Identity Crises in Two Novels from the Opposing Sides of Europe: A Comparative Reading of Henry James’s ‘The Ambassadors’ and Halide Edib Adıvar’s ‘The Clown and His Daughter’

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Abstract

People who are subject to different cultures are destined to face the suffering stages of identity construction. Such intellectuals as the leading figures of their eras and countries struggled to acquire a cultural hybridity at the most critical times of history. In this paper, I discuss different and common ways in which two major novelists, who lived at the turn of the twentieth century, tackled the issue of identity in their semi-autobiographical masterpiece novels, ‘The Ambassadors’ and ‘The Clown and His Daughter’. American Henry James and Turkish Halide Edib Adıvar are authors with unorthodox educational backgrounds and migrant lives. One is torn between America and ancestral Europe, the other oscillates between European and traditional Turkish culture respectively. The duality of their main characters in both novels reflects the authors’ own dilemmas. The representations of Europe and the responses of the characters in the two novels are no doubt quite different as the two cases diverge in nature. I trace how the resolutions suggested by the novelists present another point of divergence between the two in that their main characters respond to conflicting forces differently. Strether, like James, is able to achieve a synthesis whereas Rabia, similar to Adıvar, struggles continuously to place herself in one culture. I argue that the difference in degrees of hybridity has its roots in the novelists’ own positions as well as their countries’, which are strictly related to the nature of each novelist’s crisis. The problem of East versus West engulfed Adıvar in a more problematic crisis than James’s individual trouble in situating himself between two Western cultures. That is why James indulged in personal problems (as a forerunner of the modernist movement) and Adıvar worked with socio-political issues. An analysis of these two literary figures from the opposite sides of the Atlantic will enhance our assessment of identity crisis regardless of its origin.
Original languageEnglish (US)
Pages (from-to)129-140
JournalInternational Journal of the Humanities
Volume3
Issue number11
DOIs
StatePublished - Jan 1 2007

Keywords

  • Halide Edib Adivar
  • Henry James
  • "The Clown and His Daughter"
  • "The Ambassadors"
  • The Old Continent
  • East versus West
  • Hybrid identities
  • Identity crisis
  • Cross-cultural conflict

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