. Ubiquitous religious instruction at an early age and its influence on every member of the society becomes glaringly obvious in Rabia's upbringing [11, p. 17] and her becoming a hafiz at an early age [11, p. 19].
However, despite the obvious frame of religious and patriarchal influence, when looked at the novel in general, it is like a huge carnival square in a Bakhtinian sense because there are characters from various and unstable social statuses, religious backgrounds, ages, physical appearances, political alignments, nationalities, and even genders if Tewfik's special characteristics are taken into consideration. Thus, it is possible to agree with Moran who thinks that it is because of this variety that the novel has become attractive to people [8, p. 120]. As Kantarcioglu states, the different cultures in the novel can link to each other by their tiny similarities that are the wealthy colours of human spirit and soul. In this way, they create a bigger whole to live in. The local culture of the Turkish society is the meeting point of other cultures where all the cultural elements meet and fuse into each other [7, pp. 78-79]. Edib's novel is a precise picture of this cultural synthesis. Even a simple glance at some of the pages in the novel yields the understanding of the novel as a comprehensive unity of varieties; it is "self-created and self-creating Unity; creating and recreating perpetually" [11, p. 62], as Vehbi Dede, a semi-mystic character in the novel states. Indeed, Vehbi Efendi is a symbol of this unity in the novel.
The teachings of Vehbi Efendi function to soothe out the differences and propose an alternative path <...> This philosophy not only aims to articulate a new discourse that enables the self to disinvest itself from binary constructions, but also aims to open a space of recognition for both the Self and the Other through their differences [12, p. 41].
This is precisely the unity that Bakhtin expresses through his concept of the grotesque, which is an important element in the theory of the carnival. For Bakhtin, one
should "merge with various natural phenomena, with mountains, rivers, seas, islands, and continents. It can fill the entire universe" [13, p. 318]. While analysing Bakhtin's carnival in terms of democracy and politics, Koczanowicz concludes that "understanding is a complicated process of attempting to harmonise diverse viewpoints through assimilation and accommodation to others' perspectives" and this is precisely what Bakhtin's carnival means [14, p. 85]. And this is what Edib tried to show in her novel.
The neighbourhood of Sinekli-Bakkal, a small street where Rabia lives, presents a lively and gay atmosphere. Qonoglu notices that the description of the street is closely associated with sincerity and that this neighbourhood is like a living organism that keeps its heritage and carries it to the next generation [15, p. 484]. Sinekli-Bakkal street is a place that synthesises varieties [16, p. 1550]. It consists of people who help Tewfik and Imam's daughter, Emineh elope just because they "found the Imam disagreeable and were glad to inflict on him this humiliating blow" [11, p. 8]. Usually, in many patriarchal communities, as Baysal underlines, society in general is quite reluctant to protect a woman from domestic violence or aggression [17, p. 240]. However, in Edib's novel, the neighbourhood of Sinekli-Bakkal street is willing to vitiate the power of patriarchy. It is a street where "lively gossip from window to window" [11, p. 5] confirms the positive and supporting energy of the neighbourhood. Such settings like Sinekli-Bakkal street or Tewfik's shop are very similar to the spaces described by Bakhtin where it is possible to see elements of his carnival theory. Indeed, §ahin calls these places in Edib's novel dynamic and adds that in contrast to Imam's house or the mosque, they invoke the sense of security and peace [16, p. 1560].
Carnivalistic characters
The street inspires people to challenge the normal flow of life and this is obviously seen when one of the young men of the neighbourhood, Mr Big-Brother says: "We ought to appoint Rabia Abla Imam of the Sinekli-Bakkal" [11, p. 343]. Sabiha Hanim, with all "her eccentricities" [11, p. 20], totally disregards the idea of the other world because it is a "dull", "a nasty one" that "suggested creepy and crawly insects; it smelt disagreeably of damp earth" [11, p. 21]. When she hears that Tewfik is expected to burn in hell, she laughs and exclaims: "A j olly time the inhabitants of Hell will have with Tewfik to entertain them!" [11, p. 26]. It is a typical sentence which Bakhtin would accept as profanation because it undermines the seriousness of religious teaching and concepts. It also suggests the carnivalisation of hell. According to Bakhtin's discussion of the underworld, the Christian medieval idea of hell is that of "an ultimate concentration of gloom, fear, and intimidation" [13, p. 395] just like the hell in Imam's description. Yet, the carnivalesque version of hell is that of pleasure and entertainment: "We have seen that the process of carnivalization of the official conceptions of hell and purgatory took place throughout the Middle Ages" [13, p. 394]. It is precisely Sabiha Hanim's eccentric nature with all her ideas about hell and heaven that brings her into the same pot with Dostoevsky's carnivalesque characters whom Bakhtin discusses in his works; for Bakhtin, eccentricity plays a great role in making one a carnivalistic character [5, p. 150]. When Sabiha Hanim decides to belong to one of the Tekkes "that is the Orders — which were not looked on as orthodox" [11, p. 22], she chooses "the Order of the Dancing Dervishes" because it promised humour and laughter.
