FEMALE CHARACTERS İN LESYA UKRAINKA’S AND SUAD DERVIŞ’S STORIES

In this work is studied the image of a female as a literary character in the stories of the Ukrainian writer Lesya Ukrainka’s (1871-1913) and Turkish writer Suad Derviş’s (1905–1972). For this purpose, for female images are analyzed in to the focus called works of Lesya Ukrainka's “What a Pity” (“Жаль”), “The City of Sorrow” (“Місто смутку”), “Loud Strings” (“Голосні струни”) and works of Suad Derviş “A Thief”, “The City I Passed Through”, “The Funeral”. The aim of the study is to analyze the dominant female images in the stories of Ukrainian and Turkish authors of the late XIX – first half of the XX century. Analysis of the stories of Ukrainian writer Lesya Ukrainka and Turkish writer Suad Dervis allows realizing the task of gender representation, including common types of female images, which became fundamental in short epic genres of authors and identify distinctive cultural accents in authors’ works from different national literatures. In addition, the study attempts to compare the female characters in the stories of Ukrainian writer Lesya Ukrainka and Turkish writer Suad Dervis. The chosen approach allows a deeper understanding and study of such relations between them as: common – special – unique, panhuman – national. Common conceptual and methodological plane in research for phenomena being compared is genre (story), stylistic (modern and realistic works to be analyzed), thematic (social perspective) and typological (typology of female images in realistic prose) aspects.


Introduction
Development of literary thought in the XXI century takes us beyond the research of national and literary relations, encourages us to establish common values reaching higher theoretical generalizations in the context of the concept of "world literature". The study of literature beyond the national material is becoming increasingly crucial. The problem of explaining the coincidence of motives, plots, images in the achievements of culturally and historically distant literatures continues to attract the attention of modern researchers. Basic elements of the literary process such as the author, literary work, component of a literary work were and remain the subject of historical and literary analysis. However, in the result of inter-literary research of these components, there is formed a new functionality of the interliterary process allowing to expand the understanding of national literature and inter-literary communities. This aspect of literary studies was focused on by famous theorists of literature Dionyz Durisin, Viktor Zhirmunsky, Yuri Lotman and others.
Relating to the intensification of both interethnic and global (relations between West and East) dialogic tendencies in the modern world, the study of common and various cultural features of different peoples is increasingly interesting to the humanities. Comparative literary studies offer ample opportunities to study various cultural aspects.
In this study were used the flash fiction stories by Lesya Ukrainka and Suad Derviş, covering women's issues. The genre is studied of the short story. In this study are used the method of comparative analysis and typological approach. This made it possible to identify the common and distinctive features at the level of external structure (form), themes of works and social types of female images in the works of Ukrainian and Turkish writers. The typological approach allows us to correlate literary images in the short stories of Lesya Ukrainka and Suad Derviş in order to identify characteristic differences and similarities between them.

Formation of gender discourse in Ukraine and Turkey
The period from the second half of the XIX -XX century both in Ukrainian and Turkish society was marked by considerable activity in the struggle for women's rights, which later turned into a struggle for gender equality in society. During the XIX -XX centuries, the topic of women in society was addressed not only by writers from different countries, but also by scientists. Ivan Franko, reflecting on the nineteenth century as a period of human emancipation, wrote that "in all fields of spiritual life, in science, literature and technology, the nineteenth century broke all the traditional scales that once entangled the human spirit, dispelled all dogmas… There is a wide free path everywhere for a free thought, immeasurably intensive work of the unit, it is allowed to reveal all the means of its strength, wit, originality and depth everywhere." (Franko, 1990: 207). Franko characterized the modern era as a time of strong rejection of patterns and stereotypes, so the development of female writing and themes in the culture of this period is a logical pattern.
Gender studies continue to be of interest to modern theorists of literature, as evidenced by the works by S. K. Day, Ş. Kaya, M. Gymnich, P. R. E. and so on.
There is a lot of works on gender equality in Europe and the East. For instance, woman's experience, life practice, gender relations as a central category of social organization is considered in the collection of works "Women on the Edge of Europe", in which researchers (G. Derbina, L. Lubomyrsky, D. Rensel, M. Ruthes, L. Startseva, O. Dedok, V. Shymanets, R. Ratchield etc.) analyze the role of a woman in different historical periods in the territory of Western Europe. In particular, attention is focused on models of female patriotism, women's images in drama are analyzed, the economic role of a woman in the family is studied, the problem of woman's creativity is focused on and so on (Gapova, 2003: 26-34). The tradition of depicting female characters from the standpoint of national subordination, formed by the authoritarian patriarchal system, continues to exist in the works of the first female authors in Ukrainian literature of the late XIX -early XX century.
T. Hundorova, V. Aheieva, and N. Zborovska were engaged in the formation of gender discourse in Ukraine, who studied the problem of the feminine principle in Ukrainian culture from the standpoint of feminist criticism. From the point of view of Comparative Literary Studies, the typology of female characters in the stories of Ukrainian and Turkish writers was studied by N. Senchylo (2016: 217-220).
S. Bayram addresses the problem of the female image in Turkish literature, tracing the main stages of a woman's formation as a literary character The researcher notes that in Divan's literature the woman has always been depicted as an abstract object, the concretization of the image occurs only in the periods of Tanzimat and Servette-Funun. Analyzing the works of Tanzimatists N. Kemal, Ş. Sami, R. Ekrem, N. Nazim and S. Bayram captures the image of a woman who in her social activities does not go beyond the family. The researcher emphasizes that social development influences the evolution of the image of a woman in literature. In particular, a woman acquires the features of a Western character in short stories by H. E. Adıvar. Her characters are emancipated secular women endowed with the features of typical images of Western European literature, who fight for individual freedom in the conditions of the then patriarchal structure of Ottoman society.
H. Yavuz also associates the appearance of specific female characters in Turkish literature with the Tanzimat period. However, the researcher focuses on the modernized female image, the main feature of which, in addition to intellectual abilities, is freedom in relations with men that emphasizes the importance of a woman as an independent and autonomous identity. According to Yavuz, the type of a free woman, not married, first appears in the short story "September" (1901) by Mehmet Rauf. It so doing, gender perspective was actively developed in Turkish short stories of the early XX century.

