This research paper deals with the oppression of women at the hands of state government which uses religious ideologies as a tool to exercise its control and authority. The main focus is to analyze the exploitation of religious practices, particularly veil, for political ends that are shown in Reading Lolita in Tehran. Nafisi has delved on the role of women and issues faced by them in the backdrop of war and Islamic Revolution in Iran. The purpose of this research is to show how the debate around religion is based on politics rather than theology, as state authorities further their own agendas by exercising control over women’s clothing, thinking and agency in the name of religion. This control is played out through the imposition of the veil. A strong link between gender and fundamentalism is traced. The research also shows how patriarchal government controls women’s sexuality and other aspects of their lives through religious abuse. The paper shows how Nafisi and her students are non conformists and rebel against the authorities in their act of reading Lolita and other literary texts that are banned in Iran. The gender inequality is at the heart of the religio-political issues in the Memoir.
Keywords: Women, Iranian Revolution, religion, feminism, religio-political abuse.
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Introduction
Reading Lolita in Tehran: A Memoir in Books chronicles Azar Nafisi’s life in Iran from 1979 to 1997. The memoir deals with the religio-political circumstances of Iranian society, articulating Nafisi’s views on post-revolution Iran and Institutionalization of Islam for political agendas. It is through a private literature class she held in her flat with seven of her selected female students for two years, that the oppression of women at the hands of state authorities is exposed in the Memoir. In the circumstances of Nafisi’s narrative, this class serves as the microcosm of post- revolution Iranian society. She begins her memoir with the introduction of her students that she had selected for her literature discussion class. The memoir is divided into four sections, each dealing with an author and his work of literature. It is through these literary pieces of work that Nafisi and her students find an escape from the oppressive reality of Iran, and though the texts lead them back to reality, they find a connection of the text with their own lives under Khomeini’s oppressive regime. The writer also deals with her personal experiences with missile attacks, air raids, and blackouts during eight-year war with Iraq.
This paper is intended to look into different incidents in this memoir that indicate issues of political oppression of women through institutionalization of religion. In making the veil obligatory and by imposing laws that curtail women’s freedom, the totalitarian regime, in the name of Islamic Revolution, represses the sexuality of women and represses their chances for the development of an individual identity. In such circumstances the women in the Memoir find solace in literature. In their act of reading Lolita and other texts by Imperialist culture, that were banned in Iran, they rebel against the tyranny of authoritarian regime and exhibit their freedom of mind.
Literature review
According to Zalipour et al., the writings of Diasporic Iranian women embody dimensions of the notion of veil with regard to who they are and who they want to be. “The question of veiling is pressing when women’s veiling becomes a means to veil their identities… the veil negotiates, resists, and reinvents the forces informing the realities and identities of Iranian women” (411). Nafisi’s account of the ancestral culture and tradition of her homeland, before and after the Islamic Revolution in Iran in 1979, deals with the same issue of identity. To this effect, she points out that the association of unveiling with bursting into colour in the Memoir can be interpreted as two entirely opposite or contradicting versions of reality and women’s identity in the memoir. “The metaphor of colour refers to women’s individuality that has been taken from them by imposing the dress code by the authority; they become each other’s extensions, one colour, a mass with no distinguishable or definite identity or personality” (412).
She adds that Veil, as represented by Nafisi in her memoir, is used as a political agenda by the authority. The differentiation between veiling the head and veiling the mind was the main concern in Nafisi’s narration of her homeland. She highlights how veiling, by being imposed rather than being a choice for women, forms and reshapes their identities. Thus, according to Zalipour, Veiling in Reading Lolita in Tehran proves that the Veil was used as a “political agenda to consolidate the image of the Iranian women in the time and setting of the memoir. Nafisi describes in detail each of her students’ appearance” (412).
