Gendered experiences of modern cities in the novels of Turkish and Mexican women writers

Abstract

This thesis examines Adalet Ağaoğlu’s Lying Down to Die (1973) and María Luisa Puga’s Panic or Danger (Pánico o Peligro) (1983) to study how women writers in non-western geographies reflect upon the relationship between women and modern cities. Drawing on feminist scholarship on the gendered experiences of modernity and urban space, this thesis shows how Puga and Ağaoğlu illustrate the significant role that the daily experience of modern cities plays in the self-discovery and self-realization of women characters in the modernizing cities of Ankara and Mexico City. This process takes place via their encounters with patriarchal relations, class inequalities, and dominant political discourses that are embedded in the spaces of these two national capitals. The thesis also argues that Puga and Ağaoğlu’s literary reproduction of the cityscapes from the perspective of women protagonists is simultaneously a critique of and a contribution to the gendered cultural memories of the cities.