Feministic Approach
Throughout many centuries and most cultures, humankind could have access to privilege, power, and language; however, the amount of their benefit could be determined by their biological features. If they were male, they would acquire the major share. Not only could men get more privilege in materialistic affairs; they enjoyed cultural, psychological, and religious superiority too. On the other hand, female used to be regarded as the other in society who could not have any proper access to the social resources. Such an attitude started from micro level to the macro level of social hierarchies. In the other words, it has been believed that the female oppression has been started from the families; “for centuries, and all over Europe, there were families who disposed of 'unnecessary' or unmarriageable daughters by shutting them away in convents” (Walters, 2005). The idea of female oppression has penetrated into all layers of society among both educated and uneducated people even the most educated people like “Aristotle [who] declared that 'the female is female by virtue of a certain lack of qualities; and St. Thomas Aquinas believed that woman is an 'imperfect man'.”(Seldon, 2005).
Since the 1979 Revolution in Iran, the number of women instituting themselves in different arenas of artistic endeavor such as film, theater, music, art, short story and novel writing has augmented noticeably. "After 1979 revolution, specially in the last three decades in Iran, the cultural and structural changes have transformed the social roles, and have risen the level of awareness in women" (Rezvanian & Kiani, 2015, p. 43). This rise in the number of female writers has been remarkable. It is all the more remarkable when we look at the history of the Persian novel. "Compared to Europe, the novel, as a literary genre, came very late to the Middle East and Iran. It does not go back any further than the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries, when the modernization of this part of the world began" (Hashabeiky, 2011, p. 140). "Women’s literature in Iran, i.e. the literature produced by women, does not enjoy a very long history" (Saeidian & Hosseini, 2013, p. 64).
According to Hashabeiky (2011), although the construction of modern Iranian society, at least in the beginning, was restricted to the establishment of economic and military institutions, the influence of other aspects of Western civilization cannot be ignored. The advent of printing and journalism together with the translations of the literary works from the West were among the key factors that played an important role in the rise of the Persian novel in the early decades of the twentieth century. Among other aspects that led to the rise of the Persian novel were the Iranian students who had been sent to the West to study, as well as, other Iranians who lived in exile in the neighboring countries like Russia and Turkey, where they contributed to the rise of the new literary genre. "The final years of the 20th century onwards are considered as the Iranian female writers’ thriving and dominance in the field of literature, especially that of fiction writing" (Saeidian & Hosseini, 2013, p. 70)
Feminist novels are mostly written by the post-revolutionary cohort of women novelists both in Iran and in the Diaspora. "It is hardly necessary to say that the feminist novels show abundant sensitivity towards gender issues. They are almost always written from the viewpoint of a female character or narrator" (Hashabeiky, 2011, p. 147). "In contemporary Persian literature, specifically in the works of Forough Farrokhzad and Simin Daneshvar, there is a feminine voice projected from a womanly understanding and insight of the life" (Rezvanian & Kiani, 2015, p. 41).
The distinct characteristic sorting out the feminist novels from the social novels is that in the feminist novels, the historical and socio-political contexts are either absent or a secondary issue. The feminist novels revolve around "the differences between men and women, their two separate worlds, and on women’s feelings" (Hashabeiky, 2011, p. 147). The feminist novels are hooked on the opposition between the two genders. In these novels, men are usually present just as a means to underscore the differences between the two sexes.
Throughout many centuries and most cultures, humankind could have access to privilege, power, and language; however, the amount of their benefit could be determined by their biological features. If they were male, they would acquire the major share. Not only could men get more privilege in materialistic affairs; they enjoyed cultural, psychological, and religious superiority too. On the other hand, female used to be regarded as the other in society who could not have any proper access to the social resources. Such an attitude started from micro level to the macro level of social hierarchies. In the other words, it has been believed that the female oppression has been started from the families; “for centuries, and all over Europe, there were families who disposed of 'unnecessary' or unmarriageable daughters by shutting them away in convents” (Walters, 2005). The idea of female oppression has penetrated into all layers of society among both educated and uneducated people even the most educated people like “Aristotle [who] declared that 'the female is female by virtue of a certain lack of qualities; and St. Thomas Aquinas believed that woman is an 'imperfect man'”(Seldon, 2005).
