The Woman Who Read Too Much by Bahíyyih Nakhjavání: A review
The Woman Who Read Too Much: A Novel by Bahíyyih Nakhjavání My rating: 3 of 5 stars "A woman should know her place." - the grand Mullah, uncle/father-in-law of the poetess of Qazvin This is a story about a woman who most definitely did not know her place, or rather, she rejected the "place" that her society assigned to her. The story is based on a real woman, Tahirih Qurratu'l-Ayn, the poetess of Qazvin, who lived and died in the mid 19th century in Persia, during the time of the Qajar dynasty. The poetess was the daughter of a Mullah who took the unusual step of defying the strictures of his society and his religion by teaching his daughter to read and to think in philosophical terms. Literacy was something that was denied to Persian women, so this was a revolutionary act. The poetess was beautiful and intelligent, possessed of a first rate mind, and she took to learning as a duckling takes to water. She learned not only to read but also to write, something th...