A woman as author
Beginning of woman's creative activity dates from the end of the XIX -beginning of the XX century in the Ukrainian literary process. The first female images as central characters in Lesya Ukrainka (1871Ukrainka ( -1913 is Ukrainian writer, translator, cultural figure. She knew European languages -English, German, French, Italian, ancient Greek and Latin. In addition to Slavic Ukrainian, Russian, Polish, Bulgarian. Suad Derviş  is Turkish journalist, writer, and political activist. She knew German and French, wrote works of art in Turkish. In the works of Ukrainian Lesya Ukrainka and Turkish Suad Derviş writers is affirmed woman's selfsufficiency in the socio-cultural space.
The reasons for the creative activity of female writers in Ukrainian and Turkish literatures, as well as the appearance of leading female literary characters in their works are the beginning of emancipation processes, a certain social and economic emancipation of a woman, more favorable educational opportunities and the emergence of critical approaches to the usual patriarchal life, originate from the popular wave of woman's movement in Europe. Woman's literature has become a mirror of radical changes in the social and cultural spheres, demonstrating the change in traditional women's roles limited exclusively by the family. Creativity becomes for female authors not only a psychological need, but also an attempt to overcome the marginal position in the patriarchal world, to realize themselves, to express their own needs and offer their vision of the debatable issues of that period.
The appearance of women in the public sphere is largely due to the renewal of the entire socio-cultural and historical paradigm: new, fundamentally different historical, social, political, economic conditions correspond to modern cultural trends, and woman's writing should also be interpreted as an attempt to update the outdated aesthetic paradigm. The embodiment of this concept became female characters.

The genre of short stories and gender themes in the works of Lesya Ukrainka and Suad Derviş
The short prose genres of Lesya Ukrainka, in comparison with her dramas, and Suad Derviş, in comparison with her novels, are given much less readers' and researchers' attention. However, both writers worked in the genre of short stories and created masterful samples of short prose that raises the gender themes and depicts new colorful female images. The genre of the short story in the most capacious form allowed to show to the reader different aspects of a woman's life in such a way as to draw attention to the problems and social injustice in the usual patriarchal society. In the genre of short stories, Ukrainian and Turkish writers focus on describing one phenomenon -the position of women in society and the need to rethink it. The one-line plot, a minimum number of characters (main character and several secondary ones), laconism, and the accuracy of artistic means are common features of both writers' stories. However, Suad Derviş' stories are characterized by an asymmetric plot organization, journalism, rationality, lack of lyricism, in contrast to the works of Lesya Ukrainka, where the plot organization seems, on the contrary, to be symmetrical and has through-lyricism. A special feature of Lesya Ukrainka's works is that she gives some of the stories their own genre affiliation, for example, the author defines the genre of the work "A City of Sorrow" as "silhouettes", "Sonorous Strings" -as "sketch". In the stories "A City of Sorrow" and "Sonorous Strings", the author uses epigraphs. In the very structure of the stories "Pity", "A City of Sorrow", "Sonorous Strings" she uses elements of the epistolary style -letters, notes.
The titles of Lesya Ukrainka's stories "A City of Sorrow" and Suad Derviş's "The City I Passed Through" have a common component -the city as a background for building a short story. In addition, in these stories, the authors seem to have built a narrative: the author of each story personally observes the events taking place. The stories begin from the first person "Once I happened to be in a big institution for the insane" (Ukrainka, 2021: (6) 178); "I stayed here for several hours. Without any purpose." (Derviş 209). It can be assumed that both stories are based on real-life pictures that the authors had to contemplate. Besides, the stories are thematically similar, besides the theme of gender inequality, there is also the theme of the insanity of the characters of Lesia Ukrainka or the semi-insane state of the prostitute in the work of Suad Derviş.
The stories of Lesya Ukrainka and Suad Derviş are not characterized by sentimentality and moralizing. Both writers try to distance themselves from the direct assessment of the depicted reality, trying to ensure that the truth of life in their works speaks for itself. Through characteristic external (descriptive) details, in an ordinary, seemingly insignificant event, they reveal the obvious gender inequality of their characters, conveying all the complexity of a woman's life in a patriarchal society. Personal themes dominate in the stories of both writers, mainly psychological, which allows us to deeply reveal the leading theme of gender inequality.