To solve this sexual discrimination and stand for the women’s rights, a new movement started to shape. After feminism started to shape as a social movement which fights for female equality, many drastic changes took place in different fields. Literature has been an important media that was influenced by this social movement and a new literary trend for reading literary works shaped which was called feminist criticism. Feminist criticism comes in literary world in many forms and feminist critics have various goals. In this literary trend, how women are treated is analyzed and highlighted.
The patriarchal system required women to be domestic, submissive, and silent creatures. Moreover, they should have been also “accomplished, demure and pious”( Peterson, 1984). To stand for the rights of women, feminism emerged as
a system of thought for female expression. This system has challenged all the ideologies regarding the stereotypes of women. According to Wilfred et al. “feminism is an overtly political approach and can attack other approaches for their false assumptions about women”( Wilfred, et all., 1996).
As it has been mentioned, this movement contained different fields particularly literature and literary criticism and it examined how women had been depicted in literature as Tyson claims that "broadly defined, feminist criticism examines the ways in which literature (and other cultural productions) reinforces or undermines the economic, political, social, and psychological oppression of women"(2006). Therefore, this movement became a weapon for women to show their existence since "feminist literary criticism advocates equal rights for all women (indeed, all people) in all
areas of life..."( Bressler, 2006)
A work of fiction aims to both implicitly and explicitly reproduce the lived experiences of a society through an illustrative image of collective and individual form. This representation of a real world which is transferred into a fictional world helps to reflect the problems of females in a contemporary society in a more effective and expansive way. Novel is one of the most applicable means in order to deliver this aim among the other forms of fiction.
Theme is one of the most significant elements of a work of fiction. "Theme, is an abstract concept illuminated through a work of fiction in general which welds the all parts of a work to make a unified whole" (Zanusi, 2013, p. 1). Writers would have the opportunity to describe their views and insights towards the world around them; consequently, they can introduce a new perspective to the mind of the readers. Analyzing the theme, and the motifs of a work helps the reader to learn about the major concerns and obsessions of the writer. Story and novel can both project the salient changes in cultural, societal, and political domain; moreover, they can provide a breeding ground for the growth of new ideas.
Simin Daneshvar is known as the pioneer of women's strong presence in writing and literature in contemporary era. "After Daneshvar, there appeared such female writers as Moniro Ravanipour, Ghazaleh Alizadeh, Fereshteh Molavi, etc. who held their pens in producing works of literature" (Zanusi, 2013, p. 2). Iran in the recent decades has witnessed an exponential growth in the number of works written by women.Anyway the present situation of female writers in recent years depicts that the development of their individuality and their understanding of the changes in the contemporary society in Iran are the changes whose fruit for women is the product of more than a century of efforts and hard works" (Saeidian & Hosseini, 2013, p. 64).
The fictional world of the novels and their vast realm of imagination have grounded these writers with the prospect to look at the social involvements and obstacles through a feminine perspective with its peculiar worldview.
The general theme of My Bird focuses upon "the concerns women are obsessed with regarding the society they live in; furthermore, it pays close attention to the circumstances that destroy the marital bonds and the ties among the members of a family" (Zanusi, 2013, p. 2). There are some traces all through the novel in order to help the reader to reach the inner-layers of meaning. By analyzing the theme and motifs of this work, this paper is going to scrutinize the main concerns of the writer through the techniques she applies in order to project the main issues any woman is dealing with in the contemporary society.
Due to its dependency on societal and chronological conditions, the assignment of social gender frequently turns out to be a rather complicated part of the translation process. The following examples are intended, on the one hand, to demonstrate some ways in which translators have tried to disentangle the problems and, on the other, to show that the choices made imply ideological considerations as well.
