A Study and Analysis of Extramarital Affairs in the novel “Being Forty”.

Yari, Javad

doi:10.30466/jispll.2025.55843.1026

A Study and Analysis of Extramarital Affairs in the novel “Being Forty”.

Document Type : Original Article

Author

javad yari

student

10.30466/jispll.2025.55843.1026

Abstract

Extramarital affairs are one of the societal crises which stealthily threaten the integrity of the family. It encompasses all behaviors of a married person outside the family framework resulting in the formation of a friendly, intimate, emotional relationship, and finally, a love affair. Married people establish such relationships due to various internal and external factors; if not treated, they destabilize and destroy the family unit.

In the recent past, some writers have focused on this psychological and social phenomenon in their works of fiction, besides a variety of other issues. As an example, Nahid Tabatabai analyses this social problem in her novel "Being Forty" and offers a different reading of this phenomenon in the mid-life crisis of her fictional character. This was the motivating factor behind the present study to investigate the factors of formation, the way of presentation, and the solution to the extramarital affairs in “Being Forty”, adopting an Interpretative-Analytical approach. The findings of the present study suggest that the author considers the causes of the formation of such a relationship in the life of the protagonist to be dissatisfaction with emotional relationships, lack of intimacy between the spouses, a permissive attitude and mid-life crisis; and the way to cure it to be consultation, companionship, and empathy among the family members and driving the forbidden desire toward a sublime phenomenon such as the art of musicianship.

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