University of Massachusetts Amherst ScholarWorks@UMass Amherst Doctoral Dissertations Dissertations and Theses April 2021 PROSTITUTES, TEMPORARY WIVES, AND MOTREBS: A COMPARATIVE STUDY OF SEX WORK IN IRANIAN FILM AND FICTION FROM THE CONSTITUTIONAL REVOLUTION (1906-1911) TO THE ISLAMIC REVOLUTION (1979) maryam zehtabi sabeti moqaddam University of Massachusetts Amherst Follow this and additional works at: https://scholarworks.umass.edu/dissertations_2 Part of the Comparative Literature Commons, Feminist, Gender, and Sexuality Studies Commons, Modern Literature Commons, and the Near and Middle Eastern Studies Commons Recommended Citation zehtabi sabeti moqaddam, maryam, "PROSTITUTES, TEMPORARY WIVES, AND MOTREBS: A COMPARATIVE STUDY OF SEX WORK IN IRANIAN FILM AND FICTION FROM THE CONSTITUTIONAL REVOLUTION (1906-1911) TO THE ISLAMIC REVOLUTION (1979)" (2021). Doctoral Dissertations. 2153. https://doi.org/10.7275/19985445 https://scholarworks.umass.edu/dissertations_2/2153 This Open Access Dissertation is brought to you for free and open access by the Dissertations and Theses at ScholarWorks@UMass Amherst. It has been accepted for inclusion in Doctoral Dissertations by an authorized administrator of ScholarWorks@UMass Amherst. For more information, please contact [email protected]. PROSTITUTES, TEMPORARY WIVES, AND MOTREBS: A COMPARATIVE STUDY OF SEX WORK IN IRANIAN FILM AND FICTION FROM THE CONSTITUTIONAL REVOLUTION (1906-1911) TO THE ISLAMIC REVOLUTION (1979) A Dissertation Presented by MARYAM ZEHTABI SABETI MOQADDAM Submitted to the Graduate School of the University of Massachusetts Amherst in partial fulfillment of the requirements for the degree of DOCTOR OF PHILOSOPHY February 2021 Comparative Literature © Copyright by Maryam Zehtabi Sabeti Moqaddam 2021 All Rights Reserved PROSTITUTES, TEMPORARY WIVES, AND MOTREBS: A COMPARATIVE STUDY OF SEX WORK IN IRANIAN FILM AND FICTION FROM THE CONSTITUTIONAL REVOLUTION (1906-1911) TO THE ISLAMIC REVOLUTION (1979) A Dissertation Presented by MARYAM ZEHTABI SABETI MOQADDAM Approved as to style and content by: ____________________________________ Moira Inghilleri, Chair ____________________________________ James Hicks, Member ____________________________________ Claudia Yaghoobi, Member ____________________________________ Mehammed Mack, Member __________________________________ Moira Inghilleri, Program Director Comparative Literature __________________________________ Robert Sullivan, Department Chair Languages, Literatures, and Culture DEDICATION For Dad ACKNOWLEDGMENTS This dissertation would not have materialized without the support and encouragement of a lot of people. I would like to first extend my deep and sincere gratitude to my committee members: To Moira Inghilleri, my research supervisor, my mentor, and my main champion. Her sincerity, vision, motivation, and patience have deeply inspired me to become not only a good scholar in the academia but also a well-rounded and kind-hearted human being in general. Without her empathy and friendship, I would not have survived this arduous journey. I am forever grateful to her for empowering me to discover my voice. To Jim Hicks, whose knowledge and enthusiasm as well as humility and kindness are a constant source of inspiration to me. I am grateful for his guidance and encouragement to be professional and do the right thing even when the road gets tough. To Claudia Yaghoobi, my role model in both academic and nonacademic life. Her genuine desire to help, her generosity of spirit, and her immense knowledge of my research topic made working with her an exceptional opportunity and a great pleasure. To Mehammed Mack, whose dynamism, brilliance, and meticulousness I am in awe of. Part of this dissertation germinated in a class I took with him in 2015. His extremely insightful observations of my study nudged me in the right direction when I most needed help. I wish to acknowledge the support and great love of my family in Iran. Their unwavering faith in me was the best reason to believe in myself. v I would also like to offer my deep gratitude to Mike and Tina Berins who welcomed me into their home with open arms and became my family. Special thanks to my friends who accompanied me in this journey as I went through innumerable ups and downs. I could not have lasted this long in the academia had it not been for Iman Pourtahmasbi, Farzad Hosseinpour, Parastoo Nasrolahzadeh, Mohsen Jalali, İnci Sariz Bilge, Adile Aslan, and Hyongrae Kim. I owe a debt of gratitude to Leili Beheshty, a kind and generous soul whom I have never had the pleasure of meeting in person. She came to my rescue when I needed help finding a rare book critical to my research. My heartfelt thanks to my cat Sampson whose sheer presence in my life fills