The exposition of some of the problems that arise when translating gender has shown that a variety of parameters are involved when translators have to make their choice of gender. This is especially true of the translation of expressions where the determination of social gender has turned out to be more complex and ambiguous than the selection of expressions which inherently belong to a specific gender.
It is only on a superficial level that Fariba Vafi restricts herself to the day-to-day problems of the female protagonist, to the same old difficulties faced by this mother of two, to the marital quarrels with her husband. Right from the opening chapter, the seemingly naive narrative contains a subtext that runs through the whole microcosm described in the novel and brings it vibrantly to life.
A young Iranian woman, who remains nameless throughout the story, tells of the residential area in an equally nameless large Iranian city to which she and her husband and children have moved. Everything is new and strange to her. The book opens with the sentence: "This is the People's Republic of China." In reality, however, the woman has never been to China; it is just the way she imagines China to be: loud, confusing, and "full of people". However, the comparison with China (and two pages later with India) is anything but coincidental. Regarding to the purpose of this study, following research question is addressed:
Q: To what extent could the English translation of book “my bird” reflect the feminism purpose of the author Fariba Vafi’s translating?
1. Review of the Related Literature
According to Munday (2001), "throughout history, written and spoken translation played a crucial role in interhuman communication." (p.5). Newmark (1988), also, calls 20th century "the age of translation" or "reproduction." (p. 3). Translation is considered as an essential factor in the development of different societies all over the world. The concept of translation, however, is not just the mechanical act of transferring meaning from one language into another, rather as Benjamin (1989/2000,) asserts, it is the act of "re-creation." (p.82). In this creative process, Benjamin (1989/2000) continues, "there could be no objectivity, not even a claim to it." (p. 77). Therefore, the translator, as the re-creator of the work, has her/his own intention in translating the text. And when "intention" in the process of re-creating a text is at work, the translator’s ‘ideology’ plays a crucial role in revealing her/his intention.
Fawcett (2001) defines ideology as "an action-oriented set of beliefs" (p.107) and believes that, especially after the spread of deconstruction and cultural studies, the concept of ideology came into attention. Regarding the relationship between ideology and translation, Fawcett (2001) quotes Lefevere (1992) that "on every level of translation process, it can be shown that, if linguistic considerations enter into conflict with considerations of an ideological and/or poetological nature, the latter tend to win out." (p.106). Therefore, ideology can be one of the most effective factors in the process of translation.
Clearly related to the notions of ideology and translation is language, which is the main concern in translation. Any translator primarily works on the first language, and then she/he transfers the message to the receptor via second language. Language, however, is not a neutral means of transferring ideas and beliefs.
A brief glance over the history of language reveals that it is one of the most important means of showing power, and because history according to some feminist critics was patriarchal, men were mostly the sources of power by which they shaped language as they desired. In other words, language is man-made and raises gender-related issues in which patriarchal ideologies are dominant. Hence, the significance of gender is related to language and translation. The most influential movement that pays attention to differences between men and women and tries to overcome the stereotypical view of women in the patriarchal societies is Feminism.
The traces of the movement began in early 1900s when women started playing social roles. They tried to introduce themselves as one important part of the society by obtaining the suffrage, but still they were not equal to men (Bressler, 2007, p. 171).
Virginia Wolf, an outstanding figure in the history of feminist criticism, published her famous book A Room of One’s Own in 1929 in which she talked about why the picture of talented women in the history of literature in the world is not seen.
In 1960s with the rebirth of feminist criticism, the writings about and of women became important again bringing about two distinct pictures of women. The first one is the picture of women in the works of men writers: the physical, social, behavioral and psychological characteristics that male authors gave to their female characters. The second focus of feminist criticism was on women as writers.
