16 Iranian female authors and “the

anxiety of authorship”
Firouzeh Dianat

Iranian female authors use their narratives to assert their desires and determina-
tions and to construct identities that inspire, instruct, and resist gender and class
discrimination. Cultivating the means to resist the tragic responses to male author-
ity and class discrimination has been a challenging task for them. While intertex-
tuality suggests that female authors employ forms used by male authors to frame
their narratives, the process is liberating. Intertextuality implies “double-voiced
discourse,” a relationship between influence and aesthetic production. In The Dia-
logic Imagination Bakhtin and Holquist state “one’s own discourse and one’s own
voice, though born of another or dynamically stimulated by another, will sooner
or later begin to liberate themselves from the authority of the other’s discourse.”1
Nevertheless, for female authors, using established frames and moving between
boundaries has not guaranteed that they would avoid social mistreatment. Emily
Dickinson advises, “Tell all the Truth but tell it slant.” They have had to manage
the difficult task of “achieving true female literary authority by simultaneously
conforming to and subverting patriarchal literary standards.”2 Female authors, in
the process of uncovering and expressing the self, uncover the mechanism that
exploits them and come up with their own language and form to express the self
among various sets of norms that pull and push them to deconstruct and recon-
struct the self. Supporters of the patriarchal structure advocate for women to be
“angels in the house.” Gilbert and Gubar write: “Denied the economic, social,
and psychological status ordinarily essential to creativity; denied the right, skill,
and education to tell their stories with confidence, women who didn’t retreat into
angelic silence seem at first to have had very limited opinions.”3
Although the limited presence of Iranian female authors and critics in Iranian
literature is an indicator of male authority in the society, it is incorrect to infer that
Iranian women choose to remain passive. They have struggled to express them-
selves and claim a space of their own in Iranian society. Because male-dominated
Iranian culture extols women who are silent and insensible, women have tradition-
ally been forced into seclusion and silence. This seclusion has manifested as long-
term isolation from formal political and economic power. In spite of this, women
have used intuition and creativity to circumnavigate this isolation and pursue lit-
erature as a productive outlet. Anna Vanzan’s “From the Royal Harem to a Post-
Modern Islamic Society: Some Considerations on Women Prose Writers in Iran
338 Firouzeh Dianat
from Qajar Times to 1990s” traces the history of prose writing by women back to
the Qajar era (1785–1925).4 She blames the patriarchal structure of the society for
the virtual nonexistence of notable female writers prior to this point. The culture
associates women with domestic space. Before the Qajar period, there was much
opposition to establishing schools for girls and to women’s involvement in social
and political activities. The Qajar period created the setting for drastic changes in
Iran. At the beginning of the dynasty, the social climate underwent considerable
revision and women became more visible in the social and political arenas. Due to
the global transformations and Iran’s communication with the West, social infra-
structure, including gender relations, was subject to modification.
Nevertheless, Talattof in his Modernity, Sexuality, and Ideology in Iran: The
Life and Legacy of a Popular Female Artist discusses sexuality and its rela-
tion with modernity in the West; he also presents ideas of Iranian scholars who
approved of most aspects of modernity but excluded women and gender equality
as they considered a traditional role for women, the angel in the house. Talattof
argues that the reason the shift to modernity never happened fully in Iran is that
“any public and theoretical discussion of modern ideas and philosophy lacked
the necessary academic, intellectual, and national debate over the seminal subject
of gender and sexuality.”5 Gender has been neglected during different phases of
Iran’s history.
The Qajar period in Iran was marked by significant sociocultural modification
and confrontation with respect to a number of fundamental concepts, including
the Constitutional Revolution movement (1906–11), which in its turn ushered
modernity, raised “the woman question,” and reflected the way that women
approached and expressed themselves in literature. The Constitutional Revolution
movement led to the establishment of a parliament in Iran and functioned as a
catalyst for even more social changes. Women were aware that access to educa-
tion would play a crucial role in their independence and growth and their partici-
pation was reflected in the formation of a number of associations and publica-
tions, such as Danesh, Zanae Iran, and Shekoufa. According to Janet Afary’s The
Iranian Constitutional Revolution,1906–1911: Grassroots Democracy, Social
Democracy, and the Origins of Feminism, the Constitutional Revolution was a
“turning point in the history of the Iranian women,” as women, regardless of their