Rakim's characterisation adds more colours to the idea of the carnival sense of the world in Edib's novel; he is a dwarf and he behaves like a child sometimes. His attitude
towards religion is neutral, even negative: "Children do not fast, monkeys never, and the Almighty created me in the image of a child-monkey. and the image is fixed" [11, p. 95]. Indeed, he is resembled to a monkey. Rabia also finds a similarity between Rakim and her dog: "How his big eyes resembled those of the yellow dog!" [11, p. 72] Thus, in a way, Rakim depicts his image as half-human-being, half animal. In this way, he creates a Bakhtinian grotesque image devoid of any kind of rigidity or certainty. Rakim's speeches about his characteristics deserve attention: he is a Muslim, but he does not like religious discourse; he is afraid of churches and he becomes bored in mosques. When he listens to preaching he falls asleep. He has never prayed [11, pp. 94-95].
Even the rigid characterisation of Imam has its own carnivalistic elements. Imam has specific subconscious multi-dimensional personality. Despite the aura of suffocating hell, boredom, and dark religious mysticism around him, birds fly towards him and are usually seen around in his house. When Peregrini sees these birds around Imam, he becomes surprised because "this friendship with feathered folk seemed inconceivable in this incarnation of hate" [11, p. 293]. Imam's image changes from weak to strong and vice versa when Peregrini observes him: Imam is a "sickly and anaemic old man", but with "eyes stuck on at the back of a head" suggesting "watchfulness, their absolute sensitiveness to the life"; he has a "stylised and powerful voice" but his body is a "puny and shabby black bundle"; despite his "pitiful poverty" his eyes are like the "glow of lava"; the toothless mouth produced music; he was "feeble of body" but had "no sense of loneliness" [11, pp. 290-291]. Imam's image suggests love and hatred, health and old age, weakness and strength, poverty and power at the same time. Despite his preaching of spiritual attachment to the other world, Imam is profoundly obsessed with money — a symbol of this world. This side of Imam is very similar to what Bakhtin terms as decrowning — an act of taking off someone's kingly attributes. Imam is an epitome of spirituality and religious doctrine; yet, his inherent interest in money is his loss of this spirituality and holiness. In other words, he decrowns himself by his attachment to money. When, for instance, Rabia starts earning money, Imam starts "to treat her as a person of importance in the house" [11, p. 47]. When Selim Pasha promises Imam a great sum of money for Rabia's musical education, "the Imam retired quivering with joy. The girl was a real hen with golden eggs!" [11, p. 46].
The setting and the portrayal of other characters are dramatically intensified by Tew-fik's characterisation. Tewfik, who can be accepted as the main carnivalistic character in the novel, appears as the main challenge to stability, authority, and certainty. He is the source of laughter that made even Selim Pasha, "the pattern of all that was sober and solemn", laugh [11, p.7]. Tewfik's characterisation turns some grand notions upside down. Firstly, the boundaries between the roles of men and women are completely blurred in Tewfik's characterisation. "With his figure and face, and his consummate gift of impersonating women. he received the nickname of 'Kiz-Tewfik,' that is, 'Tewfik, the girl'" [11, p. 7].
It was bad enough to be an actor, but an actor who wore in public the veils and shawls and
other frivolities of women, a clown who painted his cheeks and eyelashes, and put out false
beauty-spots on his cheeks and chin was even worse [11, p. 7].
Kaya, in her study of Winterson's The Passion, analyses Henri's feminine characterisation and states that Winterson "challenges or subverts the conventional gender roles" in this way [18, p. 96]. Edib also subverts gender roles and depicts the possibility of the
elimination of gender hierarchies. However, Tewfik's feminine attributes do not make him a weak person. "On the contrary, he resists Emineh's authority by the power of humour, just as he withstands the tortures of the Abdulhamid regime" [19, p. 434].