Elaine Showalter in her well-known book, A Literature of Their Own (1977) divides female writings into three historical phases. The first is called the "feminine phase" (1840-1880) in which women writers like Charlotte Bronte and George Eliot wrote under the influence of a male dominant society and male pseudonyms. In her view, they were isolated from their social lives.
In the second period or the "feminist phase (1880-1920) female writers helped dramatize the plight of the slighted woman, depicting the harsh and often cruel treatment of female characters at the hands of their more powerful male creations" (Bressler, 2007, p.176). Finally, in the third or "female phase" (1970- present) women writers reject the secondary and passive role of women in the two previous phases. In this period, for the first time we can see "female understanding of female experience" (Bressler, 2007, p.176). In Showalter’s view, women in this phase try to uncover the misogyny or the male hatred of women in the texts (Bressler, 2007, pp.175-76). Also, in her essay "Toward a Feminine Poetics" (1997) Showalter introduces the term "gynocriticism" by which she means that the female theorists must develop a female framework for analyzing and evaluating women’s literature (in Guerin et al, 2005, pp. 225-26).
Sherry Simon (1996) mentions a "three stage evolution" in feminism. She calls the first stage "an essentialist phase" in which the reality of being a woman is important because it is the opposing force against the "abuses of patriarchy;" the second stage, called "a constructionist model," focuses on the point that difference between men and women is something which is created historically and socially in the area of language and culture; and the third stage, which is the actual result of the second, looks upon this difference "to be produced dialogically in relation to what it excludes." (p.14).
Another issue related to translation and gender ideology is what Hatim and Munday (2004) called "translation project." They define it as "an approach to literary translation in which a feminist translator openly advocates and implements strategies (linguistic and otherwise) to foreground the feminist in the translated text" (p.105). Also, they believe that the opposite strategy occurs when "gendered-marked works are translated in such a way that their distinctive characteristics are effaced" (p.106). This usually is done by non-feminist or gender-neutral translators of feminist works.
A closely related issue is the concept of ‘gender’ which is taken by so many people as the equivalent for ‘sex,’ although there is a basic difference between the two terms. While sex (biological gender) refers to physical features of people "based on their anatomy (external genitalia, chromosomes, and internal reproductive system)," gender is a socially constructed phenomenon that "attributes qualities of masculinity or femininity to people" (Karoubi, n.d, p.5).
2.2.1 Overview of Fariba Vafi and My Bird
Fariba Vafi was born in Tabriz in northwestern Iran on January 21, 1963. Her first novel, My Bird, came out in 2002 and won the award for top novel from the Golshiri Foundation and Yalda Literary Award later in the same year. In 2003 her Tarlan, a novel was published. Two years later, The Tibet Dream was released, for which she won the top prize of the Golshiri Foundation. Some of her short stories have been translated into Russian, Japanese, Swedish, Turkish, etc.
She has won several awards and accolades from different literary events.
The novel of My Bird portrays the story of life, love, and the demands of marriage and motherhood, Fariba Vafi gives readers a portrait of one woman’s struggle to adapt to the complexity of life in modern Iran. The narrator, a housewife and young mother living in a low-income neighborhood in Tehran, with her husband Amir who desires to immigrate to Canada. When he finally slips away,the young woman is forced to raise the children alone and care for her ailing mother.
2.2.3 Female Writing in My Bird
Showalter believes that in this phase, different aspects of being a woman can come to existence. This stage is associated with self-discovery and realization of their own gender. It is in this phase that women have understood that they are different from men and through such differences, they could develop and reach self-awareness. The physical differences that they have would make them experience, feel, and think uniquely: "In order to live a fully human life, we require not only control of our bodies … we must touch the unity and resonance of our physicality … so there is a kind of celebration of woman’s body as a source of imagery in writers". Therefore, "women define and categorize areas of difference and similarity which in turn allow us to comprehend the world around us through language"(Shwoalter, 1986).
