Self-Awareness Transformation Process in Iranian Women Novelists’ Works According to the Transformation Theory of Ellen Showalter

According to the theory of renowned American feminist critic, Ellen Showalter, in the study of any sub-culture, including women’s literary sub-culture, we witness the process of three main stages of imitation, protest, and self-awareness. To describe this process, Showalter has developed three stages of transformation as Feminine stage, Feminist stage, and Female stage. As Feminine, the women novelist imitates overwhelming male traditions and patterns. As Feminist, the women novelist protests rooted values and measures in literature. As Female, the women novelist returns to herself to discover personal identity and self-awareness. The present study has extensively reviewed thirty three novels of Iranian women novelist in the last half century from 1960 to 2010.The study, with an eye on Showalter’s feminist theory considers transformation process of self-awareness in female writers of Iran and defines its development through the predetermined stages. As the result of present study, it was logically evident to claim that Showalter’s model comprehensively applies to the Iranian female literary subculture. Nevertheless, it must be noted that transformation from second to third stage was not broadly evident and only happened in the work of Shahrnush Parsipur titled “Blue Logos”. We may also need to study more works of Iranian women novelist to search for third stage enhancements.