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THE CRITICISM OF MAN‐DOMINATED SOCIETY. AROUND THE
IRANIAN FEMALE POET: FOROUGH FARROKHZAD
Leila GHALEHTAKI *
The modern Persian poetry evolved during the Second World War by Nima Youchidj and was
completed and expanded later by some disciples of Nima. Among them, there was a woman who
deeply influenced her generation by the originality of her work: Forough Farrokhzad.
Remaining faithful to the modern Persian poetry, Forough used her poetry in her fight against the
inequality of sexes in Iran in 1950s and 1960s. The female poet criticized the vices of society and
unjust mores against women, expressed her worries, fears and pain as a woman, a mother, and
poetess. What feeds her poetry was her experience, passion, lost love, tumultuous life, divorce and
hesitation of leaving her only child. Her personal life becomes the starting point of her revolt against
the injustice of man toward woman, all women indeed.
In her revolt, she uses poetry to represent a woman who, to get rid of bitterness and boredom,
took refuge in the enchanted world of poetry. Her goal is to profit from her poetry in order to
discuss problems of the Iranian woman, to teach her to stand up against the cultural as well as
traditional constraints, established by man and to establish gender equality as well. She wanted the
community to recognize the right of women against the authoritarian man. Thus, she uses a free
poetry which is modern, simple and compatible with the life of Iranian women in the twentieth
century, close to the people of her time.
In a passionate love, she married very early, at the age of 16 to a man 14 years older than her,
but soon that marriage faced an impasse. In the meantime, she began writing her first poems that
she published later under the name of “The Captive". The poems in this first collection express the
life of a woman trapped in the problems of married life, looking at her empty existence.
Her world is completely hostile and stifling symbolized by the prison and the cage. The woman
feels herself a prisoner, a caged bird whose guard is the man of her life. She sees her child only
through the bars of her prison. This prisoner as a caged bird dreaming of freedom, awaits freedom
and even hesitates desperately about her freedom. She keeps thinking:
I think and I know that ever
I cannot free myself from this cage
Although the jailer freed me
I no longer have the strength to take flight. (The Captive)
In this painful wait, she begins to remember her happy past when she was a beautiful flower;
young and happy. Trapped by love, she is deprived of everything that already defined her life: her
youth, happiness and freedom. The poet reflects her very pessimistic feelings towards love which
means the entry into the world of man where everything that exists belongs to him. Love is seen as
possession and that the man is the one who owns completely his woman.
In this man's world, women cannot exist as an independent being. Indeed, she loses her
independence and even her essence to become an immobile being, blind and deaf: "a doll", as she
says, “a wind‐up doll” that looks around her through her glass eyes which lies "shouting without
reason": Oh, I'm happy!" (The Captive). Thus, life of such a woman is based on a big lie, because she
lies not only to others, but also lies to herself. The question therefore arises for the poet. Should I
continue to live like this or get out of the possession of man? She finally decides to rebel and declares
her position in her second major collection entitled "The Rebellion".
*
French Department, Shahid Chamran University of Ahvaz, Iran..