The validity of Nafisi’s account of events cannot be negated and they cannot be taken as untrue or exaggerated, presenting an Orientalised image of East and the Women. DePaul, while talking about the hostility that Reading Lolita in Tehran has generated regarding “Western stereotypes and Eastern exoticism”. In an article on Nafisi’s Memoir, DePaul writes:
The number of academic and popular-press articles on the book continues to grow… “Reading Nafisi in the West”, “Reading Reading Lolita in Tehran in Idaho”, “Reading and Misreading Lolita in Tehran”, and so on. And then there’s Jasmine and Stars: Reading More Than Lolita in Tehran, by Fatemeh Keshavarz, a book-length refutation of Nafisi’s work. Meanwhile… at least nine other memoirs or collections by Iranian women in exile have surfaced in US bookstores in the past 10 years.
Corbella observes that “A critical evaluation of how women’s lives have been regimented since the 1979 revolution appears as a prerequisite to their full-fledged participation in nationalist or feminist emancipatory projects.” While talking about the sustenance of religious establishment in the promotion of a sexed, silenced Other, Corbella suggests that it may further contribute to explaining how the patriarchal system in Iran still maintains domination over women. This socio-political phenomenon is used to regiment sexuality, manipulate identity, enforce unequal gender roles, and to demand conformity. Moreover, the critic adds that “In most cases, the appropriation, transference, exploitation, exclusion, and seclusions of women determine the female experience in post-revolutionary times, thwarting their development of a sense of self and their social advancement, as well as jeopardizing their emotional and physical well-being.”
Kamalkhani states that “The sexual danger of women in its visible and invisible forms is believed to be so powerful and impulsive that it can lead to the moral corruption of men and society” (136). It is this constant threat to male supremacy that feminine sexual force arouses along with men’s fear of loss of power and control over women which would eventually lead to instability in societal structures. This threat to male supremacy and men’s fear of loss of power is present in the Memoir and comes to surface Nafisi reflects about one of her students whether she is “aware […] of her own power?” (Nafisi 27).
According to Corbella the imposition of veil upon women is intended to make them invisible, restrain their sexuality, and to render their presence ubiquitous. As a result, there is an unresolved tension in the interactions between men and women. Nafisi rules out the contradictory nature of the political system regarding “sexual policies”, “in discouraging the expression of sex because it was too involved with it. It had to suppress sex violently, for the same reason that an impotent man will put his beautiful wife under lock and key, we had always segregated sex from feeling and from intellectual love” (Corbella 109). The purpose of the revolution, Corbella notes, is rendering women silenced are hidden under a veil because, “according to regime, it guarantees the stability and continuity of a way of life threatened by the insidious influence of western value” (110).
Kousha notes that “Although possibilities of expression may still occur within clearly circumscribed boundaries of proper and acceptable female behaviour, the Islamic government’s totalizing discourse excludes women, for the most part, from the national debate, and deprive them from their right to speak for and about themselves” (199). In the act of “being told” Iranian women are transformed into a category defined by its otherness lacking voice and agency. They are only capable of achieving a “precarious sense of self by submitting to, or internalizing, this image created for them “in a society that considered notions of freedom, privacy, individuality as foreign imports” (199).
Discussion
Azar Nafisi’s Reading Lolita in Tehran is a critique of the policies that ensure domination and objectification and positioning of Iranian women at the juncture of religion and politics and The Memoir reveals the internal lives of women whose rights and freedom are not equal to men despite the fact that their needs are not so different from men and do not necessarily diverge from the general interests of their society. The lives of these women appear to be suspended in “a condition of near non-identity” under an oppressive regime. Their existence in various spheres of life is rendered meaningless and useless. By controlling their speech, sexuality, public conduct, rights and by enforcing hijab, the patriarchal government affects their objectification by confining their “essence” within the body.
The reader cannot help but notice how women are excluded from public and social sphere, rendered silent and invisible. The Women in the Memoir share an unstable relationship with an oppressive system of power that thwarts their growth as an individual and makes them obey and conform to the rules of the government. The government achieves this by manipulating the religion and using it in its favour by giving narrow and perverted interpretations of Quranic verses. Nafisi’s critique is not on religion in her Memoir, but rather on the institutionalization of religious ideologies by state apparatuses. The Memoir shows that although the new Islamic codes of conduct have affected the entire Iranian society, their consequences on women are adverse.