The author shows that at first the woman in this novel did not have any activity and self-awareness. The narrator suffers from loneliness since his husband just thought about going to Canada.
Physically, he is at home, mentally he is away, neglecting his wife’s feelings and needs. Living in his own world, he neither sees nor hears her. This life in loneliness and silence reminds the wife of her childhood in silence with a strict father and a bitter mother. She is not particularly in love with her husband, but she is not strong enough to leave him either. Therefore, she continues to live with him, while keeping silent about her true feelings about Amir. (Vafi, 2002)
However through her own imagination and mentality, she can release herself from this marriage and think about her own desires as a woman. The narrator says:
Amir does not know that I betray him one hundred times a day; when I pick up his pajamas left on the floor, precisely as he has taken them off; when at our parties, he is so busy with other people that he does not even think of me […]; when he looks at me as the reason behind all his failures. He does not know that I leave this marriage one hundred times a day […] for places that he cannot even imagine. Then, in the darkness of a night like this, I return to this house and to
Amir like a penitent woman. (Ibid)
As the story develops, so does the main character’s personality. Once she puts her head on Amir’s chest, she thinks about their marriage and condition; she breaks from that traditional woman she used to be and moves towards independence: "I come closer to Amir and put my head on his chest. His chest is too hard. I put my head a bit lower. Amir caresses my hair […]. He cannot even imagine how tired I am of him”(Ibid). The narrator has to go through a complex process in order to reach the self-discovery that every woman wishes for; she experiences “carelessness from the husband…and the society as well”(Zanusi, 2013). Therefore, she decides to experience her own liberation; however,she is tried to be prevented from such feeling. “I feel the liberation and I talk about it, but Amir does not let me to express such an important word about such trivial and unimportant sentiments".(Vafi, 2002)
In this novel, the main character wants to acquire her own identity through liberal thoughts that she wants to have. She wants to face her own female part in a context which is free from any patriarchal ideologies; she is neither submissive nor protesting; she wants to be free, therefore, "she is no longer frightened by patriarchal traditions and founds her relationship with the opposite sex upon human feelings and passions, and values the counterpart as much as she does herself"(Saeidian & Hosseini, 2013) She is the character who has gone through a complete transformation from a traditional woman to a modern woman whose role has been redifined, and her fears as well as her silence are gone; she admits "that very moment I thought about my silence. It was like a rental dress that my attention was suddenly directed to"(Showalter, 1986).
The female stage shows the place that a woman can reach at the end through self-contemplation; she can express what she feels as Showalter believes "feelings of alienation from male predecessors…their culturally conditioned timidity about self-dramatization, their dread of the patriarchal authority of art, their anxiety about the impropriety of female invention." (p.65) All can be worked out, if a woman trusts herself and her nature. on this condition, she can know that she has her own potential that must be found and cherished as in the case of the main character of My Bird; eventually, she remarks "The one whose bird flies away from a place, it hardly can stay in the same place. The bird becomes a stranger in its own place. Do I have a bird? My own bird"(Vafi,2002, p.98). This statement shows the self-awareness that the main character has reached.
2. Results
3.1 The Ways to Decipher the Messages
3.1.1 The Dialogues between the Characters
The narration and the one who narrates paly a great role to express the theme in the works of fiction. Zanusi (2013), regards that narration does not mean to simply retell the events based on a consecutive order but it means to structure the story based on a unified order that ends up to a whole, and makes the wholeness of a work. Narration also includes the stream-of-consciousness.
The writer as the narrator is not present in the story sometimes; consequently, there are the characters as the narrator expressing the theme of the novel by talking and voicing their ideas about different subjects in different occasions. Such occasions can be the time when the characters are describing a phenomenon, when they are having a dialogue, and sometimes when they are talking to themselves or thinking aloud. Most often, the central character of the novel can reveal much about the central theme of the story through speeches, and actions. Sometimes it is the speeches of minor characters that guides us to understanding the hidden layers of the meaning in a story. Characters may use implications to send their ideas in indirect ways.
