Jane Eyre and Mahbube – No Sisters in Arms

Hello Michael!

Sorry for the late mail!! There is just a lot to do every day. Go to university every day and them come home eat and spend time with family. Or meet a friend after work and come home late. But Now i found some good time to sit and write. Hope that everything is fine with you. The weather here is around 10 degrees, but it has been sunny and not so windy this week. so its nice.
So nice that you invited omid and his family. they are very kind, I met them.
I am not going to shajarian, its not the type of music that I usually listen to. Nice that you went, so you liked it.
YES!! Believe it or not, I am reading Jane Eyre… and its so pitty but I have not so much time to read either! But I have started.

take care
/ghazal

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Ghazal my Dear,

It was so nice to read your e-mail.
And it gave me a big relieve to hear that life is exciting,
the PhD project goes as well as do the experiments,
that you can use pipettes which don”t harm your joints,
that you discivered a nice book and that in addition to all of
this you still have time to write a nice and – this time – funny e-mail.

I always knew that your comment from last year about books, and that you hate reading and so on was perhaps a temporal feeling, maybe due to a single bad book that you tried once.
So this time you very likely got a better choice. I never red Jane Eyre myself, but my sister (who works in a library) told me a lot about it. It is by one of the Bronte sisters, as I remember. I think it is a long novel. And it has some tragic moments. But it is concidered a key literature for female liberation, at least liberation from the old victorian and religious stereotypes. I hope you like it a lot.
When we lived in England (in a suburban village south of London), our Landlady was a Ms. Reed (she was 72 years old, but still wanted to be called Miss, not Misses. She was a real dragon. We were not allowed to open the window to the garden side of the house, and she always switch off the heating, so we had to survive in winter time in 12 degrees cold rooms.
My sister, when she visited us, and we introduced her to the Landlady, she said to her “O nice to meet you. I know another Miss Reed, from Charlotte Brontes “Jane Eyre”" When I asked my sister later on who on earth is this Miss Reed from “Jane Eyre” she told me that in the book this is perhaps the most disgusting character. I had the feeling that our Landlady did not understand
the meaning of my sisters comment.

Maybe I should also read the book, eventually.
Maybe I first wait till you have finished it, and hear your opinion.
Do you have a swedish translation, or you read the english original ?
I red recently (within one afternood sitting in a large Munich book shop a novel by Fattaneh Haj Seyed Javadi called “The morning of drunkeness”. In the intro it was described as a iranian bestseller and key book for womans liberation. But I found it pretty boring and conventional. I guess compared with Jane Eyre, it will appear even more mediocre.

I hope every day is a sunny day for you, Ghazal.
Take Care,
Michael

Dear Michael,

Fattaneh Haj Seyed Javadi wrote her Iranian bestseller novel “Bamdade Chomar” in 1995. It has since been translated only into german.
Keith Hitchins wrote about it in World Literature Reviews “…The charm of the novel lies in the finely drawn portrait of Mahbube, in effect a self-portrait as she gradually reveals herself. Equally complex is the character of Rahim. (…) Masterly also is the novelist’s delineation of character through dialogue and his depiction of extended dramatic scenes” . The comments following its german translation in 2002 where less enthusiastic, accusing the author for showing that Mahbubehs initial battle to live a selfdetermined life and choose a partner of love rather than of family compatibility has to fail and that she finds eventual happiness only in the frame of a very traditional but slave-like role as a secondary wife of a cousin.

In particular Fahim eh Farsaie, iranian himself blamed Haj Seyed Javadi in a review in the german weekly paper “Die Zeit” of following in her book a political agenda, namely that of the official policy of Teheran by opposing any modern and liberal life in particular when it comes to the relationship between men and woman.

http://www.perlentaucher.de/autoren/3900/Fattaneh_Haj_Seyed_Javadi.html

I am wondering if people who pushed ”Bamdade Chomar” or its german translation “Morning of Drunkeness” into the best-seller ranks of the book market ever  red “Jane Eyre” in their live.  In an exclusively deep-thought essay Danusha Goska compares Janes couragement to that of Leonidas, whos army was defeated by the massive predominance of the persian army.

best greetings from Stockholm
take care
/ghazal