After the revolution and with the implementation of the state’s version of Islamic dress code, women’s position in society was significantly curtailed. Nafisi states that “the streets have been turned into a war zone, where young women who disobey rules are hurled into patrol cars, flogged, fined…” (27). Nafisi narrates the experience of Sanaz under the tyrannical rule where she and a group of her friends arrested and are forced to take virginity tests without any justification. They are forced to sign confessions and are sentenced to “25 lashes” for vague accusations of vice (74).
Throughout the fourth section, Nafisi presents many other problems that Iranian women faced under a totalitarian regime. Through the experiences of her students Sanaz and Yassi, Nafisi demonstrates the difficulties of open courtship, the ridiculous rule of “temporary marriage” (259). Through the narration of Azin’s experience, the author exposes the discriminatory divorce and child custody laws (272, 286). Nassrin’s alienation from her own body shows the psychological effects of Iran’s oppressive laws (295-96).
The Veil and Iranian Women
In the Memoir forcing the veil upon women becomes a tool to veil their identities. Veiling in Khomeini’s regime becomes as much a political force as did unveiling in Reza Shah’s time. Reading Lolita in Tehran, like other works by female authors revolving around the same issues, rejects veiling “when it becomes the site of political contestation, a force of an eventful law and order, when the veil became compulsory and a means of control of the mind and freedom” (Zalipour 412). “Before the revolution,… she had worn the scarf as a testament to her faith. Her decision was a voluntary act. When the revolution forced the scarf on others, her action became meaningless (Nafisi 9).
Throughout the book, it is veiling of the mind and freedom that is accused and resisted. When Nafisi is told to cover the windows, the readers can draw a parallel between covered women and windows. Here windows are an allusion to the window of mind granting freedom of thought and imagination.
Nafisi herself stands against the regime’s laws by detesting and defying the veil that has become a mandatory practice in Iran:
“I told …that my integrity as a teacher and a woman was being compromised by its insistence that I wear the veil under false pretences for a few thousand tumans a month. The issue was not so much the veil itself as freedom of choice. My grandmother had refused to leave the house for three months when she was forced to unveil. I would be similarly adamant in my own refusal.” (Nafisi 101)
Through constant surveillance, the application of violent punitive measures, and restrictive dress code, the regime goes to great lengths to ensure women’s compliance in its attempts to control them. The chador, or veil, becomes an instrument of suppression, “forever marred by the political significance it had gained” (Nafisi 192), which once stood as a choice and right of women to protect their privacy and to express their religiosity. By imposing the veil, the authorities put women in a position where they can no longer maintain their capacity for agency and autonomous movement. Women experience the arbitrary curtailment of their individual rights not only as a state of bodily entrapment, but as a form of psychic mutilation. With their bodies entrapped in the cloth of religio-political propaganda for male dominance, these women eventually lose sight of themselves and appear to live in “a disembodied state of suspension” Nafisi (58). Such entrapment and concealment of women, with the segregation of male and female spheres of life, a conflictive relationship between the system’s oppressive demands and women’s desires for freedom emerges. Nafisi, in reflecting about one of her students, wonders, “Is she aware […] of her own power? Does she realize how dangerous she can be when her every stray gesture is a disturbance to public safety?” (27).
The ruling gender system promotes a dichotomy between physical and spiritual love that does not take into consideration the desire of the body and, as a consequence, women dismiss the possibility of sexual gratification. “These girls, my girls,” says Nafisi, “knew next to nothing about their own bodies, and what they should expect of these bodies which, they had been told, were the source of all temptation” (304). Thus, such treatment and process of objectification renders the female body empty of positive meaning, desexualized, and turning into a source of shame.