Images of characters in writers' stories
In the story "Pity" Lesya Ukrainka sometimes resorts to detailing the everyday life of the Turkovskyi family: she gives brief descriptions of the house, clothes, food, thus pointing the reader to the social affiliation of the main character Sofia. The description of Sofia's appearance is not very detailed, but it is quite extensive: "Golden curls...masterfully flowing fastened over the forehead and held back by a combdiadem... She gracefully bows her round fresh face, a poetically innocent smile plays on her pink lips, her blue eyes look a little askance, a little as if surprised, naively look in the looking glass." : (6) 70).
The author gives a brief description of each of the characters in the story "A City of Sorrow" by Lesya Ukrainka: "… black loose hair covers her shoulders and chest in a messy net, black eyes burn with inhuman longing, her voice sounds monotonously and plaintively ..." : (6) 177); "… young poetess with clear wavy hair, with wonderful blue eyes.." : (6) 177); "… an insane woman-composer plays, she has a face like a Byzantine icon, her eyes look sedately and strictly at one point ..." (Ukrainka, 2021: (6) 178).

183).
The analyzed stories of Suad Derviş have the form of short stories-novellas, that do not have detailed descriptions of the past of the hero and minimized details of portrait images. For example, the description of the image of the main character Aishe in the Story "Thief" consists of several short sentences.
"... an old woman is wandering the streets. Her fallen apart shoes are slapping and she could hardly move her legs. She has an old torn shawl on her shoulders" (Derviş, 1962: 110).
In the story "The City I Passed Through", the descriptions of a woman of pleasure are also as concise as possible. "Shivering from the cold, three women are trying to hide from the rain. They whisper something to passers-by. Their lips are brightly made up." (Derviş, 1974: 210). The description of the main character Rukiia in the story "Funeral" is reduced to the short phrase "an old woman leaned over a sick person." The analyzed stories by Lesya Ukrainka and Suad Derviş are based on separate episodes from the lives of the main characters, on the basis of which the authors reveal the topic of gender inequality and vulnerability of women in a patriarchal society. Often, an important role in these works is played by an artistic detail (clothing, household items, body defects, etc.) as an integral element that helps to reveal the character of a woman.

Typology of female images in the short stories of Lesya Ukrainka
Lesya Ukrainka proposed a new hero in her prose works. Much of the stories were written for youth competitions, in particular, "It is Late", "What a Pity", "A Cup", "Loud Strings", "Affection". It was a way to directly join the modern literary process by creating a popular text and, at the same time, the opportunity to self-presentation and test personal strength in a new capacity. Opportunity to try new topics and see the reader's reaction. The story "What a Pity"  is the first great prose work of Lesya Ukrainka, which was published in the magazine "Zorya" in 1894. The work tells about the high rise and rapid fall of a young proud girl Sofia Turkovska from an untitled family, who enters the higher world through marriage with an elderly Duke. Due to the inability to conduct financial and economic affairs, as well as the recklessness and extravagance of the young wife of the Duke goes broke and suddenly dies. Left without any financial support, the young widow, who quickly got used to a new beautiful life, having mastered the laws of the aristocratic world, dreams of a new marriage. She does not want to return to the village to her parents. Without education and means of subsistence, the main character decides to become a "companion", or rather a servant to the old capricious baroness. The Baroness, a relative of the deceased husband, constantly reproaches Sophia, tortures her with petty requests and curses. During another verbal altercation, being in a state of extreme nervous excitement, the character kills the baroness with a bronze statuette… The main character of the story "What a Pity" (1894) is a deeply lonely and disappointed person in life. She is constantly looking for her way in life and cannot find it. Even when real life is raging next to her, a life full of worries and discoveries, passions and struggles, the character due to a number of circumstances and reasons does not know it and does not want to know. Her world is limited only by material goods. Like most women of that period, Sophiia could not even imagine a decent life without a husband or other care. Having become a widow and left without a livelihood, Sofia seeks to find, not build a new life for herself. "No, I have to tough it out! ... I need to break out of this wilderness... I need to go to the wider world, there, maybe, I will get on in the world again ..." (Ukrainka, 2021: (6)

