Representing the Contemporary Iranian Woman: a Reading of Parinoush Saniee’s the Book of Fate

Abstract

In this thesis, I explore Parinoush Saniee’s The Book of Fate to establish how the contemporary Iranian woman is represented in the novel. The study aims at investigating the depiction of Iranian woman against the historical backdrop of the Islamic Republic of Iran and how the narrative is crafted to narrate these women’s experiences. Correspondingly, three hypotheses guide this study. First, Parinoush Saniee narrates Iranian women’s experiences against the historical background of Iran, the second one presupposes that the contemporary woman in Iran is represented in The Book of Fate and third, there are narrative strategies employed in the text to narrate the Iranian woman’s experiences. The argument I advance in this research is that Parinoush Saniee weaves the stories of Iranian women with the colonial history of the nation thus portraying their real-life experiences from an insider point of view, subverting the hegemonic narratives that define them as homogenous categories of powerless victims. Steered by Homi Bhabha, Edward Said, Chandra Mohanty and Gayatri Spivak’s postulations on postcolonial discourses, this study reveals that the contemporary Iranian women exists in a hybrid space and that a myriad of factors, ranging from history to economic affect their lives. In this space, the contemporary woman in Iran is an intellectual, visible in both public and private realms, a dedicated wise mother, industrious, pious and a role model. In addition, Gerard Genette’s narratological framework aids in evaluating the “how” in the narrative. Admittedly, the study exposes that personal narratives of Iranian women provide the basis for understanding the experiences of women in the Global South.