For Nafisi, her return to teaching can be seen as a compromise as well as a thrill for her. She takes a moral stand against the regime’s mandatory policy of veiling by leaving her position at the University of Tehran. In a meeting with Mr. Bahri, her student, Nafisi was asked why she wanted to jeopardize the revolution for a “piece of cloth” (164). Nafisi objects to the regime’s confiscation of the veil as a symbol for its fight against “Western Cultural Imperialism”. Thus, by refusing to wear it in her official capacity as a professor, despite the fact that she must wear it as a private citizen, Nafisi finds her teaching difficult. Also, she is advised to teach because the spreading of ideas is a resistance to the oppressive policies of the regime in itself. Eventually, after quite some time of meditation Nafisi agrees to accept the position at Allameh Tabatabai University, leaving University of Tehran that made her feel like a hypocrite.
On one instance, Nafisi writes that “Living in the Islamic Republic is like having sex with a man you loathe” (329). In repeated stories of vice squads’ arbitrary powers, the sexual molestations that pass for security searches, and the arguments about the veil itself, she develops the theme of frustration against the oppressive government. It appears that the regime is intent on controlling all aspects of women’s sexuality.
In section three Nafisi had referred to her grandmother’s wearing of the veil as an act of free choice, a special pious act which defined her personal relationship with God and which was not political in nature. In the fourth section, she intensifies the exploitation of veil by discussing Mahshid’s relationship to the veil: “she willingly wore it before the revolution, and yet after it becomes mandatory for all women, it is oppressive to her.” The reason for giving these two contradictory images of women and their choices of veiling, in contrast to the women who want to get rid of it, and by making it obligatory for all women, is to show that the special significance of it in the lives of Iranian women as a choice has been nullified. No one in looking at Mahshid could tell if it were her desire to veil or if it were simply thrust upon her. This results in self-doubt, depression, and self-loathing.
Conclusion
This paper shows how religion has been used as the basis for oppressing women in Iran. Their sexuality, identity, and other aspects of life are controlled and nullified by religio-political abuse. Nafisi and her students use literature as a means to escape the harsh realities of their politically controlled society. The confiscation of their basic rights results not only in a curtailment of their physical freedom but also in the curtailment of freedom of thought, imagination and creativity. Nafisi and her students open a window through literature that allows them to look out and find solace. The paper shows how government maintains and controls its power over women through religious exploitation and demands conformity by imposing laws on them. The inequality of genders is at the heart of the revolution as men are least affected by it.
Works Cited
- Corbella, Walter. “Strategies of Resistance and the Problem of Ambiguity in Azar Nafisi's ‘Reading Lolita in Tehran.’” Mosaic: An Interdisciplinary Critical Journal, vol. 39, no. 2, 2006, pp. 107–123. JSTOR, JSTOR, www.jstor.org/stable/44030189.
- DePaul, Amy. “Fighting Words: Reading Lolita in Tehran.” PopMatters, 30 July 2008, www.popmatters.com/fighting-words-2496156195.html.
- Kamalkhani, Zahra. Women's Islam: Religious Practice Among Women in Today's Iran. London: Kegan Paul, 1998.
- Kousha, Mahnaz. Voices from Iran: The Changing Lives of Iranian Women. Syracuse, NY: Syracuse UP, 2002.
- Minh-Ha, Trinh T. Woman, Native, Other: Writing Postcoloniality and Feminism. Bloomington: Indiana UP, 1989.
- Nafisi, Azar. Reading Lolita in Tehran: A Memoir in Books. New York: Random, 2003.
- Nazari, Hossein. “Reading Islamophobia in Azar Nafisi's ‘Reading Lolita in Tehran.’” U.S. Studies Online Forum for New Writing, 8 July 2015, www.baas.ac.uk/usso/reading-islamophobia-in-azar-nafisis-reading-lolita-in-tehran/
- Turhan, Filiz. “Reader's Circle | Reading Lolita in Tehran by Azar Nafisi.” Random House Reader's Circle, The Random House Publishing Group, www.randomhouse.com/rhpg//rc/library/display.pperl?isbn=9780812971064&view=tg
- Zalipour, Arezou, et al. “The Veil and Veiled Identities in Iranian Diasporic Writings.” 2011 International Conference on Social Science and Humanity IPEDR © , vol.5 , no. (2011), Jan. 2011, doi:10.13140/2.1.1362.2724.
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