Selena Truong ASTU 100A

In Marjane’s Satrapi’s memoir, Persepolis, Satrapi stresses the issue of the invisibility of women in Iran during the Islamic Revolution in 1979. She stresses that despite whether women choose to rebel or conform to the Islamic Revolution, women in Iran are only seen by men under the two following categories, both of which erase their identity as equal citizens to men. Women are acceptable if they are well-behaved conformists to the fundamentalist Islamic regime. However, in this process they are required to cover their bodies and they have restrictions on their behaviour, which causes them to be invisible. On the other hand, women who are deviant to the Islamic regime in such ways that they allow their hair to be shown and protest against the revolution are not only are disrespected, but are silenced.

As shown in Persepolis, Marji (Satrapi’s younger self) is raised with a feminist and progressive upbringing. Being regularly exposed and included in her family’s analytical and traumatic conversations about the war against Iraq and the Islamic Revolution as a child, Marji is informed and aware of the injustices in Iran at a very young age. As a result, Marji’s will to be “an educated, liberated woman” (73) is ingrained in her personality from her youth and is reinforced by her mother who, when Marji was only ten, tells Marji that “she should start learning to defend her rights as a woman” (76) by attending a demonstration against the Islamic Revolution.

Satrapi fights to make the “hidden visible” (Chute 106). From wearing forbidden jeans and jewelry to school as a child (Satrapi 143), to writing the memoir itself, she fights to have the voice of women heard. With an extra leap, Satrapi goes to great lengths (that I will soon describe) to ensure that the images and content of her stories are not influenced by any other source other than her memory (Chute 106). By doing this Satrapi is emphasizing the worthiness of her voice and perspective as a woman.

As noted above, Marji’s feminist values are salient in the creation of Persepolis, the graphic narrative and Persepolis, the film. As feminist author, Hilary Chute, opens her article by noting that the New York Times Magazine ran a story on graphic narratives, which stated that they are becoming recognized as respectable literary forms, she points critically at the fact that “graphic narrative work by women” is not included in the article and is ignored (92). The patriarchal system traditionally ignores and silences the voice of women and the invisibility of women is a result of such patterns. However, Chute continues her article by reminding her audience that the graphic novel is not a man’s world and in fact that having a voice in history will not be reserved solely for men (92). Chute describes how Satrapi fights against the invisibility of women by creating a widely known graphic narrative and takes initiative in making sure her voice and point of view in the book and movie are exclusively her own by “[acting] out the physical gestures of each scene of the film to give her animators a physical reference” (106). Chute explains that Satrapi announced that she plays all of the roles, including that of the dog. (106). By drawing her own images for her graphic novel and “inserting her literal, physical body into each frame of the film” (Chute 106), Satrapi takes ownership in the representation of her personal memory and the collective memory of the historical events of the Islamic Revolution and War against Iraq. She thus contributes in using her voice to promote the visibility of the individuality of Iranian women as well as women as powerful narrators of history.

Works Cited

Chute, Hillary. “The Texture of Retracing in Marjane Satrapi’s ‘Persepolis.’” Women’s Studies Quarterly, vol. 36, no. 1/2, 2008, pp. 92–110.

Satrapi, Marjane. Persepolis. New York, NY: Pantheon, 2003.