religion, united to claim “a new space for women.”6 By the end of the dynasty,
society began to discuss the status of women specifically. Women started to write
more profusely, express themselves more boldly, and defend themselves more
fervently.
During the Qajar era women vigorously adopted literature as a means of
expression to construct their identities. The Qajar court was an advocate
of poetry. Ahmad Karimi-Hakkak, in Recasting Persian Poetry: Scenarios of
Poetic Modernity in Iran, states: “Some of the figures involved in the Return
Movement were among the elite of the Qajar court, directly involved in the
affairs of the state.”7 However, the literary domain was claimed and dominated
by male authors. Thus, women’s authorship had to resist gender discrimination.
Fath Ali Shah Qajar (1772–1834) attracted poets to his court and supported
them financially to promote their poetry.
 Iranian female authors and “anxiety of authorship” 339
Even among the Qajars, the literary domain historically has been allocated to
male authors. In a patriarchal society like Iran that favors advantages for men,
males had far greater access to education. Confection of the Assembly,8 the earli-
est Qajar anthology of female poets, including biographical sketches and selected
poems of twenty-eight female poets, was officially coauthored by Zia Al Saltaneh
(1799–1837) and her brother, Prince Mahmud Mirza (1793–1850).9 In the intro-
duction, Mahmud Mirza indicates that in this period publication was not limited
to men; it applied to women as well. He states that the anthology was compiled by
himself, at Al Saltaneh’s request. These records say that, while the idea of com-
piling the anthology was initiated by Al Saltaneh, the prince “obeyed” her. This
claim, in which only Mahmud Mirza actually compiled the anthology, denies the
authorship of Al Saltaneh.
Female authorship at times suffers from gender and class disparity. During the
Qajar epoch, early nineteenth-century females of the upper and royal classes of
society had access to education. Thus, the majority of literary works by women
were produced by royal females, as literary resources were more accessible to
them than to nonroyal females. Even in Confection of the Assembly the order of
the poems is based on the social status of the female authors. The anthology is
divided into four sections, or Majlis; the first Majlis, “Princess,” features eleven
poets: seven daughters of Fath Ali Shah (Hilal, Tayyiba, Sultan, Iffat, Ismat,
Fakhri, and Zia), a granddaughter (Malik), a wife (Taj Al-Dawleh), a daughter-in-
law (Sahib), and a princess (Makhfi). The second Majlis, “Women of the Royal
Harem and Other Female Dependents,” includes poetry and biographical sketches
of three wives of Fath Ali Shah (Aqa, Mastur, and Nush) and two daughters-in-
law (Afaf and Qamar). The third Majlis is that of “past and present women poets
of Iran,” (Zivar, Hayati, Rashha, and Sahahbaz). This section presents four poets
who were contemporary of Mahmud Mirza, whether alive or dead at the time.
The fourth Majlis includes some poetry of earlier periods: from three poets from
Iran (Laleh Khatun, Mahasti, and Iffati), three poets from central Asia (Mutrib,
Ayisha, and Ismat), and two from India (Mehri and Nur Jahan Beigom).
Nevertheless, in totalitarian regimes, even male authors find self-expression
challenging. Thus, using “metaphoric representation” and “satiric utterance” has
provided grounds for Iranian authors, both male and female, to express their dis-
satisfaction with gender inequality as well as other social and political issues.
Karimi-Hakkak, in “Revolutionary Posturing: Iranian Writers and the Iranian
Revolution of 1979,” states: “By metaphoric representation or metonymic reduc-
tion, through elegiac or satiric utterance, modern Iranian literary intellectuals con-
tinued to communicate their deep dissatisfaction with the state of affairs in their
country.”10
Karimi-Hakkak’s statement implies that using such techniques not only func-
tions as a medium of expression, but also that doing so has a prior history in
Persian literature. The political and social weekly Molla Nasereddin (1906–31),
founded by Jalil Mohammadqolizadeh, which employed satirical language and
humor, was “banned from Persia on account of its focusing on the inequalities and
injustices in society (poverty, women’s lack of social rights, plight of the working
classes, oppression, tyranny).”11 Despite this, the weekly was smuggled into Iran.
340 Firouzeh Dianat
In spite of strict government rules banning freedom of expression, these satirical
and critical texts were published and distributed.
Employing humor has been a means for female authors to assert their dissatis-
faction with gender discrimination. Bibi Khanum Astarabadi’s The Vices of Men
(1894–95) describes the situation of women in male-dominated Qajar society and
decries mainstream women of her period. The essay was an answer to an anony-
mous booklet, The Education of Women (1889). Bibi Khanum criticized the con-
tent of The Education of Women. She stated: “In the first chapter of The Education
of Women, the author has said that if a man takes the hand of his wife and wants
to put it into the fire, that wife should obey him, be quiet and silent, and show no
resistance.”12 Bibi Khanum employed a biting response:

This humble author did not consider herself able to educate men; therefore, I
wrote The Vices of Men in answer to The Education of Women so that men’s
failings would be known. Perhaps now they will refrain from educating
women and devote themselves to their own education.13

The language of both booklets relied on “learned words.” Using “appropriate quo-
tations from the Koran and famous poets, and their own poetic products as well as
sexually explicit language, Bibi Khanum ingeniously mixed her language with street
Persian and slang words.”14 Her use of the language of the “common people or slang
expressions” was unprecedented in Persian literature. Her critical essay concludes
with her khaterat, or life narrative. The Persian word khaterat, which has been trans-
lated as “memory” and “recollection,” indicates the dynamics of memory, as it offers
the writer’s recollections. She indicated that she fell in love with her husband and, in
spite of the wishes of her maternal uncle, who was head of the family, married him.
However, she protested when, after giving birth to six children, her husband married a
servant in her absence. Although they reunited after the servant left, Bibi Khanum was
disappointed by her marriage and a tradition that allowed men to suppress women.
Suffering from a disloyal husband, she criticized men’s treatment and questioned the
subjugation of women. She condemned attacking women from every side:

Poets satirize them, scholars and literary men make sarcastic remarks about
them and call it advice; they are shameless. In such a time, which is obvious
to any intelligent person, the book of Education of Women appears, adding
insult to injury. May God hasten the day of deliverance and make the day of
salvation near.15

