“One day, after a really exhausting argument, I told him, Mr. Nahvi [a student], I want to remind you of something: I am not comparing you to Elizabeth Bennet. There is nothing of her in you, to be sure–you are as different as man and mouse. But remember how she is obsessed with Darcy, constantly trying to find fault with him, almost cross-examining every new acquaintance to confirm that he is as bad as she thinks? Remember her relations with Wickham? How the basis for her sympathy is not so much her feelings for him as his antipathy for Darcy? Look at how you speak about what you call the West. You can never talk about it without giving it an adjective or an attribute–decadent, vile, corrupt, imperial. Beware of what happened to Elizabeth!”

–Azar Nafisi, Reading Lolita in Tehran