Functions, Forms, and Meanings of Women’s Cheerful Performances during the Qajar Era

The current paper analyzes the sociology of three fashions of women’s cheerful performances during the Qajar Dynasty. The genres or fashions include critical and traditional performances, socio-critical performances (lustful men), and social performances (lack of economic security). Two or three cases of the performances of each type are introduced and evaluated. One of the ways to study women's cheerful performances is through utilizing sociological concepts, thus to study the social status of women at the time of a male-centered society, Bourdieu’s masculine domination was employed. The present study was conducted through descriptive–analytical method, and the required information was collected through a library approach. According to the data collected, in order to escape the pressures imposed on them by society, women sought different methods, one of them being holding performances with women as their center to represent their own issues. The performances were an exhibition of concealed complexes which were manifested by the prejudices of a patriarchal society. The results show that exploring these performances is one of the effective methods of finding the roots of the effect of masculine domination of women.