Out of Tune with the World: Thrownness and Everyday Life in Jean Rhys’s Good Morning, Midnight and Tezer Özlü’s Zaman Dışı Yaşam

Evren Akaltun Akan

doi:10.64957/nesir.1933905

Research Article

No. 10 (2026): Open Issue

Out of Tune with the World: Thrownness and Everyday Life in Jean Rhys’s Good Morning, Midnight and Tezer Özlü’s Zaman Dışı Yaşam

Evren Akaltun Akan ^▸^▾

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DOI: https://doi.org/10.64957/nesir.1933905
Submitted: 09.02.2026
Published: 22.04.2026

Abstract

This article provides a comparative reading of Tezer Özlü's Zaman Dışı Yaşam and Jean Rhys's Good Morning, Midnight in light of Martin Heidegger's concepts of thrownness, fallenness, authenticity, and tranquility. It illustrates how the protagonists of these novels are “thrown” into a world whose social and temporal rhythm they can neither fully join nor fully escape. Focusing on the protagonists’ strained relationship to everyday life, this article further examines how everydayness appears not as a space of belonging but as a condition marked by drift, withdrawal, and suspension. While Rhys’s protagonist Sasha responds to the conditions of everydayness through strategies of self-effacement and imitation, Özlü’s narrator actively resists absorption, seeking intensity, withdrawal, and literary engagement as forms of coping. Yet neither text offers resolution or recovery. Instead, both protagonists endure their existence through writing, movement, and fleeting human encounters, sustaining life without stability or closure. By reading them together, the article reveals a shared mode of suspended being that negotiates the tension between fallenness, authenticity, and the precarious temporality of everyday life.

References

Akdik, Hazel Melek. “Tezer Özlü Yazınında Kadınlık Durumu ve Öznenin Varoluş Umudu.” Monograf, no. 12 (2019): 110–125.
Akgöğ, Hasan. “Tezer Özlü’nün Eserlerinde Yabancılaşma Bağlamında Gitme Temi.” Karadeniz Teknik Üniversitesi Sosyal Bilimler Enstitüsü Sosyal Bilimler Dergisi 8, no. 15 (June 2018): 133–147.
Bowlby, Rachel. Still Crazy After All These Years: Women, Writing, and Psychoanalysis. Routledge, 1992.
Dreyfus, Hubert L. Being-in-the-World: A Commentary on Heidegger’s Being and Time, Division I. Cambridge, MA: MIT Press, 1991.
Elkin, Lauren. Flâneuse: Women Walk the City in Paris, New York, Tokyo, Venice, and London. Farrar, Straus and Giroux, 2016.
Gardiner, Judith Kegan. “Good Morning, Midnight; Good Night, Modernism.” boundary 2 11, no. 1/2 (Autumn 1982–Winter 1983): 233–51.
Harris, Laurel. “Impassagenwerk: Jean Rhys’s Interwar Fiction and the Modernist Impasse.” Journal of Modern Literature 44, no. 3 (Spring 2021): 19–34.
Heidegger, Martin. Being and Time. Translated by John Macquarrie and Edward Robinson. Blackwell, 2001.
Hite, Molly. The Other Side of the Story: Structures and Strategies of Contemporary Feminist Narratives. Ithaca: Cornell University Press, 1989.
Howells, Coral Ann. Jean Rhys. Harvester Wheatsheaf, 1991.
Koç, Nesrin. “Fashioning the Self: Jean Rhys’s Voyage in the Dark and Good Morning, Midnight,” Cankaya University Journal of Humanities and Social Sciences 18, no. 1 (2024): 66–77.
Linett, Maren. “‘New Words, New Everything’: Fragmentation and Trauma in Jean Rhys.” Twentieth Century Literature 51, no. 4 (2005): 437–66.
Lypka, Celiese. “‘I Look Straight into His Eyes . . . For the Last Time’: Intimacy and Indifference in Jean Rhys’s Good Morning, Midnight,” Journal of Modern Literature 46, no. 4 (Summer 2023): 167–184.
Özlü, Tezer. Kalanlar. 16. ed. Yapı Kredi Yayınları, 2015.
———. Yaşamın Ucuna Yolculuk. Yapı Kredi Yayınları, 2018.
———. Zaman Dışı Yaşam. Originally published 1998, Yapı Kredi Yayınları, 2023.
Parsons, Deborah L. Streetwalking the Metropolis: Women, The City, Modernity. Oxford University Press, 2000.
Rhys, Jean. Good Morning, Midnight. Penguin Books, 2016.
Savory, Elaine. Jean Rhys. Cambridge University Press, 1998.
Tekeli, Şirin. Women in Modern Turkish Society: A Reader. Zed Books, 1995.
Woolgar, Carmen. “Truth and Strangers in Jean Rhys’s Novels: Good Morning, Midnight and Wide Sargasso Sea.” MA thesis, Concordia University, 1997.

