Which Fictional Female Character: Pre-Publication Version - 2003-08-12

One of the members of the editorial team of the Book of the Week had asked me to say or write about the fictional female character that has had the most impact on me. This is a piece I finally completed after many delays, which always happen when I find myself in a situation where I have to say 'yes.' To be honest, among the multitude of short stories and novels I have read, selecting one female character is very difficult. Especially since, despite having spent several years of my life seriously studying and following literature, I still find it hard to set it aside, but I have lived less with a story or a character. The impact of all of them in my mind, although settled, is not clear and distinct enough for me to easily talk about them. However, among all of them, I want to write about the female character in 'A Shawl the Length of the Silk Road,' a novel by Mahasti Shahrokhi, an Iranian author residing in France. She has no name. I mean, she must have had one, but in the story, no one ever calls her by her name. She has no place; not even a ten-centimeter corner for herself and only for herself. Perhaps in this regard, she resembles the female character in the novel 'The Forbidden Notebook,' who only realizes that in this house and years of life, there is no place that is 'exclusively' hers when she buys a notebook for herself. The concept of 'personal space,' which is deeply intertwined with individual identity, is one of the fundamental concepts in women's lives; many women, in their journey of self-awareness and identity formation, realize they have never truly owned a place for themselves; neither in physical spaces nor in the mental spaces of those around them. Virginia Woolf emphasizes in her work 'A Room of One's Own' that women cannot write until they have a room of their own, thus metaphorically reminding us of the opportunities and possibilities that have been denied to women to progress as much as men. The creation of the character 'Shakespeare's Sister' and writing that she had as much talent as Shakespeare but was never recognized by history because she was a woman showcases one of Woolf's unparalleled creative insights. Woolf gives a name to Shakespeare's sister, an imaginary and unknown woman, and a place where her grave is located (somewhere at the intersection of two crossroads in London), thus reminding us that we must have a name and a place just for ourselves. Nevertheless, I feel I have been most influenced by female characters in stories who are nameless and have no room for themselves.