From Certitude to Doubt: A Social-Semiotic Study of the Evolution of the Heroine's Modal Structures in Tooba and the Meaning of the Night

The main aim of this research is exploring power relations in Tooba and the Meaning of Night, focusing on the gender issue and gender representation in the novel. Studying modal structures and modality is one of the tools provided by Halliday's social linguistics for examining texts and revealing their ideological functions. Focusing on the role of modality in the production of texts and reproduction of power and gender relations, researchers study modality in Tooba and the Meaning of night with an analytic-descriptive method. The novel offers a seventy-year-old historical perspective on the Iranian woman. However, in the course of this seemingly progressive historical movement, Tooba, the heroine of the novel, not only does not achieve her ends but also, quite on the contrary, shows signs of regression. Towards the beginning of the novel, Tooba is a self-assured woman who talks and acts decisively, but near the close of the novel she turns into someone without certainty or any kind of conviction. Indeed, Tooba's modal structures evolve from external certitude and determination to internal doubt and hesitation. In the end, Tooba's internal evolution and spiritual barrenness are closely related to more general social discursive relations and functions during the Qajar and Fist Pahlavi dynasties, especially those which prevent women from thinking, speaking, and participating in external practices on the social scene.