Zanusi (2013), points that in My Bird, the central female character is also the narrator of the events in the novel. The writer of the novel can indicate the theme and motifs through different points of view. Having used the first person point of view for the narrator, the writer is capable of entering to the minds of other characters and disclose the realities about them that helps the reader to learn more about the characters. Fariba Vafi has given the narrator a friendly and emotional tone that is used to emphasize the feminine atmosphere within the story.
Tone, in general, gives a kind of special identity and personality to the characters. "The narration tone in such novels that the author is hidden within the story, can be a projection of inner-thoughts of the writer or narrator" (Zanusi, 2013, p. 4).
3.1.2 The Absence of Mutual Care and Understanding
The negligence of husbands to mutually understand their wives is one of the extant problems that nearly all the female characters in the novel encounter. "Such a carelessness from the husband to the wife leads into a negligent treatment from the wife to her children, and the society as well" (Zanusi, 2013, p. 5). The narrator is so happy with the shopping for the house; she says, "I feel the liberation and I talk about it, but Amir does not let me to express such an important word about such trivial and unimportant sentiments" (Vafi, 2002, p. 10). In Amir's perspective liberty does not make sense while they are encapsulated in such a small apartment house they live in. "He can see my eyebrows that it has been months that whole the world knows and he does not know they do not have the shape of an arrow" (ibid, p. 64).
Amir as the antagonist to the narrator says, "When we married I told you from the day one that I want a company for my way not a stone on my way" (ibid, p. 93). Men planning for their times while ignoring their wives, brings about such an impression. The narrator faces with her daughter, Shadi's indifference, when she talks to her about the unreal love. "I seem like a desperate speech maker who has been talking about art for an hour and now the audiences ask questions about economics" (ibid, p. 24). "But I well remember that one side of my face was always swollen...I was taken to the prosthodontist by the time it was too late for any cure, the tooth had to be pulled out" (ibid, p. 72). Such a present time indifference in behavior roots in the parents' negligence towards the child, and it proceeds the same way. "Once you see wherever you go, you are asked about your children, and you have to take them with you everywhere... " (ibid, p. 77). The narrator later talks about her sisters being busy with their own businesses. Even when in Baku, Amir talks about the trains and houses rather than his wife and family.
3.1.3 Hatred of Loneliness
Due to the frustrations, listlessness from the routines, and indifference, the narrator feels lonely. She is harassed by such a loneliness, and tries to escape from it. On one day that the children leave the home to play outside, she says, "As though everybody left you in here" (ibid, p. 11). As Zanusi (2013) relates, the narrator shows her feelings of fear, loneliness, and insecurity by soliloquies when she faces with apathy from Amir as she relates the point of the bitter memories. "I was shocked and the feeling of loneliness and frustration have distanced me and Amir like a concubine does" (ibid, p. 11). "Amir has no idea that I betray him one hundred times a day" (ibid, p. 41). "When he leaves me alone, I betray him" (ibid, p. 42).
3.1.4 In Search of a Lost Identity
The female characters in the novel are in search of their lost identities. "We can see the symptoms of rejecting the masculine dominant discourse and its values and at the same time exploring the feminine self but the important point to be emphasized here is that women do not consider themselves inferior to men any longer but consider themselves as human beings who do not differ from men. She is no longer frightened by patriarchal traditions and founds her relationship with the opposite sex upon human feelings and passions, and values the counterpart as much as she does herself" (Saeidian & Hosseini, 2013, p. 70). "Also it should be noted that most of the female characters of these stories are trapped in a limbo between tradition and modernity, and their identity remains mysterious and hidden. That is why they are still reluctant in the battle to win freedom and independence from men and realize their own individuality" (Saeidian & Hosseini, 2013, p. 63).
