The Change or Stability in the Perceptions:a Reading Attempt With Grace Ellison and Martha Nicol

Abstract

Travel literature and self-narratives are the most inclusive sources in which the perceptions of travellers and their subjective accounts can be analyzed and followed. They have been major genres in British literature for a long time in the forms of letters, narratives, and diaries in the sense that they offer "factual" information pertinent to historical scholarship, as well as fictional elements otherwise found in novels. In this respect, this study covers two female travellers and their accounts in terms of comparative basis. In her account titled An English Woman in Angora, Grace Ellison writes about her adventures and observations in Turkey right after Turkey's War of Independence in 1922 when the new Republic of Turkey was established. On the other hand, Martha Nicol stays in Izmir as a nurse and gives service in British Army Hospital in Izmir during the time of Crimean War (1853-1856). Apart from their male counterparts, one might consider the inveterate Turkophilia of both female travellers in their accounts through their discourses. In this regard, with a textual comparison of the above-mentioned accounts, the purpose of this paper is to reveal the change or stability by exploring the discursive strategies deployed by Ellison and Nicol towards and after the establishment of Republic in Turkey.