Hacettepe Üniversitesi Edebiyat Fakültesi Dergisi

Öz

Discourse is a multifaceted concept related to everyday life, reflecting individuals' emotions, thoughts, opinions, and perceptions, and varying considerably in terms of its functions. Along with the term "postcolonial," which began to be used in the 1970s, postcolonial studies also examine how European colonial powers affected other cultures after the end of the Second World War. The postcolonial theorists and writers of this period mostly examine pre-colonial and post-colonial events and phenomena that cannot be explicitly expressed, within the framework of postcolonial discourse theory in disciplines such as history, economics, literature, and cinema. In this context, thinkers such as Homi Bhabha who is among the important names of postcolonial theory, has developed important analyses and concepts about colonialism and its effects, and discussed how the West constructs the East as exotic, underdeveloped and different, and how these constructions legitimize colonial policies. The aforementioned theorist has also employed postcolonial discourse to express the effects of colonialism on the cultures and ideologies of countries, focusing on issues such as resistance, identity, exile, family, marginalization, representation, gender and migration. In this regard, Leïla Slimani, one of the 21st-century writers, holds an important place in terms of drawing attention to issues such as cultural confusion, belonging, the female figure, the female body and loneliness in her works. In her 2016 Goncourt Prize-winning novel Chanson Douce, Slimani, depicts the class and cultural conflicts between a young Parisian bourgeois couple and their nanny through the roles of women. In the novel, through two women, a nanny and a mother, the roles of mother- housewife- businesswoman and the concepts of motherhood and womanhood are discussed within the context of traditional and modern female models. The aim of this study is to analyze the womanhood-motherhood roles, female identity, the problem of motherhood-womanhood, racism and identity crisis of two women from different social classes in Slimani's novel within the framework of the postcolonial discourse theory of Homi Bhabha.