Not Without My Daughter - Essay Example

The main character, Betty, meets her husband Dr. Mahmoody is a Michigan hospital. She knows little about him and his past but falls in love at once. In a time, they marry and Betty gives birth to their daughter, Mahtob. One summer, the family travels to Iran, a native country of Dr. Mahmoody. When they come to this country, to their relatives, Betty understands that her husband wants to stay in Iran and keep Mahtob and Betty as prisoners in the house of his sister. She tries to oppose his will but is suppressed by Mahmoody and his family.

Living in Iran, Betty knows much about this family and their customs. The most disturbing fact is that Mahmoody and his family are involved in political struggle under slogans of Islamic fundamentalism and nationalistic fanaticism. Betty tries to leave the country, but fails. She contacts her mother in America and asks for an Embassy contact number. Betty is disappointed when knows that Iranian women have no rights on their children: Betty can leave the country but without her daughter, Mahtob.

Around the day, Betty is controlled and monitored by relatives of her husband who behave violently towards her. Mahtob is forced to visit a Muslim school faced with oppression and cultural differences. One day, Betty meets another American woman, who helps her to escape. Betty's father fells ill and she decides to visit him in America, but Mahmoody beats her and threatens to kill if she takes their daughter with her. Disappointed and afraid of her future, Betty accepts an escape plan proposed by one of American activists in Iran.

She and Mahtob, faced with hardship and the most difficult times, travel through the desert and come to America through Turkey. In this novel, Mahmoody and Hoffer vividly portray the role of the Iranian government and strict social control in lives of ordinary people. The main concepts related to government involve the government control and dominance of religious traditions, low role of women stipulated by the state and political absolutism, feudalism and cult of a political leader, and the state ideology.

Of all features of Iran's political culture, religion has by far contributed most directly to the development of both political autocracy and revolutionary movements. This seemingly contradictory role has been played by religion in Iran because of its special relationship to Iran's political institutions. During her first days in Iran, Betty discovers that: "religion as well as their government coerced them [women] in every turn, the practice exemplified by their haughty insistence upon an antiquated and even unhealthy dress code" (Mahmoody and Hoffer 35).

In Iran, the power and strength of the government is based on religious traditions and laws. Religion has served as a main cause of political absolutism and as a vehicle for political oppression. Betty and other Iranian women suffer from strict control exercised by the government and its official institutions. The most readily apparent form of inequality stipulated and supported by the government is that between the sexes. Under the Islamic Republic inequality between men and women is sanctioned through official and quasi-official policies that discriminate against women and ensure their subservient position in society both socially and