She was asked by her “sisters” to write a response to the putting down of females
in The Education of Women. In fulfilling their wish, she took them as her initial
audience. The existence of a supportive female network strengthened the realm
of female authorship and inspired other female authors to protest against gender
discrimination. Bibi Khanum chose to talk back to the author of The Education of
Women in her own vocabulary, timbre, and viewpoint.
Bibi Khanum was privileged to have access to a royal education and resources.
Afsaneh Najmabadi states: “Bibi Khanum describes her mother as a learned
 Iranian female authors and “anxiety of authorship” 341
woman who had served in inner-court circles. . . . A number of Qajar women had
private libraries, female scribes and secretaries, and supported women poets and
writers.”16 Bibi Khanum was raised in the royal harem. Her mother, Khadijeh
Khanum, worked as teacher to Shokuh al-Saltaneh, one of the wives of Naser
Al-Din Shah and mother of Mozaffar Al-Din Shah (1853–1907). Javadi asserts:
“She was a precocious child who was in the habit of scribbling on the walls. When
Naser Al-Din Shah (1831–1896) asked who was doing that he was told it was
‘Bibi’; he responded she could join the girls in the harem for education.”17
Bibi Khanum was a pioneer in expressing women’s issues and reconstructing
women’s image. Gilbert and Gubar state that women “have been especially con-
cerned with the assaulting and revising, deconstructing, and reconstructing those
images of women inherited from male literature.”18 In doing so, female authors
continuously modified the form and language of their expression.
Tahereh Qurrat al-Ayn (1814–52)19 is an example of a female poet who moved
between boundaries. She adopted the ghazal,20 a form of lyric poetry, as the frame-
work of her poems. Kairmi-Hakkak in “Love, Separation, and Reunion” explains
that the ghazal offers sets of “binaries between the lover and the beloved.”21 The
genre “depicts the nightingale/poet/lover/human as forever singing songs of des-
perate love to the rose/patron/beloved/God.”22 On Tahereh’s poetry, Farzaneh
Milani argues: “If the self-assertion is a cardinal tent of Tahereh’s life, self-denial
and self-effacement are key elements of her poetry.”23 In the following mystic
poem she expresses love, longs for union, and complains about her separation.
The line “I am wandering like a breeze” indicates Qurrat al-Ayn’s desire to move
freely beyond the boundaries that had been set by the Iranian society of her time.
The speaker in this poem passionately and boldly desires union with her beloved:

If I happen to see you face to face

I explain sorrows of your love point by point
For seeing your face, I am wandering around like a breeze
I am searching for you house to house, alley by alley
Your separation makes me cry into blood
Like the flow of Tigris river, all seas, springs, and streams

Tahereh employed veiled language, metaphorical and layered, to express her-

self and her expectation for a restructuring of the social order. Najmabadi traces
a transformation in women’s language in the nineteenth century due to social
changes, including increasing interaction between Iran and Europe: “When the
female voice found a public audience, it became a veiled voice, a disciplined
voice . . . the female body was itself transformed. Before the physical veil was
discarded, it was replaced by an invisible metaphoric veil.”24 Sometimes the
poetic persona in Qurrat al-Ayn’s poems is concealed. In others, like “In Pursuit,”
in the final line, she provides her pen name, which idiomatically is called “tal-
lakhos”. The last line of “In Pursuit” reads: “Tahirih, in the dust, and drunk on the
one face I see: Alone I await your blessing: a sinner here am I.”25 Similar to the
contents of her poems, which deal with sets of opposition, she is concealing and
revealing the poetic persona.
342 Firouzeh Dianat
Tahereh’s poetry did not receive scholarly attention due to her gender and the
new religion, the Babi faith,26 that she adopted. Amin Banani, et al., in Tahirih: A
Portrait in Poetry, state that when Tahereh was alive “there were no systematic
efforts” to collect her poetry until “some fifty years after her death.”27 He states:
“The total body of existing poems attributed to Tahirih is not large. It consists of
fewer than sixty short and medium length poems.”28 Her poems suffered a lack
of scholarly attention to the extent that Banani states “Qurrat al-Ayn is depicted
either as a saintly martyr, a cunning vixen, or a fiery feminist.”29 She has even
been accused of plagiarism. In 1940, Mohit Tabatabi, without any literary argu-
ment, stated that he had discovered the poem in a manuscript copy of the collected
poems of Tayer Isfahani. Banani notes, “No information was given about the loca-
tion of the discovery, the possible date of the manuscript, the name of the copyist
or the age of the paper.”30 Being a nonconformist in her time, she was sentenced
to death following her conversion to and advocacy for the Babi religion and for
unveiling herself in writing.
Female authors continue to use writing as an act of unveiling. Milani suggests
that veiling is a “cultural phenomenon” that is related to “boundary maintenance,
social distancing, and privacy.”31 In such a society, males and females are veiled
not only physically, but also emotionally. In other words, the act of “communica-
tion is veiled.”32 Taj Al-Saltana (1883–1936), the daughter of Naser Al-Din Shah,
unveiled her life story, or khaterat. Her narrative, Crowning Anguish: Memoirs of
a Persian Princess from the Harem to Modernity (1914)33 aims to construct and
deconstruct self and engage her male teacher profoundly. As Solyman, her teacher
and cousin, turned her attention to historical texts, those that he believed would
remind her of her identity and station, Taj told him that her own life story was
equal in value to that of those historical texts for its importance and emotion.34
Intrigued, he asked her to tell her story, and she replied, “No.” Then the teacher
pleaded with her to tell her story. “The more I refused, the further he importuned.
Finally, I said, I don’t have the strength to relate it to you verbally, but I do prom-
ise to write it all down for you.”35 Taj kept the gender of her primary audience in
mind in her writing, and the language consciously avoids gender terms. However,
she was well aware that poetry was a popular genre. Thus, Taj inserted passages
of Sadi’s poetry36 into her narrative to reinforce her statements.
Taj unveiled her determination to educate and liberate herself. Her arranged
marriage was unhappy and ended in divorce by the outbreak of the Constitutional
Revolution. 37 Her ex-husband and his family had fled to Russia, fearing assassina-
tion by their political enemies. The abrupt exodus deprived Taj of her children, so
she decided to educate herself by studying women’s rights and becoming a member
of the “Association for the Freedom of Women,” which was founded in 1907.
Taj is an example of a female author who had to go through the dilemma
of balancing opposite ideas, particularly modernity and tradition. Her narrative
reflects modernity and the dilemma of self as challenges that arose from a new set
of beliefs. According to Nasrin Rahimieh, Taj was divided between new and old
notions of female identity.38 As a result, she struggled to define and locate herself
in a community that she was both isolated from and a part of. Taj was challenged
 Iranian female authors and “anxiety of authorship” 343
by the “formulation of Persian national identity and new inscriptions of gender in
the discourse of nation.”39 As Taj vacillated between tradition and modernity, she
tried to find a way to articulate herself and become visible. Thus, she stated: “Now
I begin the story of my life.”40 Taj wrote her khaterat at the crucial transformative
time when the society was challenged by modernism.
In calling for change in the social relationships between men and women, Taj
was not only addressing individuals but the nation itself. Najmabadi’s Women
with Mustaches and Men without Beards: Gender and Sexual Anxieties of Iranian
Modernity examines the role of gender in the making of “Iranian modernity”
on “iconic, narrative, metaphoric, and social levels.”41 She states that as Iranian
modernity was being shaped, women like Taj began to claim their space; “Nation
was largely conceived and visualized as a brotherhood, and homeland as female, a
beloved, and a mother.”42 There was a line between nation and homeland, female
and male, but they were closely related and connected.
Taj’s life narrative is a continuance of Bibi’s essay. Their audiences directly
affect the authors’ choice of words. Bibi Khanum openly uses sexual terminology
while Taj’s narrative indirectly addresses sexual issues. Najmabadi asserts:

