Novel was not only a literary form in the nineteenth-century. It was also a means of social critique in 'capitalist society', in which social relations were determined by unequal economic relations. Starting with French realists (e.g. Stendhal and Balzac), many writers told stories of ordinary people, who were in constant struggle for survival, to criticize or even present alternatives (e.g. Zola's novels) to the capitalist social relations. Some writers, such as American author Horatio Alger, Jr., went beyond social criticism and turned novel into a 'survival manual' in a capitalist society. In this genre, the main goal of the writer was not merely criticizing poverty and inequality, but showing ways of getting through under these conditions. These popular 'dime novels' based on some exemplary rags-to-riches stories were showing 'ways to wealth' to the poor working class. Novel, in the Ottoman Empire, appared as a new literary form in the late nineteenth-century when the Ottoman statesmen and intellectuals were struggling with the grueling problems of 'modernization'. Under these circumstances, some Ottoman intellectuals were inspired by 'Western' examples and used this new literary form as an effective tool to educate the masses. For example, the most prominent intellectual of the era, Ahmed Midhat Efendi, penned many rags-to-riches stories, in addition to his critical stories about harmful effects of conspicuous and wasteful consumption. Other examples such as Mehmed Murad's Turfanda mi, Turfa mia or Recaizade Mahmud Ekrem's Araba Sevdasi were also based on similar ideas. These Ottoman writers were telling imaginary stories of some ideal 'Ottoman heroes' who achieve social success through hard-work, thrift and economic enterprise. The authors of these works were not only criticizing 'Westernized' life-styles, as the scholars have suggested so far, but they were also aiming a bottom-up social transformation through promotion of a new work-ethic. The economic messages given in these stories attribute separate roles to men, as the general directors of the family unit, and women, as the 'household managers'. This study analyzes the economic content and relevant gender roles in the late nineteenth-century Ottoman novels and shows how novel was used as a tool of 'social engineering' in the modernization process. The conclusions of the study illuminate three fields: the intellectual content of the Ottoman novel, the idea of economic development in the late Ottoman Empire, and the assumed gender roles in the Ottoman modernization.