MASALLARDA KADIN VE AŞK: TOPLUMSAL CİNSİYET KURAMLARI BAĞLAMINDA BİR İNCELEME
WOMEN AND LOVE IN FAIRY TALES: AN ANALYSIS IN THE CONTEXT OF GENDER THEORIES

Summary/Abstract: Folktales play an important role in the transmission of cultural values, social norms, and identities from generation to generation. These narratives, particularly through themes of women and love, function as effective means in shaping and reproducing gender roles, reflecting social realities and values while revealing how female identity is perceived and constructed. Within the scope of the study, it is observed that female figures in the analyzed folktales are often presented within certain stereotypical patterns, idealized with characteristics such as passivity, dependency on love, and awaiting rescue. This indicates that the theme of love is used not as an emancipatory force but as an ideological mechanism by patriarchal and male-dominated structures to restrict women. In this context, to understand the representation of women and love in folktales, gender theories such as Simone de Beauvoir’s construction of womanhood, Judith Butler’s performativity of gender, and Luce Irigaray’s notion of the female subject have been adopted as theoretical frameworks. These perspectives provide a crucial foundation for explaining how female identity is positioned through love in folktale texts and how patriarchal ideology is reproduced. Therefore, this critical reading of female representations in folktales constitutes an important step toward the transformation of cultural narratives from the perspective of gender equality, aiming to create new awareness by demonstrating how stereotypes are reinforced.

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