With the exception of a number of poets, the premodern female voice

was largely an oral voice, to be heard, rarely to be written and circulated.
Moreover, the audience for the voice was predominantly, if not exclusively,
assumed to be female.43

Other female authors continued to protest in different forms. Julia Kristeva consid-
ers intertextuality as a mixture of signs and echoes, a process in which one borrows
from predecessors to vocalize and authorize one’s voice. In “Word, Dialogue, and
Novel,” she suggests that “any text is constructed as a mosaic of quotations; any text
is the absorption and transformation of another.”44 Both Taj and Bibi Khanum con-
demn males’ ill treatment of women. Although no document reveals a relationship
or any communication between them, Taj could have been inspired to write down
her life story by Bibi Khanum as she was raised in a harem and a royal court. How-
ever, the encounter with the teacher and his suggestion to write down her life story
were the main motivating factors for Taj to write her khaterat. While Bibi’s essay
included a part of her own life, Taj used the whole of her life narrative to present
and criticize women’s subjugation. Taj emphasized the importance of education as
a medium for women’s emancipation. Her own life led her to complain about the
“absence of education for women.”45 Although a part of her narrative remains miss-
ing, her narrative and that of Bibi are key documents in understanding social condi-
tions in Iran and women’s history during the Qajar dynasty. Among the works of the
post-Constitution period, Taj’s narrative is considered to be the longest prose work
that reflects the system of the court and harem. The narrative is also considered
the first documented Iranian female life narrative in which the author is calling for
change in social relationships. Taj blamed the veil: “The source of the ruination of
the country, the cause of its moral laxity, the obstacle to its advancement in all areas,
is the veiling of women” (290). She called for women’s involvement.
344 Firouzeh Dianat
Similar to Bibi Khanum and Taj, who unveiled the norms and sets of relation-
ships of their time, other Iranian female authors continued to address women’s
issues in their narratives. Bibi Khanum’s use of satirical utterance as the founda-
tion of her protest and her technique were picked up by the next generation of
female authors who used life narrative as a protest against dictators and patriar-
chal systems.
At times, as women managed to overcome obstacles of self-expression, their
critics raised suspicions and accusations against their poetry just as they had
against Tahereh. The female authors fought back as much as they could. For
instance, Parvin Etesami (1907–41) responded to accusations against her poems
by means of her poetry.
Parvin followed traditional patterns in form and substance of Persian poetry.
Nevertheless, scholars questioned the authorship of the poems. In response, she
wrote: “Some literary persons believe Parvin to be a man/she is not a man, this
riddle better be solved.”46 Even some years after her death, her critics refused to
accept her authorship. Fazllolah Garakani, in Accused of Being a Poet (1977),
argues:

In principle, the usage of Arabic words and complex Persian vocabulary by a

“woman” or a “youngster” is shocking. . . . That is why in a poetry collection
attributed to a woman (and lacking as it does any poems other than maybe
one or two that revolve around women’s theme), citation from the Qor’an and
the usage of many difficult and uncommon words – and that at such a skilled
and expert level – seem strange and indigestible.47

Parvin protested against the status of Iranian women, arguing that they were
treated even worse than second-class citizens. In “Iranian Woman,” she criticizes
gender inequality:

