The Self Reflected: Mirrors in Persian Poetry

Undergraduates: Leah Balkoski, Tahjamare Warren, Neusha Zadeh

Faculty Advisor: Claudia Yaghoobi
Department: English & Comparative Literature

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In the aftermath of the Second World War, the Iranian government and sociopolitical sphere were set into turmoil by a 1953 coup d¿¿¿etat assisted by the United States CIA, which put the authoritarian regime of Reza Shah Pahlavi in power. Reza Shah focused on modernization and Westernization to present a more ¿¿¿advanced¿¿¿ image of Iran to his Western allies, but his policies did little to actually help the impoverished and disenfranchised, and heavily restricted political freedoms. Born in 1935, Forugh Farrokhzad came of age under the rule of Reza Shah, and thus had a firsthand understanding of the social and political climate of the time: as a woman, she particularly was caught in the tug of war between the competing interests of traditionalism, nationalism, and secularization. Through her poetry, she affirmed her own identity and autonomy in the face of the regime¿¿¿s repressive platform. In our research, we analyze her use of eye and mirror imagery as a reclamation of self-sovereignty and the reversal of the male gaze in her poems ¿¿¿Another Birth,¿¿¿ ¿¿¿The Gift,¿¿¿ ¿¿¿Green Phantasm,¿¿¿ and ¿¿¿Earthly Verses¿¿¿. We argue that Farrokhzad uses this kind of imagery to subvert the typical state women are placed into as the object of desire, instead presenting herself as the subject, turning her own gaze onto herself to contemplate alienation and her role as a woman, bringing female sexuality to the public eye, and also onto men, placing them in the position of desired object.