Second, Tewfik transcends gender hierarchies and violates the rules of privacy. He brings his wife's quite intimate scenes from their bedroom to his tiny theatre stage on the street. So Emineh, an epitome of strict social and religious mindset is mocked and ridiculed:
He applied the tweezers to the upper part of an eyebrow, lifting the brows to get it more quickly done; he extracted superfluous hairs from the upper lip, pushing it out with the help of the tongue: finally he imitated her finishing touch, a tiny false beauty-spot which she put on the edge of the left temple [11, p. 13].
It was a shock for a religious woman like Emineh whose background education largely consists of the doctrines specifying women's privacy and secrecy. "That was a subject no Moslem, no Turk with any decency, could allude to in public" [11, p. 16]. Tewfik's bringing all their private deeds to the street is similar to what the carnival participants do in Bakhtin's carnival theory. They experience "the life of the carnival square, free and unrestricted... the profanation of everything sacred. familiar contact with everyone and everything" [5, pp. 129-130]. Tewfik, in other words, familiarizes the public of the street with the private life of his wife and carnivalizes her pious life by parodying her private actions. As Platter states, when there is parody, there is a "lack of insulating structures that protect the representatives of the status quo from the unseemly advances of common revellers" [20, p. 8]. The carnivalistic sense of the world, thus, enters the person of Tewfik and overcomes the strict religious barriers of Imam's house and enters his household, mocks his daughter Emineh and starts to reveal the inside of her private life.
Thirdly, Tewfik mocks the notion of business and money; he shatters the notion of materialism. Even his shop is under his humorous attack as he insists on subverting its fundamental principle, that of earning money.
He fooled with the barefooted urchins who swarmed round the shop, and treated them to red sugar; he made friends of his customers; he never resisted their demands for credit, and hated to ask for money at the end of the month [11, p. 9].
In other words, Tewfik's shop, a place where people do their business in normal circumstances, is turned into a carnival square in Tewfik's hands [11, p. 9]. He, in fact, has regarded money just as a means to be able to continue his mocking. Contrary to Imam and Emineh, Tewfik does not see money as something, which deserves effort and attention.
Finally, nothing is stable in Tewfik's environment; every place where he appears becomes infused with the sense of carnival. It is difficult to fix Tewfik to a particular place. Firstly, he is banished to Gallipoli. After his return to Sinekli-Bakkal, he does not stay there for a long time because he is banished to Damascus. Yet, everywhere he goes is filled with his exuberance. During his banishment, he spends his first years by "earning a few coins by acting comic scenes in market-places" and then he becomes "the chief entertainer to the governor" [11, p. 70]. Tewfik becomes a famous play performer in Damascus where he imitates animals and makes them speak like people. For instance, in one of his performances, camels speak about their pilgrimage to Mecca [11, p. 270]. By bringing animals to the centre of his career Tewfik unites the world of animals and human beings, which is
very similar to Bakhtin's idea of the grotesque: "[T]he combination of human and animal traits is, as we know, one of the most ancient grotesque forms" [13, p. 316]. And by inserting animals into the religious and sacred context, Tewfik sabotages religious doctrines.
Besides Tewfik, his daughter Rabia inherits his positive sense of life and becomes an heir to his throne of mockery, undermining, and subversion. She is a strong and self-determined young woman with enormous self-confidence and unwavering loyalty to her social background. Similar to Edib herself, Rabia is born into a heterogeneous environment. As Ural states,
while she is maturing she is educated in a milieu in which both Eastern and Western and traditional and modern tunes are present, although the Eastern, traditional influence is much
more dominant. Rabia symbolizes the wisdom of Eastern woman and culture [19, p. 430].
Ural emphasises Rabia's Eastern culture, which is marked by her heterogeneous environment. It is impossible to accommodate Rabia into one stable unit. If Ural means something stable about the Eastern culture, it is not possible to agree with her because the term Eastern culture, in the sense as it appears in this novel, is the blending of diversities. And Rabia is the representation of this diversity. Rabia, in short, is a small unit encapsulating the genetics of her diverse society.
