Your Silly Scarves

In the most recent reading of Persepolis, I started to consider another way Marjane gives us a new perspective on the Iranian Revolution. We have talked at length about having a child as a narrator, but I had not considered how significant it would be to have a girl telling her coming-of-age story as the regime taking over her country is Fundamentalist Islamic. The difficulty in figuring out what it means to be a woman, especially one who identifies as a very modern, progressive woman, in this setting is made abundantly clear in the incident on p74, when Marji's mother is accosted on the street by strangers for not wearing a veil. 

I was surprised by how difficult this scene was to read. I don't think I truly appreciated what a graphic novel can bring to the story telling I read until this page. The words are so simple, jarring but sparing. But the figure in the middle panel is so broken, so devastated. And she says nothing in the bottom left panel, but her expression says it all. I understood perfectly how she felt, looking at it: abused, violated, unclean, empty, with a sinking feeling in her gut that won't let her get out of bed. It is, unfortunately, a feeling familiar for many. But afterward, I second guessed myself, amazed I had extrapolated so much from a small, black and white panel and a simple expression.

I think this scene is so important to set up how complicated Marji's relationship with the veil could be. On the one hand, wearing the veil protects her street harassment like this. It's like armor from catcallers. On the other hand, wearing the veil is like an admission that she needs protection from these people, that her hair and the femininity it represents is something of which to be ashamed, something inappropriate. This is what her government is telling her; this is what her neighbors and the news are telling her. Women protesting the veil are beaten on the streets. It is not difficult for me to understand why some women would start to believe it, why some women, who had never been devout for a day in their lives, would start to wear a chador, and believe that they needed to do so.

So Marji and her mother's relationship with the veil is not the same as a student's relationship to a uniform they are forced to wear, and its not the same as my classmates who choose to wear a veil as a symbol and reminder of their religious devotion. Rather, it represents a larger struggle between their belief of what it means to be a woman and a Muslim, and their government's. Furthermore, it represents the struggle between their desire for personal safety and their desire to rebel against an oppressive regime. I assume this is why Satrapi focuses on the issue so much. The first chapter, after all, is called "The Veil".