97).
Lesya Ukrainka portrays the type of character by social role -a widow who, despite the high status of a princess, her youth and beauty, remains completely helpless and unable to live independently. The social type of a widow has something in common with the same type of character in Suad Derviş's story "Funeral".
In the story "What a Pity", Lesya Ukrainka shows the type of spiritually limited, lonely, unrealized character, obsessed with the material world and at the same time affirms the idea that a woman is not a toy in the hands of higher powers, but a full-fledged creator of her own destiny.
In the work "The City of Sorrow" (1896), female characters are realized through a portrait description or type of employment -a black-eyed girl, poet, composer. The main characters in the work are represented by professional affiliation -these are such types as a woman-poet and a woman-composer. In the epigraph to the short story "A City of Sorrow", the author asks a scientific question: "Where is the border that separates the normal from the abnormal?". In a psychiatric hospital, the narrator contemplates patients, among whom women predominate. For example, the young poetess was driven to madness by a banal life situation -unhappy love. A somewhat similar situation is described in Suad Derviş' short story "The City I Passed Through", where unhappy love leads a woman to prostitution, and her behavior resembles the behavior of an insane woman. However, both authors leave it to the reader to doubt the insanity and schizophrenia, since the characters seem completely normal.
The main character in the story "Loud Strings" (1897) is a beautiful talented sensual girl with a rich inner world, but with a physical disability (Ukrainka L. Ukrainka, L. Encyclopedia of Life and Creativity). The fullness of her harmonious personality is revealed through the kind of activity -music. The type of image of a woman in this story by Lesya Ukrainka is also determined by professional affiliation -a woman-musician. The author depicts a gifted young girl with a physical disability -a hump on her back. "When she was walking down the street, everyone looked back at her"  : (6) 183). At the center of the conflict are the desires and dreams of the girl and the resistance of society because of her defect. Her physical vulnerability turns into a life disaster. In Suad Derviş's short story "Thief", her daughter's physical disability turns into a life disaster for the main character Aishe. The vulnerability of the body becomes crucial for the social reception of the characters of Ukrainian and Turkish writers. Both characters are also endowed with moral stoicism.

