Women in Persian Novels: A Comparative Study of Modern Persian Literature Before and After the Islamic Revolution of Iran

This study is an investigation of the status of women before and after the Islamic revolution of Iran (IRI) as reflected in the Persian novels written by both male and female authors before and after the revolution. As aninitial step, ten Iranian novels are selected, and then their women –oriented parts are analyzed within Van Dijk’s semantic macro structures (SMS) framework and with regards to the writer’s gender, attitudes, experiences ofreal life and the date of novel. The analyses suggest that there are differences between the Persian novels before and after the revolution with regards to women’s status in family and society at language as reflected in the SMS of text. IRI as a socio-cultural event affected the way in which woman are characterized in novels. The way inwhich an author describes woman characters‘appearance, the style of clothing ,and their mind is different before and after the revolution. After the revolution the characterization of women has been based on Islamic and revolutionary criteria. Also, it maybe concludes that female writers are more cautious than male writers in characterizing women in their writings. Most of them try to make the character of women prominent in spite of their problems.