"Fariba Vafi in ‘My Bird’ (the winner of the best novel of the year in 2002) portrays a woman’s sexual life who is also engaged in difficulties of her life, children and routines. Similar to some modern heroines, she looks at love doubtfully and reviews her relationships with her husband, family and children in her mind through a loud and anxious monologue. Her world is enchanted, empty of any excitement..." (Saeidian & Hosseini, 2013, pp. 62-63). These women try to find such a lost identity by contemplating about themselves, and paying close attention in their relations to the others. "The main character in My Bird is passive against the events taking place but she contemplates them in the mind" (Rezvanian & Kiani, 2015, p. 47).
The search for female individuality is a very important issue for the womanly world that My Bird has pointed it out in different sections. "The identity of contemporary Iraninan woman is a synthsis of the traditional and modern identities, and she is seeking for identity independence, social activities, growth in personality, awareness, ability, and social position" (Rafat Jah, 2008, pp. 152-155). The female narrator of the events who has a silence combined with fear is trying to break this fear. "That very moment I thought about my silence. It was like a rental dress that my attention was suddenly directed to" (Vafi, 2002, p. 25). "Years later I learnt that speech can be even a better hiding place than silence" (ibid). In addition, she repeats that her silence is like a woolen tight dress that she is going to get rid of.
3.2 Description of the Setting
Setting signifies the time and place that a certain event takes place. By using the temporal and spatial descriptions, the writer of the novel stops the sequence of the events in order to beware the reader of whatever is happening within the story. Indeed, the writer tries to guide the reader of the novel to the depth of the events and understanding of the situations. Since the narration in short stories is not lengthy, the descriptions are not so thick and detailed; thus, the main ploy to get the story ahead is through the dialogues of the characters. Zanusi (2013), remarks that descriptions in the stories make the movement of the events sluggish; consequently, it helps the reader to concentrate on the main stream of events in the story; furthermore, the writers find the chance to insinuate and project their ideas.
In the novel, the writer can have enough time and space to go through the descriptions in a way that sometimes several pages can be written in the descriptions for a specific case in the story to bring about an occasion the writer can put forward their main notions and thoughts in-between these descriptions. In the stories written today, the task of transferring the meaning is mainly expected from the characters.
Descriptions play two important roles in producing a work of fiction. One being a means to reflect the themes and motifs, and the other making the events a unified whole. Description is the link between the parts; it both connects a sequence of parts and simultaneously shapes the big picture of the story beyond the events.
In My Bird, Fariba Vafi has used several parts implying the theme and motifs of the novel. There is a part in which the narrator accompanying her husband goes to the park and each imagines the future life of the other one when they are old. The conversation they have in this regard shows their inability in understanding each other. "I always choose the most handsome old people. I do not like to choose a bald and haggard old man and say this is your future" (ibid, p. 9). "But Amir points a very old woman that is like a squeezed piece of paper, wrinkled, and tells me, that is you in twenty years" (ibid). In one part, that it is raining and the narrator calls her husband to go back home but Amir is indifferent to what she asked. "He does not see me.
He does not hear me" (p. 15). She also shows her loneliness, "Where is Amir? Maybe he is in another part of the world. I do not know. However, he is not at this home any longer. He has left" (ibid). In section twenty-four of the novel, while having breakfast, Amir remembers a recorded tape he brought with him from Baku, and is searching for it. "I cannot ask what he has remembered. It is impossible to know where Amir is now. He is alone or with a company...but wherever he is, I am not there"(p. 68). Even when the narrator asks her husband to go to the work, he leaves the home reluctantly.
3. Conclusion
Vafi’s brilliant minimalist style showcases the narrator’s reticence and passivity. Brief chapters and spare prose provide the ideal architecture for the character’s densely packed unexpressed emotions to unfold on the page. Haunted by the childhood memory of her father’s death in the basement of her house while her mother ignored his entreaties for help, the narrator believes she relinquished her responsibility and failed to challenge her mother. As a single parent and head of household, she must confront her paralyzing guilt and establish her independence.
