This paper illustrates a different side of male domination in an Iranian modern fiction. That is, even the effort to picture women suffers, passes through a filter of the main male character’s mind. In the story of Prince Ehtejab, women do not have a voice and even if the reader realizes how they are being tortured, it would be through the male narrator’s view. This condition can be observed in most of the Iranian modern literature such as Buf-e kur (The blind owl) by Sadegh Hedayat, Barreh-ye gomshodeh-ye Ra’i (Ra’I’s lost lamb) by Houshang Golshiri, Shab-e Howl (The Night of Terror) by Hormoz Shahdadi and many others. Within fictions as such, the matter of women as a victim in a male-centered society shifts to issues that are more fundamental. Critics discuss the fact that these works represent a male Iranian psyche and the illusionary portray of women from their writer’s point of view. Under the pressure of cultural changes in Iran, novelists indicated their inner tensions in the shape of a woman since they became the most controversial issue at that time. Seemingly, in Iranian modern novels, women are stocked in a man’s imagination and are represented by a masculine organized language. …show more content…
Feminism, on the other hand, modifies psychoanalysis in a way that it reconsiders the process of one’s growth not as a biological fact but as a cultural construct that can be changed. Since Golshiri invites the readers to go beyond the surface of his words in the novella, Prince Ehtejab, psychoanalytic feminism aids to understand and analyze how the writer uses four women without a voice to explain one central male character's conflicts, tensions, and
Both el Saadawi and Al-Shaykh both show how perception and expression are both affected within the confines of politics, social opportunities, and male privilege depicted in their stories. Whether the reader is a follower of the feminist movement or not, it is very clear and easy to see that these women are not being treated with the respect that any human being deserves. The misogynistic stranglehold on society, especially in this part of the world, is excessive and avoidable in today’s world but it is very likely that the traditional, conservative ways of the past will continue to control and inhibit women from being able to be fully treated as equals for many years to come, perhaps even after this generation has
In conclusion, the Iranian artist, Shirin Neshat, gave a TedTalk in December 2010 that outlined the role of Iranian artists in how the west perceives Iran and the changing position of women in Iranian culture as the political and cultural situation slowly shifts. In the end, what Neshat managed to convey through this talk was her desire for the west to consider the biased information that tends to front our news headlines in recent years, and further study could reveal why these negatives are often emphasised by the west. Although Neshat is in self-imposed exile from Iran, she still manages to highlight to the west the issues her country faces. Consequently, Neshat causes many peoples’ focus to shift towards Iran’s rich history and the strength of the Iranian people today and therefore helps to inspire people to continue the struggle for freedom.
Khaled Hosseini’s novel, A Thousand Splendid Suns, tells the stories of women in Afghanistan in the late twentieth century. Hosseini shows the women’s strengths, weaknesses, tribulations and accomplishments through their own actions, and how they are treated by other characters in the book, particularly the male characters. Hosseini portrays men in A Thousand Splendid Suns to create themes of justice and injustice within the novel. The justice, or lack thereof, served to the male characters is a result of their treatment and attitudes toward the female characters in the book and towards women in general.
As revealed in Azar Nafisi's book Reading Lolita in Tehran, Iran's radical religious and political views are the driving force behind the domination and maltreatment of the country's people. Throughout the book there are many examples of this oppressive treatment which is enforced because of strict religious convictions. Nafisi compares the oppression happening during a tense period of revolution with various works of fiction that mirrors what is becoming life in Iran. The tyrannical treatment of Iranian people can be analyzed by uncovering themes found throughout Nafisi's book.
Cultures throughout the world encompass a diverse array of lifestyles by which societies are led by. These cultures, in a typical sense, are created by the subset of a population that follows a particular set of morals and ideals. An individual’s own identity, as a result, is dependent on many varying factors of their lifestyle in these culturally regulated regions. In the stories, “Selections from Reading Lolita in Tehran,” by Azar Nafisi, and “The Naked Citadel,” by Susan Faludi, the authors depict the impact made on an individual’s identity by male-dominated communities prejudiced against women. The discriminations described in these stories contribute to the creation of cultures that oppose the idea of seeing women as equals to men. Hence,
In the novel She and in the stories of The Arabian Nights, both Haggard and Haddawy explore the expanding gender roles of women within the nineteenth century. At a time that focused on the New Woman Question, traditional gender roles were shifted to produce greater rights and responsibilities for women. Both Ayesha, from Haggard’s novel She, and Shahrazad, from Haddawy’s translation of The Arabian Nights, transgress the traditional roles of women as they are being portrayed as strong and educated females, unwilling to yield to men’s commands. While She (Ayesha) takes her power to the extreme (i.e. embodying the femme fatale), Shahrazad offers a counterpart to She (i.e. she is strong yet selfless and concerned with the welfare of others). Thus, from the two characters emerge the idea of a woman who does not abide by the constraints of nineteenth century gender roles and, instead, symbolizes the New Woman.