Typology of Female Images in the Short Stories of Suad Derviş
In short stories by Suad Dervis a woman is often the main character. The writer assigns her an important role in demonstrating the negative aspects of an in the small epic genres of Turkish literature of the first half of the twentieth century is not outlined as clearly as, for example, in the novel that gives us the right to speak of its absence.
In the short story "A Thief", Suad Dervis focuses on the social insecurity of women in society in that period. The author depicts the difficult woman's situation in society, who throughout her life remains a victim of circumstances, unjustly condemned and pushed to the periphery of society by the environment, although the character herself remains a victim of circumstances. The author creates the image of a lonely, socially repulsed woman and mother, who is always left alone with her problems. Aishe is forced to endure ridicule and injustice, she cannot protect herself from bullying and moral humiliation, "for ten years, everyone has been calling her a thief" (Dervis, 1962: 62). The typology of the character's image is built by the author through the social role of the mother and the imposition of a social label on a woman -a thief. Suad Derviş depicts a woman whose whole life is a continuous challenge and she has no opportunity to change something in her life because of her social status: dependence on a husband addicted to drink and inability to financially sustain herself. "Aishe was left alone with the child in her womb and with grief in her heart. A life full of struggle with hunger and cold began. Every day Aishe went to bed hungry, every day she thought about death... Once, on a cold winter day, her poor daughter was handed over to Aishe. It was a freak with a hairy body, a huge head and crooked legs... Gradually, tenderness awoke in her heart, mixed with pity, and she fell in love with her child, as all mothers love, and maybe even stronger." (Derviş, 1962: 62). The raised theme of physical injury echoes this theme in Lesya Ukrainka's short story "Sonorous Strings".
In the story "The City I Passed Through", Suad Derviş reveals the image of an immoral character, focusing on a socially low type of female image -a female prostitute. The problem of female immorality was extremely relevant for realist writers in world literature, in particular, it was revealed by Ukrainian writer Panas Myrnyi in the novel "Prostitute", Frenchman Guy de Maupassant in the short story "Pampushka", Russian writers Anton Chekhov in the story "An Attack" and Vsevolod Garshyn in the story "An Adventure" and others. In "The City I Passed Through", Suad Dervis uses a homodiegetic type of narrative in which the narrator is a traveler observing a situation in a city restaurant involving a woman of easy virtue. The image of the narrator is in binary opposition to the image of the main character of the story. The author reveals two main roles of the main character -its immoral behavior and social role, which dictates two oppositional female types of images: mother and prostitute demonstrating deficiencies of the society in such a way. In the story "The City I Passed Through", the author puts thoughts with a deep gender meaning into the mouth of the drunk half-insane main character.
"When handsome young men marry rich but ugly girls for their money, isn't that immoral? Can only women be prostitutes, are illegitimate children born only from them?" (Dervis, 1974: 212).
Suad Derviş raises the issue of gender in the short story through the fundamental binary relationship "man -woman". The theme of the character's clouded consciousness coincides with the theme of insanity in Lesya Ukrainka's short story "A City of Sorrow". Both Ukrainian and Turkish writers problematize the border between the normal and painful consciousness of their characters, leaving this question as an intellectual challenge for readers.
The central character in the short story "The Funeral" is a widow (Dervis). The typology of the female image is determined by the social role of women.
Derviş tries to draw attention to social problems and the moral and ethical injustice that a woman faces in difficult life circumstances, and which she cannot resist. Throughout her life, not a single dream of the main character comes true: she dreams of healthy children, a permanent job with her husband, the opportunity to live without fear of tomorrow, but none of the wishes is realized, and at the end of life Rukiie remains alone and without means to existence. Loneliness, lack of means of subsistence and helplessness characterize the young widow in Lesya Ukrainka's story "Pity". In the stories, in which women are the main characters, Suad Dervis demonstrates the lack of woman's right to be realized as a personality. The author draws attention to the inner state of the characters, their absolute dependence on external circumstances and the inability to resist them.

Conclusion
World emancipation processes of the late XIX -early XX centuries have made the presence of women's art a characteristic factor in literary development both in Ukrainian and Turkish literature. For both Lesya Ukrainka and Suad Derviş, social reality was the starting point in understanding reality. The differentiated analysis of the moral and social atmosphere of society, depiction of different types of female images expanded the boundaries of the artistic search of the authors. The similarity of problems and characters in the works of the two female writers is also explained by psychological features: personal experience is not only the experience of an individual, but above all the experience of a woman, it is sexually determined for the female authors. It is possible to observe in this the connection between female speech and female corporeality, the attempt to write "from themselves", thus modeling their own subjectivity. Considering the female writing tradition both in Ukraine and Turkey, it is necessary to take into account the socio-psychological aspect, because female writers still had to defend the right to exist.
For the prose of Lesya Ukrainka and Suad Derviş, the dominant themes are the challenges of the time: gender issues, misunderstandings of women with the environment, problems of hysteria, insanity and physical norm. The stories of both authors are affected by their dominant occupations. Lesya Ukrainka's prose is full of lyricism because foremost she is a poet. On the contrary, Suad Derviş' stories are devoid of lyricism and approach journalism, obviously, her journalistic activity affected these works.
The typology of female images in the stories of Ukrainian and Turkish writers is reduced to the social role of women in society and their professional affiliation: for Lesya Ukrainka, this is a widow, poetess, composer, musician; for Suad Derviş -a mother, a thief, a prostitute, a widow. Most of the characters in Lesya Ukrainka's stories are women of creative professions who remain unsettled, unsure of the future and rightless, like the heroines of Suad Derviş, whose world is fixated exclusively on social roles. Both authors show that the position of women in society requires a thorough rethinking, regardless of whether it is a female artist or a woman without a specific type of activity. The female authors portray women who remain hostages to social conditions and life circumstances. The voice of both writers sounds clear, both authors focus on the problems of women in the social environment. Female writers, along with male authors, feel patriotic and democratic duty that encourages them to selflessly promote humanistic values, defend women's rights, and use the word as a weapon to draw attention to gender injustice in its various forms. The specificity of the stories where women are the main characters is the focus on the inner feelings of the characters, due to psychology and social circumstances: a woman is in the state of sensory perception of reality but not of the subject of the events.