Tragedy and Defiance: The Lives and Poetry of Sylvia Plath, Forugh Farrokhzad and Perveen Shakir
By Mahmood Ali Ayub
Apex Book Publishing
ISBN: 979-8990699342
188pp.

It is invariably a good sign when a writer does not allow tragedy and adversity to daunt him or her to the point where one’s writing ability is crippled. It is therefore inspiring that the sad loss of both his wife (to Lou Gehrig’s disease) and young son (in a motorcycle accident) rendered Mahmood Ali Ayub to become especially sympathetic towards the lives and losses of other individuals, such as the three major female poets on whom his fine text Tragedy and Defiance focuses.

Writing with an admirable clarity and fluency, Ayub examines the biographical backgrounds and some of the central works of the American Sylvia Plath, the Iranian Forugh Farrokhzad and the Pakistani Perveen Shakir in an eminently readable comparative study that should be required reading for any major introductory college course on comparative literature and poetry.

The first three chapters are respectively devoted towards delineating major features of the lives of these three remarkable women. All of them had unhappy marriages, and all three met with violent ends at a relatively young age; Plath, who suffered from serious depression, died by her own hand, while the other two were killed in car accidents.

Rather spookily, a Roma soothsayer predicted Forugh’s death, and Perveen Shakir’s demise was accurately predicted by a New Delhi fortune-teller.

Ayub moves gracefully and systematically from discussing Plath’s only novel The Bell Jar — a fictional account of her young suicidal self — to significant poems of her two major collections, The Colossus and Ariel, such as ‘Daddy’ and ‘Lady Lazarus.’ He underscores that, like Farrokhzad and Shakir, Plath (who had been ill-treated by both her Nazi-like father and domineering husband) rebelled against the constraints of patriarchy, as evinced by the genius underlying her work.

Later in the text, he helpfully draws distinctions between autobiographically inspired writing and confessional writing, stating that Farrokhzad and Plath both adopted the latter mode in order to display their angst, although Shakir was not quite as obviously conflicted in a personal sense as the other two.

However, all three women are very important from a feminist perspective and it is a credit to Ayub that he displays a genuine cognizance and sensitivity of how difficult things were for women socially in the latter half of the 20th century.

For instance, Perveen Shakir’s in-laws were not supportive of her needs and talents and her divorce settlement only gave her custody of her son if she refrained from remarrying.

In spite of the fact that Ted Hughes assiduously collected Sylvia Plath’s major poetry after her death in a compilation that led to her being awarded the Pulitzer Prize posthumously, he could make no amends for the marital infidelity on his part that drove his hapless wife to the brink of despair.

Possibly Forugh Farrokhzad suffered the most wretched fate of the three, in that her own family (especially her military-minded father) chastised her irredeemably, for both her somewhat bohemian lifestyle as well as her opposition to the Pahlavi regime.

In spite of the fact that Plath was close to her mother, that relationship too was fraught with tension. It is a testament to the indomitable spirit of these three women that, in spite of personal setbacks, they wrote sincerely and spiritedly about the necessity for the emancipation of women, and even branched out towards social and global issues.

For instance, Shakir wrote about the tough lives and plight of domestic workers as well as steel mill labourers. Farrokhzad critiqued her own sister’s “artificial” existence in a heartfelt poem; unlike Forugh, her sister took solace in a safe and stable marriage. Plath’s anger at her abusive father has acquired international recognition over time.

But what is especially interesting is that Ayub draws valid parallels between the poets’ use of mirror imagery and doll-motifs in order to highlight how all three of them felt that only close self-examination can lead women to understand how restricted and circumscribed their lives can end up being in the majority of cases.

Plath gained a certain measure of fame during her life, but Farrokhzad was repeatedly denied such appreciation, even though she was a notable filmmaker as well as a poet, and engaged in laudable social work with lepers (one of whom she actually adopted).

However, Ayub notes that Perveen Shakir was the recipient of numerous awards during her lifetime, including the highly prestigious President’s Pride of Performance. He also seems to imply that although Shakir has been criticised for not being as bold a feminist writer as the redoubtable Kishwar Naheed and Fehmida Riaz, she was subversively far more aware of the plight of women than might be expected; indeed, central aspects of her famous text Mah-i-Tamaam [Full Moon] support this point.

Ultimately, how subversive or overt a woman can be when it comes to expressing her creativity is a highly personal matter, and the fact that Shakir was a single-parent and cautious civil servant may well have been the reason for her literary voice being more restrained than that of some of her peers.

But “restraint” is not the primary word that comes to mind when one reads Tragedy and Defiance — “genius” is. These female poets were compelled to write because the fires of phenomenally strong inspiration burned brightly within them, to the extent to which a gentleman like Mahmood Ali Ayub (who served as a practical-minded economist for many years) felt equally compelled to pay gracious homage to their life and work.

Having received one of my degrees from Smith College (Plath’s alma mater) I was intrigued by Ayub’s project, and was pleased to note that an article by one of my former Iranian-American colleagues in Cairo, Amy Motlagh, was cited in the bibliography (which is both useful and extensive).

Worthy journalist Raza Rumi is also cited there, and was in fact one of the people who encouraged Ayub to write this book. Moreover, my own father, Chishty Mujahid, like Perveen Shakir, is a recipient of the Pride of Performance award, so I was moved by how the book personally resonated with me in many ways.

Mahmood Ali Ayub has done both academia and literature a sound service in aligning these three poetic stars and creating a metaphoric belt of Orion by means of his own writing. I hope he can be prevailed upon to continue with his literary endeavours, since they are both informative as well as a pleasure to read.

The reviewer is associate professor of social sciences and liberal arts at the Institute of Business Administration. She has authored a collection of short stories Timeless College Tales and a play The Political Chess King

Published in Dawn, Books & Authors, August 18th, 2024