This study employs feminist literary criticism, with particular emphasis on Laura Mulvey’s concept of the “gaze,” to examine the representation of women in Ferdowsi’s Shahnameh. The research aims to investigate the ways in which gender identities are constructed through narrative strategies, visual descriptions, and systems of power embedded in the text. Focusing on the relationship between the gaze, the female body, and narrative authority, the study explores how women are represented and assigned meaning within the patriarchal framework of the epic. The central research question concerns the mechanisms through which female characters are positioned as objects or subjects of representation and how these positions contribute to the production of gendered meanings. The findings reveal that the representation of women in the Shahnameh is shaped by a complex and multilayered logic in which the gaze functions not only as a visual act but also as a narrative and ideological device. Through aesthetic imagery and symbolic language, female characters are frequently introduced by references to beauty, using metaphors such as the moon, the cypress, silk, and flowing tresses. Such descriptions often transform the female body into an object of admiration, desire, and narrative attention. However, the study also identifies moments in which women transcend passive representation and emerge as active agents within the narrative. Characters such as Tahmineh and Gordafarid demonstrate forms of agency, independence, and subjectivity that challenge the dominant structures of objectification. In contrast, other female figures, particularly Sudabeh, are represented through moralizing and exclusionary discourses. In these cases, the female body becomes associated with danger, disorder, and ethical transgression, reflecting broader patriarchal anxieties regarding female desire and power. The analysis further demonstrates that the female body in the Shahnameh does not possess a single or stable meaning; rather, it operates within a shifting field of signification where beauty, morality, and agency continuously intersect. Ultimately, the study argues that the Shahnameh constructs the gaze as a regulatory mechanism of gendered power, organizing relationships among vision, desire, judgment, and authority throughout the narrative.