Grown up in a strict religious household under the Imam's introspection, Rabia is a religious woman who does not give up her praying and fasting. Yet, similar to her father Tewfik, she has a strong tendency to carnivalise her background if analysed in terms of Bakhtinian perspective. Firstly, Rabia has a strong artistic twist that is deeply buried in her mindset and which pops up instantly in her childhood. This artistic tendency incites a kind of rebellion in her nature. Despite her grandfather's warnings, Rabia makes herself a rag doll with a red mouth [11, p. 18], which emphasises her urge to create something, entertain herself, and just experience her childhood in the most naive fashion. Her genuine musical and artistic spirit shows itself even when she is absolutely engaged with religion. Rabia's learning of Kuran awakened her tendency to rhythm [11, p. 19], which Imam despised because he feels her lively spirit. He "felt troubled" when "he fancied he saw a gleam of j oy in Rabia's honey-gold eyes" during her Koran chanting [11, p. 19]. And when Imam tells it to Peregrini, he summarises Rabia's attitude to life: "she managed to squeeze pleasure out of the divine art" [11, p. 295]. It is possible to see the same love of music and rhythm in Rabia when she becomes fascinated by Peregrini's music, which he defines as an apology to Devil: "Little shivers ran down Rabia's spine. She was both frightened and fascinated by the way her heart thumped in her breast" [11, p. 61]. Rabia even sings when she gives birth. "No doubt of your son being a musician, cher matter! <.> She sang under the chloroform! A musical operation, eh!" [11, p. 373]. Art in every sphere of life — be it conscious or unconscious — brings Nietzsche's words to mind: "Art and nothing but art! It is the great means of making life possible, the great seduction to life, the great stimulant of life" [21, p. 452]. In other words, it is art that connects Rabia to life in the vital process of her childbearing. Secondly, Rabia's behaviour and ideas suggest her subconscious tendency to spoil pure religious upbringing and traditions. Even when she covers her head as is expected from women of her surroundings, she leaves a space of freedom for her spirit by letting people see her hair plaits at her back [11, p. 57]. She has strange ambitions which undermine her religious upbringing; for example, once her keen interest in Peregrini is kindled and she wants to know the consequences of a Muslim girl's marriage to a
Christian, she gets a straightforward answer: "the people in her street would stone her and her Christian lover to death. It is one of the unbreakable laws" [11, p. 129]. Despite such frightening scenes, Rabia does not hesitate to go on with her ambition. This is what she thinks about Peregrini: "I have always wanted to marry that infidel since I was that high. I would have remained single if he had not asked me to be his wife" [11, p. 264]. She does not criticise anybody for the lack of respect for Islam or ignorance of religious lifestyle. She brings Tewfik's alcoholic drink as carefully as she used to prepare Imam's ablutions water and runs to pray [11, p. 104]. The idea of a devil and hell seems to attract her attention. When Rabia first sees Peregrini, she
thought he was most original when he spoke appreciatively of the Devil. At such moments
his eyes glittered with wicked lights, and his beard shook in the air. All this gave her a curious thrill [11, p. 60].
Rabia is like a challenge to everything that patriarchy stands for. For example, she is stronger than Imam in terms of income. Rabia earned more than Imam: "at twenty the Imam himself had not been able to earn the half of what the child was earning at eleven" [11, p. 46].
Finally, everything that encircles Rabia is weird, uncertain or chaotic if looked at from a conventional point of view. The novel presents characters, which challenge the social order, and they are male and female characters. According to Karabulut, "both men and women are conditioned and exploited by the established set of gender roles, and each is forced to depend on the other" [22, p. 9]. In a Turkish society narrated by Edib, no doubt, both genders are formulated according to particular social and religious rules. However, these rules are transcended by the characters. Similar to her father Tewfik, who is resembled to a woman, Rabia is resembled to a man. This gender interchange is mentioned by Yilmaz, who states that some masculine elements in Rabia's characterisation depict her strength [23, p. 44]. Actually, her strength is her ability to accommodate both genders in one personality, just like Virginia Woolf's concept of an androgynous writer suggests: "[i] f one is a man, still the woman part of the brain must have effect; and a woman also must have intercourse with the man in her" [24, p. 128]. In this context, Erdem Ayyildiz states that "androgyny may be evaluated as a way of liberating women from the negative forces, which the patriarchy imposes on women" [25, p. 60]. Rabia is also strange in her behaviour towards others. For example, she calls her father by name [11, p. 71]; thus, she carnivalis-es the social norms of reference. She also carnivalises the institution of marriage. When Rabia tells Rakim that she wants to marry Peregrini, Rakim says: "I was afraid you would marry Vehbi Effendi" [11, p. 266], to which Rabia exclaims: "If I married everyone I loved I should marry you too" [11, p. 266]. Rakim adds: "I believe you would be marrying us all if custom allowed so many husbands" [11, p. 267].