In Iran previously as if woman was not Iranian

Her share was nothing but misfortune and distress
Her life and death was in loneliness
What was she if not a prisoner?
No one like woman lived centuries in darkness
No one like woman has been sacrificed in the temple of hypocrisy
.....
In life with all the opportunities, woman’s destiny
Has been nothing but limitation and hardship
Light of knowledge has been withheld from woman
Hence, lack of knowledge was not because of her inferiority and slackness

In her poem, Parvin considers women prisoners and victims of hypocrisy, iso-
lated and kept in darkness because of their gender. While the poet discourages
women from any type of imitation, she encourages them to seek knowledge, as
beauty “depends on knowledge.” Iranian female authors continued to publicize
 Iranian female authors and “anxiety of authorship” 345
their private and public life and also reflect gender and class hierarchy in their
narratives. Use of figurative language and images enabled these women to express
themselves freely in an oppressive society. Milani, in her article “From Object to
Subject in Literary and Visual Representations,” by referring to the attitude of
Iranian male authors, including Mohammad Ali Jamalzadeh (1892–1997), Reza
Brahani (1935–), and Mehdi Akhavan Saleth (1928–90), indicates women’s crea-
tive writing was treated as inferior to that of men.
Forugh Farrokhzad (1935–67), in her autobiographical poems, continued the
tradition of previous female poets to assert her own definition of self within a
chauvinistic community. Talattof in “Personal Rebellion and Social Revolt in the
Works of Forugh Farrokhzad: Calling the Assumptions” indicates, “She fell in
love with Parviz Shapur (1924–99), an author and a distant relative . . . then she
dedicated most of her poetry to the expression of love and relationship issues and
her disenchantment with domestic life.”48 Her work offered images of the female
body and desire, which were way beyond the norms of her time. In “Sin” she
states:

I sinned, a very pleasant sin

In a bosom, a fiery and vehement one
I sinned, within a pair of arms
That were hot, vengeful, and ferrous

In reading this “confessional” poem, Talattof refers to her letters to Shapur and
indicates that the poem reflects her desire to join her “beloved.” She was an
“avant-garde” to express her personal feelings openly.49
In her poem “The Captive,” she compares the life of a woman who is caught
in the realities of life and her desire to “fly” and free herself. She has to deal
with “the child’s weeping eyes” as a reality. After her separation from Shapur,
Farrokhzad “returned to her father’s house for a brief time, where she faced his
displeasure.”50 The poem also might indicate her desire to fly back to her husband
to end facing her son’s “weeping eyes.” It could also indicate her desire for flying
and freeing herself from the burden of real life and its traditional boundaries, to
pacify that child that lives inside.

O, firmament! If one day

I fly from this silent prison
What shall I tell the weeping child
Forget me! I am just a captive being

At times, she goes beyond her intimate and personal feelings and reveals the
“social fabric of her society.” In the following poem, “Ramideh” from the collec-
tion Asir (The Captive, 1955) poetry collection, she complains about hypocrisy
that results in her loneliness. Talattof indicates that in Esyan (Rebellion, 1957),
“Her poems might well indicate a personal rebellion against the traditional struc-
ture of society (or more precisely the family), but in them one can also sense a
346 Firouzeh Dianat
social consciousness that promotes a collective protest.”51 It is an audacious and
rebellious act to express her innermost feelings and sexuality, and sharp criticism
of the society.

I am avoiding the gathering of acquaintances

Sneaking into a silent and calm corner
My look floats in darkness
I am listening to my sick heart
I am alienated from the people whom with me
Seem to be fellow and friend
But in reality out of excessive inferiority
Falsely, accused me hundreds of accusations
I am alienated from the people who as they listened to my poems
Bloomed in my face like a flower
But in my absence as they gathered in private
They regarded me an infamous lunatic

Farrokhzad’s case is very similar to Judith, Shakespeare’s sister, who Virginia

Woolf had created in A Room of One’s Own (1926). Although Judith was as tal-
ented as William, because of her gender she was denied the same opportunities.
She was even forced into marriage; thus, she kills herself and the genius is gone.
Although Farrokhzad survived an attempted suicide, she was killed in a car acci-
dent. In “A Poem for You,” Farrokhzad cries out her determination to break the
silence; nevertheless, she is aware that her gender reinforces limitations as she
actively expresses the emotions of “I,” that of a female.

The laughing one despite scandalous insults

for senseless taunts, was me
I wanted to cry out my being
But, alas! I was a “woman”

Farrokhzad’s poems about her feelings and perception of society have had revolu-
tionary effects on women as they inspire them to stand up and present “I.”
Simin Behbahani (1927– ), a prominent national poet like her counterpart,
Forugh Farrokhzad, is another example of a woman whose voice reflects and chal-
lenges social norms in Iran. Talattof, in “Iranian Women’s Literature: From Pre-
revolutionary Social Discourse to Post-revolutionary Feminism,” indicates that
the poet raises her voice against injustice. She advocates for unity that overshad-
ows gender and class. Talattof indicates that, although these women were treated
as “secondary,” they displayed a remarkable “sensitivity toward social issues.”52
She was socially conscious and addresses more than one era in her poems.
Although Farrokhzad and Behbahani belong to different generations, they each
boldly express their dissatisfaction with any type of confinement and segrega-
tion. These poets are women whose dreams created images with which to liberate
themselves. Their narratives inspire and motivate them and others to challenge
 Iranian female authors and “anxiety of authorship” 347
power. Also, the images in their poetry expose the tension that results from seg-
regation between the individual and society. Tallatof in “‘I Will Rebuild You, Oh
My Country’: Simin Behbahani’s Work and Sociopolitical Discourse” attributes
her to three literary discourses: “pre-Revolutionary,” “post-Revolutionary,” and
“recent years.”53 In the first phase, she portrays the lives of “prostitutes, dancers,
washers of the dead, sick children, and poor students.”54 She asks for understand-
ing of “society’s ill.” In the “post-Revolutionary” poems, she promotes gender
equality. Behbahani’s “Gypsy” presents a female who has been forgotten and
forced into silence. The narrator invites her to “slay silence” and “stamp” [her]
feet,” to remind those who disregard her of her presence:

O, Gypsy, in the honor of being, you must sing

So you may send a message of your presence to the ears
Smoke of the demon’s fire, has burnt eyes and throats
To break the terror of this night, cry out if you can
Gypsy, in yearning for liberty, stamp your feet and along its beat
Send a message, to get an answer
There must be a reason for your being
To ignite a fire stamp your feet on a stone
Old dark ages have squeezed your body
Come out to not be a fossil
Gypsy, for not dying you must overcome the silence
Meaning, you must sing to honor your being

Behbahani use of “gypsy” as an image to present the concept of femininity in her

poem functions as a representative of women who were forced into silence. The
gypsy is not still since she is moving from one location to the other. The speaker
encourages her to stamp her feet. As if she is in darkness and nobody is capable of
hearing her. Thus, she has to be loud to be heard. The gypsy “yearn[s] for liberty”
and she has to ignite a fire. She has been carrying the burden for years and it is
time for her to say something. Otherwise, she won’t remain “alive.” In order to
overcome night and silence and stay alive, the gypsy has to rely on herself and
scream a song in the depth of night and darkness to be heard. The gypsy’s pres-
ence is a means for life and continuity.
In Words, Not Swords: Iranian Women Writers and the Freedom of Movement,
Milani states that a “woman not only needs a room for her own . . . but also the
freedom to leave it and return to it at will.”55 The author emphasizes the impor-
tance of the freedom of movement and control over the body, which has been
denied “in the name of religion, chastity, class distinction, beauty, safety, and
anatomy.”56 In Persian culture the word gypsy has a negative connotation and
indicates a woman who is audacious and nonconformist. The gypsy is a symbolic
figure in Behbahani’s poems as she has the tendency to go beyond limitations.
The gypsy inspires seeking freedom and breaking through confinement.
Milani, in “The Rainbow World of Simin Behbahani,” considers Behbahani a
literary giant and emphasizes the quantity and quality of her literary works, as she
348 Firouzeh Dianat
published sixteen volumes of poetry. Behbahani is also a revolutionary poet as she
transformed the ghazal, a poetic form that has been mainly dominated by men.
She mixes tradition and modernity in her poems. The setting is similar to that of a
story in which she uses dialogue, satire, irony, and stream of consciousness. Her
creation is not black or white but a “rainbow” of images, words, and innovation.
In The Politics of Writing in Iran: A History of Modern Persian Literature,
Talattof indicates that “prerevolutionary women’s literature . . . displays a
remarkable sensitivity toward social issues, though the issues related specifically
to women were treated as secondary.”57 Obviously, these female authors were
suffering gender discrimination and “confined within the literary framework”
determined by men. Nevertheless, Iran’s literary history is replete with examples
of female authors who challenged power relations by means of various literary
forms. Although poetry has been the popular form of self-expression, other narra-
tive forms also have been used to present the self. In a gender-segregated society
like Iran, women authors have to artistically move between opposite poles such
as tradition and modernity and must use different media of expression and protest
to reflect their status.
Even the Iranian female authors who live outside Iran give voice to the need
for change by shuttling between psychological, spiritual, and sociopolitical identi-
ties and locations. However, their authorship has not been received fully. Although
some critics have viewed the texts as examples of resistance to the oppression
of girls and women, other critics have seen the writings as propaganda for the
West. According to Amy Motlagh in “Toward a Theory of Iranian American Life
Writing,” some critics accuse “the memoirist with complicity in a U.S. program.”58
Others reprimand the writers’ humorous approach to current Iranian culture, argu-
ing that it presents the culture as unimportant. In the case of Azar Nafisi, author
of Reading Lolita in Tehran: A Memoir in Books59 and a figure who has been the
target of much hostility, some criticize her for offering only a selective memory
of historical events and encouraging “collective amnesia concerning U.S. action
abroad.”60 Female writers need acrobatic skills to negotiate their authorship and
interpretations of their work in the world.
Female authors employed figurative language and literary forms common
among male authors to reflect sociopolitical and gender issues. As figurative lan-
guage is constructed socioculturally, understanding this usage requires familiarity
with the culture in which the language has been constructed. For individuals who
are outside the society and culture, grasping the nuance of the meaning is a cum-
bersome task. Historically, Iranian female authors, similar to male authors, have
chosen poetry rather than prose for writing and self-expression.
As people in the United States turned to first-person narratives to reflect the
voices of the “conquered, enslaved, occupied, excluded, discriminated against,
and marginalized,”61 in the last quarter of the twentieth century, with increasing
frequency, Iranian, American-Iranian, and Iranian-European female authors began
to choose khaterats as frameworks to reflect their life experiences and imagina-
tion and to question the concepts of self, gender, individuality, and humanity. A
person who lives between locations is restless. That restlessness causes many to
 Iranian female authors and “anxiety of authorship” 349
draw attention to themselves and their in-betweenness. It causes others to explore
their creativity as a means to divert restlessness from anxiety, insanity, and hope-
lessness. It can also bring about a kind of political performance that aims to shock
and disrupt the status quo.
Jasmin Darznik, in “The Perils and Seduction of Home: Return Narratives of
the Iranian Diaspora,”62 relates the production of life narratives to the political
relationship of Iran and the United States and asserts that this type of literature
functions as a translator to culture and religion, which fascinates and at the same
time repels audiences. Overall, narrative and storytelling can challenge concepts
of citizenship, human rights, and property.
An increasing number of Iranian female authors use their narratives to reposi-
tion themselves within Iranian culture and gender politics and also to embrace their
shifting identities as they wrestle with their relationship to Iran. Nahid Rachlin’s
Persian Girls: A Memoir (2006), Jasmin Darznik’s The Good Daughter: A Memoir
of My Mother’s Hidden Life (2011), Roxana Saberi’s Between Two Worlds: My
Life and Captivity in Iran (2010), Azadeh Moaveni’s Lipstick Jihad: A Memoir of
Growing up Iranian in America and American in Iran (2006), Firoozeh Dumas’s
Funny in Farsi: A Memoir of Growing Up Iranian in America (2003), Roya
Hakakian’s Journey from the Land of NO: A Girlhood Caught in Revolutionary
Iran (2004), Haleh Esfandiari’s My Prison, My Home: One Woman’s Story of
Captivity in Iran (2009), Gelareh Asayesh’s Saffron Sky: A Life Between Iran and
America (1999), Davar Ardalan’s My Name is Iran: A Memoir (2007), and Simin
Behbahani’s With My Mother: My Autobiography (2011) are all life narratives in
which the authors grapple to define their place as female individuals in a world
that does not know how to make full use of their talents and power. The major
difference in the contemporary life narratives of Iranian female authors is the lan-
guage, which has shifted mostly to other languages, including English and French.
Marjane Satrapi’s Persepolis: The Story of a Childhood (2003) and Persepolis 2:
The Story of a Return (2004) step even further and use a nonlinguistic mode,
image, to tell the story and call a wide range of audiences into her narrative.
As Shirley Neuman, in “Autobiography and Questions of Gender: An
Introduction,” asserts, the self is not stable, but rather changes all the time. New
communication, information, and travel technologies have accelerated the move-
ment of people, commodities, ideas, and cultures across the world; as a result, the
self is surrounded and exposed to these elements and rapid change is inevitable.63
Because of the rapidly changing world, stories of women struggling to be who they
are, as autonomous, gifted persons, mirror the challenge of females to live freely
and to express and construct identities that refuse gender and class discrimination.