Keywords

Thrownness
Jean Rhys
Tezer Özlü
everydayness
authenticity
fallenness

How to Cite

Akaltun Akan , Evren. “Out of Tune With the World: Thrownness and Everyday Life in Jean Rhys’s Good Morning, Midnight and Tezer Özlü’s Zaman Dışı Yaşam”. Nesir: Journal of Literary Studies, no. 10 (April 22, 2026): 19–44. Accessed July 21, 2026. https://www.nesirdergisi.com/index.php/nesir/article/view/327.

This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License.

[1] Akdik, Hazel Melek. “Tezer Özlü Yazınında Kadınlık Durumu ve Öznenin Varoluş Umudu.” Monograf, no. 12 (2019): 110–125.

[2] Akgöğ, Hasan. “Tezer Özlü’nün Eserlerinde Yabancılaşma Bağlamında Gitme Temi.” Karadeniz Teknik Üniversitesi Sosyal Bilimler Enstitüsü Sosyal Bilimler Dergisi 8, no. 15 (June 2018): 133–147.

[3] Bowlby, Rachel. Still Crazy After All These Years: Women, Writing, and Psychoanalysis. Routledge, 1992.

[4] Dreyfus, Hubert L. Being-in-the-World: A Commentary on Heidegger’s Being and Time, Division I. Cambridge, MA: MIT Press, 1991.

[5] Elkin, Lauren. Flâneuse: Women Walk the City in Paris, New York, Tokyo, Venice, and London. Farrar, Straus and Giroux, 2016.

[6] Gardiner, Judith Kegan. “Good Morning, Midnight; Good Night, Modernism.” boundary 2 11, no. 1/2 (Autumn 1982–Winter 1983): 233–51.

[7] Harris, Laurel. “Impassagenwerk: Jean Rhys’s Interwar Fiction and the Modernist Impasse.” Journal of Modern Literature 44, no. 3 (Spring 2021): 19–34.

[8] Heidegger, Martin. Being and Time. Translated by John Macquarrie and Edward Robinson. Blackwell, 2001.

[9] Hite, Molly. The Other Side of the Story: Structures and Strategies of Contemporary Feminist Narratives. Ithaca: Cornell University Press, 1989.

[10] Howells, Coral Ann. Jean Rhys. Harvester Wheatsheaf, 1991.

[11] Koç, Nesrin. “Fashioning the Self: Jean Rhys’s Voyage in the Dark and Good Morning, Midnight,” Cankaya University Journal of Humanities and Social Sciences 18, no. 1 (2024): 66–77.

[12] Linett, Maren. “‘New Words, New Everything’: Fragmentation and Trauma in Jean Rhys.” Twentieth Century Literature 51, no. 4 (2005): 437–66.

[13] Lypka, Celiese. “‘I Look Straight into His Eyes . . . For the Last Time’: Intimacy and Indifference in Jean Rhys’s Good Morning, Midnight,” Journal of Modern Literature 46, no. 4 (Summer 2023): 167–184.

[14] Özlü, Tezer. Kalanlar. 16. ed. Yapı Kredi Yayınları, 2015.

[15] ———. Yaşamın Ucuna Yolculuk. Yapı Kredi Yayınları, 2018.

[16] ———. Zaman Dışı Yaşam. Originally published 1998, Yapı Kredi Yayınları, 2023.

[17] Parsons, Deborah L. Streetwalking the Metropolis: Women, The City, Modernity. Oxford University Press, 2000.

[18] Rhys, Jean. Good Morning, Midnight. Penguin Books, 2016.

[19] Savory, Elaine. Jean Rhys. Cambridge University Press, 1998.

[20] Tekeli, Şirin. Women in Modern Turkish Society: A Reader. Zed Books, 1995.

[21] Woolgar, Carmen. “Truth and Strangers in Jean Rhys’s Novels: Good Morning, Midnight and Wide Sargasso Sea.” MA thesis, Concordia University, 1997.