Marji, my role model
This is my entry for Women’s Web’s ‘My Favourite Female’ contest, where I have to write about a female “fictional” character who has inspired me (You’ll know later why fictional has the air quotes to it).
My limited literary experience with central or inspiring female characters is not much to brag about. Reading about Amelia Jane at 10 and Jane Eyre at 12 didn’t move me. I wasn’t up to speed or intellect to read about Katy Carr or Anna Karenina. In short, I was never drawn to female role models of literary benchmark. I was 20 when I first read Marjane Satrapi’s autobiographical graphic novel, Persepolis. And at 20, Marji (her nickname) set a benchmark in my life that I don’t expect anyone, forget myself, to live up to.
From the innocence of her childhood, I learned about the social fabric of the middle class (to upper middle class) Iranian society, their norms, lifestyle, the hypocrisies in the backdrop of the Islamic revolution and a brief history of the Persian rulers (which was so animatedly narrated to Marjane by her father and uncle Anosh). The individual characters from her family, particularly her post-modern feminist mom and easygoing grandma, were very endearing in the way they treated her with respect and knowledge even as a child of ten and the liberty and sense of independence they accorded to her as a woman.
Satrapi wrote a starkly bold self-portrait, that wasn’t afraid of shying away from the truth. The depiction of a female character in all rawness of her conflicts and confusion with the culture that surrounds her; her parents’ activism and unconventional teachings; God and religion; her personal identity and nationality and her fulfillment as a woman of great potential, needs, emotional downturns etc. is path breaking from a goody-too-shoes like portrayal of Elizabeth Bennet (Pride & Prejudice) or its antithesis, Karenina.
The feat depicted by some feminine characters can be so overwhelmingly magnanimous that often I’ve found myself falling short of “the ideal” in an obvious mode of social comparison. A truly engaging character embodies a part of your character, behavior and soul and that’s exactly what Marji did. Through her struggles and failures, she reassured me that it is okay to not always be on top of your game and how that doesn’t deem you incompetent. More importantly, she helped me challenge the notion of what’s ideal, reinforced and repeated by most around us.
My favourite comic strip scene from the book
The character of Marjane Satrapi is such a human portrayal of a girl and a woman that every age, from a 10 year old school girl to a 55 year old granny-to-be, and generation can relate to it. Yet she is so divine in her own stature, without being ‘holier than thou’, for millions of women to not follow, but embody. She especially has such an impact on the metamorphic minds of young girls and women to awaken them from the dry shackles of passivity.
Eye of the Tiger – A snippet from the motion picture, Persepolis
Marji is a rebel at heart with a mind for effective change. She falls out of convention unapologetically and treads her own path. And that is the reason why I write about her, a female character that inspired me, even though she is adapted from a living person i.e. herself.
Tagged breaking the convention, Contests, culture, gender, liberty, Marjane Satrapi, Persepolis, women
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