Notes
1 M. M. Bakhtin and Michael Holquist, The Dialogic Imagination: Four Essays (Austin:
University of Texas Press, 1981), 348.
2 Sandra Gilbert and Susan Gubar, “From Infection in the Sentence: The Women
Writers and the Anxiety of Authorship.” In The Critical Tradition: Classic Texts and
Contemporary Trends. Edited David H. Richter (New York: St. Martin’s, 1989), 1363.
350 Firouzeh Dianat
3 Ibid.,1362.
4 Anna Vanzan, “From the Royal Harem to a Post-Modern Islamic Society: Some
Considerations on Women Prose Writers in Iran from Qajar Times to 1990s.” In
Women, Religion and Culture in Iran. Edited by Sarah F. D Ansari and Vanessa Martin
(Richmond, UK: Curzon in association with the Royal Asiatic Society of Great Britain
and Ireland, 2002).
5 Kamran Talattof, Modernity, Sexuality, and Ideology in Iran: The Life and Legacy of a
Popular Female Artist (Syracuse, NY: Syracuse University Press, 2011), 9.
6 Janet Afary, The Iranian Constitutional Revolution, 1906–1911: Grassroots
Democracy, Social Democracy, and the Origins of Feminism (New York: Columbia
University Press, 1996), 208.
7 In defining the Return Movement, Karimi-Hakkak states: “The poets of the Return
Movement believed that Persian poetry had grown in elaborateness over time so much
that it had lost its original simplicity of diction and clarity of expression. . . . The poets
of the Return Movement advocated a return to that part of the classical tradition of
Persian poetry which they felt had not yet been tainted by influences from such for-
eign claims as those of Anatolia or India.” See Recasting Persian Poetry: Scenarios of
Poetic Modernity in Iran. Salt Lake City: University of Utah Press, 1995), 28, 31.
8 In the 2006 version of the book, the editors mention manuscript copies in Tehran,
Isfahan, and Tabriz. This indicates that the book was in circulation after being
compiled.
9 Prince Mahmud Mirza was the fifteenth son of Fath-Ali Shah. He had already compiled
another anthology, Safinat Al-Mahmud (1825), which included biographical sketches
and a selection of poems from 358 poets. See Mahmud Mirza, Tadhkira-yi Nuql-i maj-
lis. Edited by M. Nasiri and N. Jalali (Tehran: Mirath Maktoob, 2006).
10 “Revolutionary Posturing: Iranian Writers and the Iranian Revolution of 1979.”
International Journal of Middle East Studies 23, no. 4 (1991): 511.
11 Hasan Javadi, Willem M. Floor, and Bibi K. Astarabadi, The Education of Women and
The Vices of Men: Two Qajar Tracts (Syracuse, NY: Syracuse University Press, 2010), 1.
12 Ibid., 67.
13 Ibid., 60.
14 Ibid., xiv.
15 Ibid., 73.
16 Afsaneh Najmabadi, “Veiled Discourse – Unveiled Bodies.” Feminist Studies 19, no.
3 (1993): 494.
17 Javadi, Floor, and Astarabadi, Education of Women, 117.
18 Gilbert, Sandra, and Susan Gubar, “From Infection in the Sentence,” 1365.
19 She is referred to as Tahereh, Tahirih, or Qurrat al-Ayn, “solace of the eyes.”
20 The thirteenth- and fourteenth-century Persian poets like Rumi and Hafez are well
known for using this genre. Ghazal is sung by Iranian, Indian, and Pakistani musicians.
21 Ahmad. Karimi-Hakkak, “Love, Separation, and Reunion: The Master-Narrative of the
Human Condition in Persian Mystical Poetry.” Paper presented at the Twelfth Reza Ali
Khazeni Memorial Lecture in Iranian Studies. University of Utah, 2004, September 10,
28.
22 Ibid.
23 Farzaneh Milani, Veils and Words: The Emerging Voices of Iranian Women Writers
(Syracuse, NY: Syracuse University Press, 1992), 93.
24 Najmabadi, “Veiled Discourse – Unveiled Bodies,” 489.
25 Tahirih Qurrat al-Ayn, Tahirih: A Portrait in Poetry: Selected Poems of Qurratu’l-
’ayn. Edited by Amin Banani (Los Angeles: Kalimát Press, 2004), 71.
26 The Babi faith (1844–52) was a religious movement started in Iran by Seyyed Ali
Muhammad Shirazi. The movement signaled a break from Islam and an attempt to start
a new religious system. Converts to the Babi faith were often persecuted.
27 Qurrat al-Ayn, Tahirih: A Portrait in Poetry, 9.
 Iranian female authors and “anxiety of authorship” 351
28 Ibid., 4.
29 Ibid.
30 Ibid., 25.
31 Milani, Veils and Words, xix.
32 Ibid.
33 Although her story was written in 1914, the narrative was not published in Iran until
1969, and then it was only a partial publication. Her writings were translated into
English and published as Crowning Anguish: Memoirs of a Persian Princess from the
Harem to Modernity in 1993 (Washington, DC: Mage).
34 Ibid., 108.
35 Ibid.
36 Sadi Shirazi, known by his pen-name Sadi, is one of the major Persian poets. He is
recognized for the quality of his writings and for the depth of his social and moral
thinking.
37 When she was eight, she was married to Amir Hosein Khan Shoja Al-Saltana, the son
of Mohammad Baqer Khan Shoja Al-Saltana. His family was a family of important
officers in the Qajar army.
38 Nasrin Rahimieh, Missing Persians: Discovering Voices in Iranian Cultural History
(Syracuse, NY: Syracuse University Press, 2001), 107.
39 Ibid., 109.
40 Ibid., 114.
41 Afsaneh Najmabadi, Women with Mustaches and Men without Beards: Gender and
Sexual Anxieties of Iranian Modernity (Berkeley: University of California Press,
2005), 1.
42 Ibid.
43 Ibid., 488.
44 Julia Kristeva, The Kristeva Reader. Edited by Toril Moi (New York: Columbia
University Press, 1986), 36.
45 Al-Saltana, Crowning Anguish, 121.
46 Milani, Veils and Words, 106.
47 Ibid.
48 Kamran Talattof, “Personal Rebellion and Social Revolt in the Works of Forugh
Farrokhzad: Calling the Assumptions.” In Forugh Farrokhzad, Poet of Modern Iran:
Iconic Woman and Feminine Pioneer of New Persian Poetry. Edited by Dominic P.
Brookshaw and Nasrin Rahimieh (London: I. B. Tauris, 2010), 84.
49 Ibid.
50 Ibid., 85.
51 Ibid., 91.
52 Kamran Talattof, “Iranian Women’s Literature: From Pre-revolutionary Social
Discourse to Post-revolutionary Feminism.” International Journal of Middle East
Studies. 19, no. 4 (1997): 540.
53 Kamran Talattof, “‘I Will Rebuild You, Oh My Country’: Simin Behbahani’s Work and
Sociopolitical Discourse.” Journal of Iranian Studies 41, no. 1 (2008): 20.
54 Ibid., 21.
55 Farzaneh Milani, Words, Not Swords: Iranian Women Writers and the Freedom of
Movement (Syracuse, NY: Syracuse University Press, 2011), xxii.
56 Ibid., xxiii.
57 Kamran Talattof, The Politics of Writing in Iran: A History of Modern Persian
Literature (Syracuse, NY: Syracuse University Press, 1999), 107.
58 Amy Motlagh, “Toward a Theory of Iranian American Life Writing,” MELUS 33, no.
2 (2008): 17.
59 Azar Nafisi, Reading Lolita in Tehran: A Memoir in Books (New York: Random House,
2003).
60 Motlagh, “Toward a Theory of Iranian American Life Writing,” 17.
352 Firouzeh Dianat
61 Betty Ann Bergland, “Representing Ethnicity in Autobiography: Narratives of
Opposition,” Yearbook of English Studies 24, Ethnicity and Representation in American
Mahmud (1994): 68.
62 Jasmin Darznik, “The Perils and Seduction of Home: Return Narratives of the Iranian
Diaspora.” MELUS 33, no. 2 (2008): 55–71.
63 Shirley Neuman, “Autobiography and Questions of Gender: An Introduction.” In
Autobiography and Questions of Gender. Edited By S. C. Neuman (London: F. Cass,
1991), 11–12.

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