my heart to the brim with joy and exhilaration. Finally, to my kind, caring, loving husband, Baabak, I offer my deepest gratitude. His unconditional love and support allowed me to focus solely on my research. He cheered me up when I needed uplifting and gave me strength when I had none of my own. vi ABSTRACT PROSTITUTES, TEMPORARY WIVES, AND MOTREBS: A COMPARATIVE STUDY OF SEX WORK IN IRANIAN FILM AND FICTION FROM THE CONSTITUTIONAL REVOLUTION (1906-1911) TO THE ISLAMIC REVOLUTION (1979) FEBRUARY 2021 MARYAM ZEHTABI SABETI MOQADDAM, B.A., GUILAN UNIVERSITY M.A., TEHRAN UNIVERSITY Ph.D., UNIVERSITY OF MASSACHUSETTS AMHERST Directed by: Professor Moira Inghilleri This dissertation titled “Prostitutes, Temporary Wives, and Motrebs: A Comparative Study of Sex Work in Iranian Film and Fiction from Constitutional Revolution (1906-1911) to the Islamic Revolution (1979)” brings together the web of images and narratives in sociocultural and historical texts and films that create and maintain the identity of sex workers as articles of mass consumption and sustain dominant practices and policies. By studying how these women, their body, and their sexuality are perceived, shown, and regulated in art and literature—which are ciphers of the society at large—my research exposes the tightly knit relationship between patriarchy, capitalism, and morality, sheds light on the ideological formations of gender and sexuality, problematizes the facile demarcations of illegitimate and legitimate avenues of sexual gratification, and destabilizes the official Islamic discourse on the issue. The first chapter discusses liberal and radical feminist discourses on sex work and creates the broader framework for my arguments regarding Iran. Chapter two focuses on vii the birth of the prostitute as a prominent literary trope in Iranian fiction and explains the sociocultural and political factors contributing to it. Drawing on works such as The Sexual Contract (1988) by Carole Pateman and The Industrial Vagina: The Political Economy of the Global Sex Trade (2008) by Sheila Jeffreys which blur the boundaries between servile marriage and prostitution, my third chapter contends that temporary marriage is a form of sex work endemic to Iran as it embodies the patriarchal ideal of the unchecked recourse of men to women’s sexuality sanctioned by law and religion. Chapter four examines sex workers’ self-perception as expressed in non-fiction and documentary works from the second Pahlavi Era (1941-1979). Finally, chapter five analyzes the voyeuristic representations of female sex workers and Motrebs (entertainers) in Iranian commercial cinema which reenact the worn-out Madonna/whore dichotomy that seeks to polarize women as either asexual and chaste or sexually active and monstrous. viii TABLE OF CONTENTS Page ACKNOWLEDGMENTS ...................................................................................................v ABSTRACT ...................................................................................................................... vii INTRODUCTION...............................................................................................................1 CHAPTER 1. THE HISTORICAL CONSTRUCTION OF THE MODERN PROSTITUTE .....12 1.1 Introduction ......................................................................................................12 1.2 Modern Discourses on Prostitution ..................................................................13 1.3 Prostitute as A New Medical Entity.................................................................17 1.4 Prostitute as A New Moral Concern ................................................................23 1.5 Prostitute as A New Legal Category ................................................................29 1.6 Prostitute as A New Feminist Question ...........................................................33 1.7 The Continuation of the Abolitionist-Versus-Regulationist Discourse in the Twentieth Century .....................................................................................38 1.8 Conclusion .......................................................................................................49 2. THE BIRTH OF A CHARACTER: THE POLITICS OF THE RISE OF THE PROSTITUTE IN THE LITERATURE OF THE CONSTITUTIONAL MONARCHY (1906-1925) AND THE FIRST PAHLAVI ERA (1925-1941) ....52 2.1 Introduction ......................................................................................................52 2.2 Historical Background .....................................................................................53 2.2.1 Women around the Turn of the Twentieth Century in Iran ..............53 2.2.2 Prostitutes in the Late 19th and Early 20th Century Iran ..................56