Simin Daneshvar's Experience of the Modern World; A Sociological Study of America Travel Letters (1952-1953)

How thinkers and writers experience social realities due to the inspiring effects on the works and therefore on the audience's minds and actions is one of the notable areas of cultural studies. Such studies about women in Iran have been less relevant and, as an interdisciplinary subject, have not been able to critically reviewed and commented on their research findings in the form of scientific knowledge and open new fields of study while creating indigenous knowledge accumulation about women. Drawing on the components of modernity from a sociological perspective, this paper studies the experience of Simin Daneshvar as a thoughtful writer and university professor living in the Western world. For this purpose, after specifying the sociological features of modernity from theoretical issues, especially Giddens, Daneshvar's published letters to his husband, Al-e Ahmad, are analyzed in a qualitative content analysis method. The findings show that letters represent both the material components of modernity, including cultural, social, communicative, and specifically urbanization tools and places, and contain non-material components, especially cultural elements including humanistic values, individualism, equality, scientism, and progressivism. Finding of this research merges with two main categories which Daneshvar critically explores and evaluates modern society and introduces dimensions such as capitalism, consumer society, industrialism and love. It is also worth noting that her feminine approach to marginalizing the text and paying attention to details reveals the imperialist nature of the West and presents a post-colonialist narrative.