Vafi’s characters are emblematic of many women in Iran, caught between tradition and modernity. Demystifying contemporary Iran by taking readers beyond the stereotypes and into the lives of individuals, Vafi is one of the most important voices in Iranian literature. My Bird heralds her eagerly anticipated introduction to an English-speaking audience.
The Ways to Decipher the Messages
The Dialogues between the Characters
The narration and the one who narrates paly a great role to express the theme in the works of fiction. Zanusi (2013), regards that narration does not mean to simply retell the events based on a consecutive order but it means to structure the story based on a unified order that ends up to a whole, and makes the wholeness of a work. Narration also includes the stream-of-consciousness.
The writer as the narrator is not present in the story sometimes; consequently, there are the characters as the narrator expressing the theme of the novel by talking and voicing their ideas about different subjects in different occasions. Such occasions can be the time when the characters are describing a phenomenon, when they are having a dialogue, and sometimes when they are talking to themselves or thinking aloud. Most often, the central character of the novel can reveal much about the central theme of the story through speeches, and actions. Sometimes it is the speeches of minor characters that guides us to understanding the hidden layers of the meaning in a story. Characters may use implications to send their ideas in indirect ways.
Zanusi (2013), points that in My Bird, the central female character is also the narrator of the events in the novel. The writer of the novel can indicate the theme and motifs through different points of view. Having used the first person point of view for the narrator, the writer is capable of entering to the minds of other characters and disclose the realities about them that helps the reader to learn more about the characters. Fariba Vafi has given the narrator a friendly and emotional tone that is used to emphasize the feminine atmosphere within the story.
Tone, in general, gives a kind of special identity and personality to the characters. "The narration tone in such novels that the author is hidden within the story, can be a projection of inner-thoughts of the writer or narrator" (Zanusi, 2013, p. 4).
A woman from an urban space takes the role of the narrator in this novel. Like her mother, the narrator does not have a name. The writer wants to remark that the women in this novel are treated as secondary in the families, and this wave is getting through a vast part of the population of women both as mothers and as wives. She starts first with describing the noisy neighborhood they have recently moved into, then she enumerates the difficulties of apartment life as she enters to the ambience of the house. Afterwards, she remarks the personal characteristics of the people around her including her husband, children, sisters, and mother. She also talks about her relation with any of the characters surrounding her.
The Absence of Mutual Care and Understanding
The negligence of husbands to mutually understand their wives is one of the extant problems that nearly all the female characters in the novel encounter. "Such a carelessness from the husband to the wife leads into a negligent treatment from the wife to her children, and the society as well" (Zanusi, 2013, p. 5). The narrator is so happy with the shopping for the house; she says, "I feel the liberation and I talk about it, but Amir does not let me to express such an important word about such trivial and unimportant sentiments" (Vafi, 2002, p. 10). In Amir's perspective liberty does not make sense while they are encapsulated in such a small apartment house they live in. "He can see my eyebrows that it has been months that whole the world knows and he does not know they do not have the shape of an arrow" (ibid, p. 64).
Amir as the antagonist to the narrator says, "When we married I told you from the day one that I want a company for my way not a stone on my way" (ibid, p. 93). Men planning for their times while ignoring their wives, brings about such an impression. The narrator faces with her daughter, Shadi's indifference, when she talks to her about the unreal love. "I seem like a desperate speech maker who has been talking about art for an hour and now the audiences ask questions about economics" (ibid, p. 24). "But I well remember that one side of my face was always swollen...I was taken to the prosthodontist by the time it was too late for any cure, the tooth had to be pulled out" (ibid, p. 72). Such a present time indifference in behavior roots in the parents' negligence towards the child, and it proceeds the same way. "Once you see wherever you go, you are asked about your children, and you have to take them with you everywhere... " (ibid, p. 77). The narrator later talks about her sisters being busy with their own businesses. Even when in Baku, Amir talks about the trains and houses rather than his wife and family.