The Comparative Study of Fariba Vafi’s Dream of Tibet and Margaret Atwood’s The Robber Bride in Feministic Aspect

In the contemporary period, after the time the Orientals have gotten to know the culture and civilization of the west, the thoughts, tendencies and modernist courses found a way into these countries. One of these impressive courses in different fields was Feminism. With a growing acceleration, this course penetrated in countries like Iran in society and political areas as well as literature in general and fiction in particular and led to the manifestation of Feministic literature. In the literature of Iran, a new generation of women writers has emerged, in particular since the 1970s so far and Feministic reflections have appeared in fiction in varied forms. Among Iranian writers, Fariba Vafi in Dream of Tibet and among Canadian writers Margaret Atwood in The Robber Bride impressed by Feministic ideas and by having a critical outlook on women’s issues have endeavoured to reflect in their fiction, social, cultural and economic inequalities and gender discriminations which are affected by the clichés made in a patriarchal system and to exhibit a communicative and clear picture of women’s condition in their societies. 

The present study attempts to investigate Fariba Vafi and Margaret Atwood’s attitude in the presentation of women’s pivotal role and the reflection of their issues in Dream of Tibet and The Robber Bride based on a descriptive- analytic approach to discover the common outlook of these two writers about women’s problems. The methodology is based on a comparative approach of the American Feministic school and the analytic approach is posterior (from part to whole). 

 In this part, the most important Feministic elements in Dream of Tibet and The Robber Bride are analyed and the outlooks of these two writers in Women’s problems are compared.3-1. Mirror; the embodiment of women’s identity and personification Emphasizing women’s identity and personification is one of the distinguished characteristics of women writers’ writing style. In Vafi and Atwood’s attitude, mirror is the embodiment of women’s personification and identity. Hence mirror is the most frequent common motif in these two novels. Indeed, both authors have utilized mirror in the meaning of womenlike’s identity and representation and reflection of feelings. With regards to the attempts of both authors in reperesnting women’s problems in stories and the frequent descriptions of mirror and woman’s association, it seems that both of them have synonymized mirror and the story in aspect of their function in exposing women’s identity and personification.3-2. Correspondence in women’s characterization  One of the common characteristics of Dream of Tibet and The Robber Bride is the correspondence and similarity in women’s character and characterization. Both Vafi and Atwood in their womanly narration, by underlining women’s pivotal role, have narrated women’s stories that each of them have faced various challenges in their individual and social life. It seems that Fariba Vafi, affected by Atwood’s narrative style and by distinguishing women’s basic role, has discussed their individual and social concerns. The world of Vafi’s fictional characters like the world of Atwood’s characters is the universe of basic uncertainties.3-3. Reflection of women’s problems by the use of futuristic and retrospective narrative One of the common characteristics of Vafi and Atwood’s narrative style in depicting women’s issues is the use of repetition frequency and futuristic and retrospective narrative. By emphasizing on and protesting to women’s individual and social crisis, both Vafi and Atwood have used the repetition frequency in diffirent parts of their novels. Both authors in accordance with the presentation of women’s problems have used the repetition frequency wherever thay have emphasized on the importance of a specific discusson. Regarding the use of retrospective technique and with attention to the narrative style of The Robber Bride in which the narrator has used flashback or returning to character’s past in order to narrate Zenia’s pre-death incidents; Atwood has used this technique much more than Vafi.3-4. Precise and detailed descriptions in womanly writing style One of distinguished characteristics of women’s writing style is their particular attention to the precise and detailed description of every incident. But a particular and unique feature in Vafi and Atwood’s own style is that both, highly attentive, have painted their descriptions in womanly color and fragrance. The commitment of these two writers to the accurate description of wearing details and the color and body of women characters in the stories have been depicted in several ways. 3-5. The interactive - conversational method in womanly writing One of the common characteristics in these two novels is that both authors have used interactive conversational method. In this method, Vafi and Atwood by establishing conversations between women characters have pointed to women’s interaction with each other. This womanly interactive - conversational interaction has formed by changing the pronoun of “I” to “we” in both novels. Hence, transition of “I” to “we” is a kind of opposition to patriarchal discourse. 

 After analyzing Dream of Tibet and The Robber Bride it can be concluded that there are considerable similarities and homogenies among the main characters of two novels regarding their emotional and mental conditions, behavioral actions and individual experiences. By emphasizing women’s basic role and correspondence in their characterization, Vafi and Atwood delineate the problems of women of different classes in their own society. By comparing the role of women in two novels, we can achieve similarities. The Correspondences between Tony and Sholeh, Zinya and Forough as a rebellious woman and Rose and Chris and Shiva are some examples of these similarities in women’s role. Among other correspondences used by the authors is the purposeful use of mirror as a symbolic meaning of womanly identity which is the most frequent common motif. Both Vafi and Atwood use the repetition frequency to emphasis on and highlight women’s individual and social problems, futuristic narrative to uncover women’s mental agitations and concerns and their reaction to upcoming incidents, the restrospective narrative to review mental memories and to return to past dreams. Using woman language vocabularies and precise, detailed descriptions, frequent use of adjectives and nouns and precise, detailed descriptions of women’s clothes, colors and body are among other similarities in womanly writing method in these two novels. Despite abundant common details in content and the form of author’s narrative method and considering Atwood’s time priority, it can be concluded that Vafi has been slightly affected by Atwood as a stylist, pioneer writer in fiction and her reflection of women’s problems.