Conclusion
Analysing the medieval carnival and its reflection in literary works, Bakhtin puts forward the idea of breaking free from everything that limits human beings. In a similar manner, in her novel The Clown and His Daughter, Edib removes the barriers in front of her characters. With its setting of Sinekli-Bakkal street and its characters like Tewfik, Rabia, Sabiha Hanim and the others, the novel reveals a rich possibility for the carnival sense of the
world. Edib's aim in writing this novel seems to be depicting life as it is in its Turkish context; with all the suspended boundaries between people, genders, social classes, and human beings and animals. Edib's project is successful because of the eastern setting — it allows her to freely play with the possibilities that such a setting provides one with: uncertainty, instability, mysticism, irrationality, and chaos. Edib's novel shows that these differences are the components of the nation's wealth as long as they do not restrict people. The carnivalesque is not subversive at all in Edib's novel, although it may be so in other literary works. Carnival sense of the world that can be observed in Edib's The Clown and His Daughter just makes clear how Turkish society is formed and it also reveals the inner energies of this society.
References
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Received: May 12, 2023 Accepted: October 13, 2023
Author's information:
Victoria Bilge Yilmaz — Dr. of Philology; victoriabilge.yilmaz@asbu.edu.tr
Карнавальная интерпретация романа Халиде Эдиб Адывар Синекли Баккал
В. Б. Йылмаз
Анкарский университет социальных наук,
Турецкая Республика, 06050, Анкара, Правительственная пл., 2
Для цитирования: Yilmaz V. B. Carnivalesque Reading of Halide Edib Adivar's The Clown and His Daughter // Вестник Санкт-Петербургского университета. Востоковедение и африканистика. 2023. Т. 15. Вып. 4. С. 702-713. https://doi.org/10.21638/spbu13.2023.406
Халиде Эдиб Адывар (1884-1964) — выдающаяся турецкая писательница — опубликовала роман Синекли Баккал в 1935 г. на английском языке. Описывая психологическое, социальное и физическое развитие главной героини — Рабии, Адывар тщательно анализирует социальные слои населения своей страны — империи, которая быстрыми темпами превращается в республику. Цель данной работы заключается в интерпретации романа Адывар Синекли Баккал с точки зрения карнавализации, концепцию которой рассматривает Михаил Бахтин в своих работах. Карнавальное мироощущение, разработанное Бахтиным, — это прежде всего преодоление всех возможных барьеров между всеми живыми существами во Вселенной. Теория карнавала пропитана атмосферой свободы и чрезмерности, карнавал — это вызов всем социальным нормам и правилам, это время возрождения, когда тело человека становится приоритетом, по законам которого и действует карнавал. В карнавальном мире король превращается в раба, а раб — в короля, из мертвого тела старухи рождается новая жизнь, а потребление пищи рассматривается как интеграция человека со всем вокруг существующим. Такие перевоплощения и интеграции Бахтин называет гротеском — изображениями, постоянно переходящими из одной формы в другую. Аналогичным образом роман
Синекли Баккал включает в себя нарратив, который опирается на основополагающее единство полов, сообществ, религий, рас, людей и животных. Действия и персонажей романа можно признать карнавальными из-за их эксцентричности, склонности к ниспровержению социальных норм и правил и стремления убрать все границы между собой и всем остальным. В заключение можно сделать вывод, что в этом романе Халиде Эдиб Адывар показала один из основополагающих элементов турецкого общества — это обилие социальных слоев, которые характеризуются бесконечным разнообразием, различиями и нестабильной реальностью.
Ключевые слова: Халиде Эдиб Адывар, Синекли Баккал, Бахтин, карнавализация.
Статья поступила в редакцию 12 мая 2023 г., рекомендована к печати 13 октября 2023 г.
Контактная информация:
Йылмаз Виктория Бильге — д-р филол. наук; victoriabilge.yilmaz@asbu.edu.tr
