Women in the Discourses' Struggle in the Novel Madaran va Doxtaran (Mothers and Daughters)

Authors
Ghodsieh Rezvanian
Mona Taleshi
Reza Sattari
Farzad Baloo
University of Mazandaran
Abstract
The novel Madaran va Doxtaran (Mothers and Daughters), by Mahshid Amirshahi, narrates the lifestyle of four generations of women in the context of common discourses of contemporary Iranian history. This research, using qualitative content analysis, combines Pierre Bourdieu’s theory of cultural capital and gender order, to examine the living and intellectual status of women in this four-volume novel. From the perspective of Pierre Bourdieu’s theory, cultural capital includes knowledge, skills, and cultural capabilities that enable women to be active and present, but gender order is a social and cultural structure that reproduces inequality and patriarchal domination and establishes women’s position as objects and subordinates. In the novel, the first two volumes show the acceptance of the gender order and women’s limited cultural capital, while in the next two volumes, characters such as Mehrowlia and Shahrbanoo, with greater cultural capital, have been able to increase their political and social subjectivity and provide a critique of ideologies and modernity. Based on memoir narratives, the novel represents the conflict between women's agency and passivity, and shows that female subjectivity is shaped by the conflict between limited cultural capital and an unequal gender order, while simultaneously creating the possibility of resistance and change. This analysis introduces the novel as an arena of complex interaction of gender, politics, and culture in contemporary Iranian history.
Keywords
Madaran va Doxtaran Novel
Mahshid Amirshahi
Cultural Capital
Gender Order
Subjectivity
Objectivity
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