Context and Concept: Early 20th century Women Poets

Rivanne Sandler is Professor Emerita at the Department of Near and Middle Eastern Studies, University of Toronto. She is a specialist of early-20th century Iranian women’s poetry.

In their vision of a revitalization of the Persian nation modeled on the flourishing countries of Europe, 19th and early 20th c. century intellectuals factored in a female presence in society. The intellectuals were aided in their plans by a growing number of initiatives in female education as well as discussion of women’s place in society in women’s publications and societies in addition to government initiatives in the 1920s-1930s aimed at bringing females out of their traditional seclusion. Early poets took the opportunity of a society beginning to open its doors to females to write poems to comment on this new reality. Their poems document a moment in time; of a society still bound by traditional norms for females coupled with an emerging concept of females as capable citizens in a new social reality. The early poetry provides an insight into a historical process through the eyes of women of the time.