A Drama Belonging to Other: Exploration of Patriarchy through a Feminist Reading in three Plays by Bahram Beyzai

Patriarchy, in its diverse practices, such as public or private practices, is a key concept in feminism. Feminists believe that in a male-dominated society, men are in authority over women and women are subordinated. They believe that the masculine oriented tendencies in a male-dominated society are repeatedly reproduced. According to feminists, the causes of women’s subversion in the patriarchal society are men’s greater access to power structures, the unequal distribution of social privileges and inappropriate relations between men and women. The male-controlled society constructs women’s subjugation, and makes it possible for men to turn to mischievousness in different practices.  Patriarchy is an important issue in literary texts and many literary works, especially drama, have been written to depict this. In the beginning, women wrote about patriarchy, however, later, some male writers joined the movement and wrote about it. Bahram Beyzaie is one such author in our country. He is a highly praised Iranian dramatist, and theatre director, whose plays display women’s subordinated position and the discriminating stance of male-dominated society against women. Bahram Beyzai is a playwright who is preoccupied with the condition of women in a patriarchal society. Protagonists of his plays are female characters. They rebel against the established norms of patriarchal society. They fight in their own ways to gain their own proper dignity. Two main issues of his plays are gender inequality and differences in women and men’s social roles. Beyzai is a skilled playwright who has been cherished for his style of untainted Persian writing and for picking out Persian sagas and legendary figures. The purpose of this paper was to explore the position of female characters in Bahram Beyzai’s selected plays. The selected plays of the paper - Parde-Khane, Pahlavan Akbar Dies, Death of Yazdgerd and Wail (Nodbeh) have been explored through a descriptive-analytical approach. The patriarchal system in Parde-Khane, makes women renounce their true identity by giving new names for them. In Pahlavan Akbar Dies, the life of Pahlavan Heidar’s mother is the genuine saga of mothers in our society. Her life portrays the doom and spitting image of all mothers of the community. She lives only for her son. The story of Death of Yazdgerd is based on the slaying of Yazdgerd the Third, the last king of Sassanid Empire. Yazdgerd the Third who is severely pressured by the Arabs on the western border of Iran, escapes to Marv, shelving in disguise in a mill and eventually is slain by the miller. The story is expressed in the words of the miller, his wife and his daughter; all stories are different. In Wail (Nodbeh), Obidollah, a male character, is representative of a social system in which all ruthless features of the patriarchal system are gathered in his presence.  The exploration of the selected plays reveals that Bahram Beyzai has depicted the components of patriarchy, its influencing factors, the expansion of patriarchy, and different means of women’s struggle to emancipate them from the domination of patriarchal system.