Yasemen, written by Hasan Nail Canat, tells you what Yasemen went through as a five years old daughter of a poor family living in İstanbul. Yasemen’s father, Ömer, is alcoholic and unoccupied.

Yasemen, written by Hasan Nail Canat, tells you what Yasemen went through as a five years old daughter of a poor family living in İstanbul. Yasemen’s father, Ömer, is alcoholic and unoccupied. Her mom is using physical violence against Yasemen as a furious reflection to her husband’s situation. Eventually her mother leaves the house and Yasemen gets lost. So this narrative tells Yasemen’s story by the time she finds her biological parents, at the age of eighteen. And yet in this sad, suffering but also captivating narrative, violence against woman is legitimized through the narrator’s discourse.[1] 

We are faced with violence against woman in Yasemen through her parents’ relationship Fatma and Ömer. At the very beginning of the narrative, Fatma yells to Ömer and she gets angry because he loses the money which he owes from a relative in gambling and he doesn’t earn money. After that, Ömer bullies his wife by saying “I will slap you in your face”. Fatma answers by saying “Slap me if you can”. The narrator tells this situation to readers as “Fatma’s reply was the one last thing that caused the break-out. Ömer hits 4 slaps to Fatma one after another.”(11)  In this sample, the narrator judges Fatma indirectly by saying this phrase, “it was the one last thing that causes the break-out” and he implies that Fatma deserves it. To him, the reason of this incident are Fatma’s “babbling” and “reply against her husband”. Likewise the neighbors who witnessed the incident find Ömer right. The reason why she get beaten up is her “jaw”. (22) So, even though she get beaten up in front of her child, violence is legitimized indirectly in narrative.

Likewise, beating is seen rightful in the dialogue between Safiye Hanım, Fatma’s neighbor, and her father Hüseyin Aga, simply because of Fatma’s bad language:

“-Are you her husband? Don’t you afraid of God, you came here to break up a family?

-I came here to save my daughter who is starved and tortured.

-If we done the same thing to our husbands, they would kill us for Christ’s sake! She is so shameless that I am convinced, Ömer is really patient for God’s sake!” (45)

Thus, the only reason of their current situation, that is, their water is cut, their rent hasn’t been paid for three months, Fatma puts her daughter to sleep while she is still hungry and in the morning of that night, they are miserably broke, is told as a consequence of Fatma’s verbal reaction rather than Ömer’s being drunk and his losts in gambling. In addition, the narrator labels Fatma’s complaining about all this stuff as “shamelessness” because Fatma’s role is well established in this story. It is expected from Fatma that she should obey her husband at any rate by simply saying “it is my destiny”. But Fatma is found guilty for not behaving like that, leaving the home and “murmuring”; Yasemen gets lost as a bad consequence of these. Still, Fatma gets into some kind of self-inquiry: “I know my faults said Fatma, and continued hushing: Remembering the things I do, I perish myself. Please forgive me for God’s sake.” (64) By saying this, Fatma becomes regretful for objections and leaving home; Ömer forgives Fatma. The narrator, again, takes a side on Ömer: “Fatma keeps her promise and becomes a woman with good manner.” (79). It is implicitly said that Yasemen gets lost just because Fatma object her husband. Despite domestic violence, Yasemen shows up when her mother becomes “well-behaved”, like a reward or favor. As it is seen in these samples, Fatma’s punishment is legitimized both with the narrator’s discourse taking side on Ömer and through other characters’ speeches.  

As a matter of fact, the book Yasemen plants the seeds of physical and psychological violence against woman in the minds of children who are eleven and elders through the narrator’s position on Ömer’s side. What Fatma went through in this narrative is served as an instructive message to the readers including the sense of absolute obedience to husband regarding the ideal woman.

Bibliography

Canat,Hasan Nail. Yasemen. İstanbul: Timaş Çocuk, 2016