Women are beaten, and it is culturally acceptable. Like routine, women are beaten in Afghanistan almost every day. When a person purposely inflicts sufferings on others with no feelings of concern, like the women of Afghanistan, he is cruel. Cruelty can manifest from anger, irritation, or defeat and is driven by self-interest. An idea that is explored in many works of literature, cruelty also appears in Khaled Hosseini’s A Thousand Splendid Suns in the relationship between a husband and wife. In their case, the husband uses cruelties in the form of aggression are to force his wife to submit. In A Thousand Splendid Suns, Hosseini’s use of cruelty elucidates the values of both Rasheed and Mariam as well as essential ideas about the nature of
...present powerful characters, while females represent unimportant characters. Unaware of the influence of society’s perception of the importance of sexes, literature and culture go unchanged. Although fairytales such as Sleeping Beauty produce charming entertainment for children, their remains a didactic message that lays hidden beneath the surface; teaching future generations to be submissive to the inequalities of their gender. Feminist critic the works of former literature, highlighting sexual discriminations, and broadcasting their own versions of former works, that paints a composite image of women’s oppression (Feminist Theory and Criticism). Women of the twenty-first century serge forward investigating, and highlighting the inequalities of their race in effort to organize a better social life for women of the future (Feminist Theory and Criticism).
conceptualizations of gender in literature are situated in a culture and historical context ; the
Throughout the history, women were considered below men. Then it led to believe that only men can write but not women. However, women managed to enter literature world like men did. However, most people believed that only writing style that exists in literature is men’s style not feminine. Almost to the point, people believed that there is no feminine style of writing. Helene Cixous is a writer of The Laugh of The Medusa. This book is about women’s writing from Cixous’s view and explanation of feminine writing. Cixous believed women should write their own style in order to break and destroy male dominated society.
The way we often try to interpret celebrated works of different eras is often misled by our misconception of conditions present at the time. In the late nineteenth century, there had always been a great divide between men and women in terms of patriarchy and psychological conventions. However in modern studies, the psychological aspect is always overlooked, as the fight for gender equality continues to dominate western culture. Novels such as The Awakening by Kate Chopin have been analyzed as feminist pieces to support this movement, when in fact it should be interpreted as a piece constructed for psychoanalysis. As a prominent figure in the world of psychology, the protagonist’s character displays traits resembling that of Freud’s structural
There is no doubt that the literary written by men and women is different. One source of difference is the sex. A woman is born a woman in the same sense as a man is born a man. Certainly one source of difference is biological, by virtue of which we are male and female. “A woman´s writing is always femenine” says Virginia Woolf
“Girls wear jeans and cut their hair short and wear shirts and boots because it is okay to be a boy; for a girl it is like promotion. But for a boy to look like a girl is degrading, according to you, because secretly you believe that being a girl is degrading” (McEwan 55-56). Throughout the history of literature women have been viewed as inferior to men, but as time has progressed the idealistic views of how women perceive themselves has changed. In earlier literature women took the role of being the “housewife” or the household caretaker for the family while the men provided for the family. Women were hardly mentioned in the workforce and always held a spot under their husband’s wing. Women were viewed as a calm and caring character in many stories, poems, and novels in the early time period of literature. During the early time period of literature, women who opposed the common role were often times put to shame or viewed as rebels. As literature progresses through the decades and centuries, very little, but noticeable change begins to appear in perspective to the common role of women. Women were more often seen as a main character in a story setting as the literary period advanced. Around the nineteenth century women were beginning to break away from the social norms of society. Society had created a subservient role for women, which did not allow women to stand up for what they believe in. As the role of women in literature evolves, so does their views on the workforce environment and their own independence. Throughout the history of the world, British, and American literature, women have evolved to become more independent, self-reliant, and have learned to emphasize their self-worth.
Marjane Satrapi’s graphic novel, Persepolis, makes important strides toward altering how Western audiences perceive Iranian women. Satrapi endeavors to display the intersection of the lives of some Westerners with her life as an Iranian, who spent some time in the West. Satrapi, dissatisfied with representations she saw of Iranian women in France, decided to challenge them. In her words, “From the time I came to France in 1994, I was always telling stories about life in Iran to my friends. We’d see pieces about Iran on television, but they didn’t represent my experience at all. I had to keep saying, ‘No, it’s not like that there.’ I’ve been justifying why it isn’t negative to be an Iranian for almost twenty years. How strange when it isn’t something I did or chose to be?” (Satrapi, “Why I Wrote Persepolis” 10). In acknowledging both Eastern and Western feminism, Satrapi’s novel humanizes the female Iranian perspective in a way that can easily digested by Western audiences.
Throughout American Literature, women have been depicted in many different ways. The portrayal of women in American Literature is often influenced by an author's personal experience or a frequent societal stereotype of women and their position. Often times, male authors interpret society’s views of women in a completely different nature than a female author would. While F. Scott Fitzgerald may represent his main female character as a victim in the 1920’s, Zora Neale Hurston portrays hers as a strong, free-spirited, and independent woman only a decade later in the 1930’s.