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In Reading Lolita in Tehran by Azar Nafisi, how are the women able to find empowerment?

Nafisi and her female students find empowerment in supporting each other through a reading group. What they explore and interpret together is literature that the fundamentalist Islamic regime fears as decadent: for example: The Great Gatsby, Pride and Prejudice, Daisy Miller, and Lolita. They also find empowerment in the survival of the female storyteller in A Thousand and One Nights.

These books may seem pedestrian to us (with the possible exception of Lolita) but are daring reads in Iran at that time. For instance, Nafisi's fundamentalist students at the university (while she is still teaching there) object to Jay Gatsby as an adulterer. Yet on the other hand, in a society that is trying to erase individuality, the women find empowerment in understanding Gatsby as a fully realized character full of very personal hopes and dreams.


In the privacy of Nafisi's apartment, the women continuously explore their womanhood in ways forbidden by the regime, questioning, for instance, arranged marriage and debating its merits. They use works like Pride and Prejudice and Daisy Miller to talk about romantic love, a concept that had been banned in the public sphere.


Nafisi makes clear how acts as seemingly minor as meeting together to read over coffee and cakes can become radically important in a totalitarian environment. She writes: 



It is amazing how, when all possibilities are taken away from you, the minutest opening can become a great freedom. We felt when we were together that we were almost absolutely free.


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