Document Type : Research article
Authors
1 Professor of Persian Language and Literature, Allameh Tabataba’I University, Tehran, Iran.
2 M.A. in Persian Language and Literature, Allameh Tabataba’I University, Tehran, Iran.
Abstract
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Extended Abstract
Introduction
Women in contemporary Iranian literature have created works that are their own voices and have depicted a form of activism in them. Mahshid Amirshahi is one of these authors who, in Shahrbanoo's Honeymoon, the third work in the Mothers and Daughters quartet, has provided her audience with the opportunity to study the lived experiences of women by placing the setting of her novel in a socio-historical context.
Reading the novel Shahrbanoo's Honeymoon based on Elaine Showalter's four-dimensional model extracts numerous dimensions of this work that lead us to a comprehensive understanding of the author's style, the status and position of women in the historical period in question, and her lived experience.
Literature Review and Discussion
The findings regarding the background of the present study show that so far, the novel Shahrbanoo's Honeymoon has not been examined based on Elaine Showalter's four_part model. The most relevant Researches include works by Talaei and Talaei (2018), Mobarak and Ahangari (2018), Faridi (2021), Nikrouz and Teymori (2023), Khalilnezhad Asl, Yeghani and Sadraldini (2023), Moradi and Shahriyari (2024), Tokhmafshan, Mohammadi and Raminnia (2024).
Discussion
Choosing a method to examine a work in a feminist framework is not an easy path, because given the different situations of woman around the world, flexibility of approach is important. On the other hand, when a work has multiple dimensions to be examined, we need a multifaceted method.
By coining the term gynocriticism, Showalter defines a type of criticism in which women as writers seek to express different dimensions of their being based on a female understanding of the world. She believes that if we consider women's writing as the central subject, we can reach new findings and understand the distinctiveness of women's writing (Showalter 1985: 248). Showalter sees theories of women's writing as consisting of four models: biological, linguistic, psychoanalytic, and cultural, each of which is an attempt to define the characteristics of women as writers and women as texts. These four models overlap and are almost sequential (ibid: 249-250).
Feminist criticism strives to be biological, intimate, and confessional. This type of criticism, from a biological perspective, sees the body as an inspiring source of imagery; but the woman's body should not be considered her central identity; because this difference is the greatest distinction between women and men, which has been used as an excuse to justify the domination of one sex over the other (Showalter 1985: 251-252).
The project of feminine language, despite its appeal to many, is fraught with problems. The linguistic range of women must be expanded and its limitations should be limited.. On the other hand, women must be present in discourses from which they have been absent.
The psychological study of literary works helps researchers to examine the mental states and unconscious processes of the mind. Sometimes the behaviors of a character in a story may have a psychological background, and paying attention to the various psychological aspects in the work sheds light on important aspects of it.
Showalter believes that a cultural model of theory is more adequate than other biological, linguistic, and psychoanalytic models. (Showalter 1985: 260). The first task of a feminist critique is to map the precise cultural location of female identity and to describe the forces that erode a writer's cultural domain (Ibid: 264).
Conclusion
Shahrbanoo's Honeymoon creates a world in which being a woman is a lived condition; a condition that is simultaneously woven into the characters’ bodies, minds, and psyches; hence, the work allows for critical readings from different paths, from biological experience to cultural status. In Shahrbanoo's Honeymoon, the body is not just a natural reality; it is also a site of power, control, and social meaning-making. Biological experiences (pregnancy, intercourse, and even clothing) quickly transcend the physical level and become instruments of judgment, control, and valuation. The female body is a body that carries the burden of meaning, fear, shame, and obedience. In the linguistic realm, the author uses language as one of the determining tools of characterization and representation. The language of women in this work is not uniform; rather, each woman has her own voice, and this linguistic diversity, flowing from a different vocabulary, proverbs, tone, and accent, carries meaning and shows the impact of lived experience on language. By highlighting linguistic differences, the author highlights the voices of women in the text. On a psychological level, the novel presents a picture of women's psychological exhaustion. When women are dissolved in their imposed roles, they feel an irrational distance between themselves and their roles and are forced to adapt to the power structure. The psychological experiences of women in this story, such as forgetfulness, denial of bodily experience, internalization of norms, and refuge in superstition, are psychological reactions to the limited, controlled, and insecure life of women. In this novel, culture is the most important organizing force in women's lives. Marriage and its necessity, control of the body, social exclusion, financial dependence, and other social inequalities are represented in the form of cultural norms. At the same time, the author does not naturalize the dominant norm; rather, by narrating everyday details, she shows how these norms are reproduced. The cultural pattern has the highest frequency, as the novel consistently represents the body, women, marriage, honor, family, tradition, politics, and history in the form of dominant norms. Women's lives are almost always defined in relation to culture, and the greatest pressure, conflict, and struggle on women come from within cultural structures. The overlap of patterns in Shahrbanoo's Honeymoon is inevitable because the experiences of the women in the story are represented on a multi-layered level; for this reason, some examples can be analyzed simultaneously on more than one layer. This reading shows that Shahrbanoo's Honeymoon is, rather than being a narrative of individual women's lives, a multi-layered representation of women's experiences in various fields, and helps to understand part of the situation of Iranian women's lives in a specific historical period.
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