Tackling Tradition in Tehran

In chapter 15 of Reading Lolita in Tehran Azin and Mahshid get into an argument over tradition. Azin is young and talking about her past husbands, her sexual needs, and how she feels her life should be.  While this is a group of women meeting to discuss foreign literature, this topic is something Mahshid feels should not be discussed with others.  She is older and more traditional and feels that such topics should be kept at home.  Mahshid confronts Azin at the meeting on page 55 saying, "Yes, you have your sexual experiences and your admirers. You are not an old maid like me. Yes, old maid-I don't have a rich husband and I don't drive a car, but still you have no right, no right to disrespect me."Azin does not understand how she had disrespected Mahshid and Mahshid refuses to tell her.  I find this exchange interesting because Mahshid feels that Azin has spent so little time actually following tradition that she is ignorant of it, and that lessens the impact of this book club.  To me Mahshid is being more rebellious as she knows what life was like and now she is acting out by reading these western texts, while Azin has always been a "rebel" and for her this is simply another thing to do, not a true mission of self discovery.  

Also there is an interesting criticism of Reading Lolita and the authors response on the wikipedia page.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Reading_Lolita_in_Tehran