Female Author: A Study on Identity-Forming Elements in the Earliest Examples of Female Prose Prior to Iranian Constitutionalism

The aim of this research is studying the identity of female traveler as a historical and artistical subject. The research corpus consists of three samples of the earliest Persian female prose including the travelogues of Hajieh Aliyeh Khanoom e- Shirazi, Vaqarodowleh, and an unnamed princess. In order to analyze the process and mechanism of Iranian women's identity formation in the position of the author, the above texts have been examined using the method of perceptual criticism derived from literary and feminist approaches. From the standpoint of the sociological approach, identity is the result of an internal-external dialectic, thus both inner reality of the author and outer reality reflected in her writing are examined to clarify how the self (a Qajar lady, resident of the seraglio) discovers or constructs the other (the motivated and astute author of this epistle). At first the traveler's self-image as a woman and author will be examined to clear her judgment about her will to write and her authorial abilities, then the act of composing will be analyzed based on three factors: the motivation, the influence of environmental conditions and the interaction with hypothetical audience. The result is: in the transition from tradition to modernity alongside the emergence of women into the realm of prosaic and amanuensic culture, we witness the outburst of women in the field of authorship and the birth of female author.