A Thousand Splendid Suns Role Of Women

The novel may be called a multigenerational saga as Hosseini weaves many stories into an Afghan family. Interestingly, the focus of Hosseini is multicultural perspective, depicting the life of the poor and the backward Afghans struggling in a global world. Hosseini has touched upon strong cultural themes, the marginalized status of women during the 1970s of Afghanistan, the issue of homosexuality in orthodox society of Kabul. The novel is packed with wonderful characters such as Parwana and her beautiful sister Masooma, Parwana’s brother Nabi who becomes a caretaker to his ailing boss, Suleiman, Timur Bashiri, Idris, Markos and Thalia who looks after Markos’s aging mother. His characters suffer by their being Afghans; they carry within them nightmares that shape their lives. Hosseini depicts their cherished memories thus in his most lyrical

However, Mariam changes after Laila comes into her life. At first, her hatred towards Lails shows Mariam’s change, her beginning to understand that she is allowed to fight against injustice. She asks Rasheed not to take her in that “in all her years this was the one thing she asked of him.” (?) The fact that Mariam asks at all depicts her growing courage to stand up to her abusive husband. She also defends herself against this injustice of Rasheed marrying Laila, loving Laila over her, by demanding her authority over the younger girl. However, it is when Mariam and Laila become companions that Mariam’s understanding truly alters. This is because she begins to love Laila and the children that Laila have. Laila has provided her the one thing that “she

The novel focuses on the theme of family, friendship, faith, and murder. The living condition of women become worse as the war broke out. Especially during the war, women always are weakest victims and forced to betray their bodies and souls in order to survive. Mariam and Laila are good example of this issue. Without the help of their family and close friends, they would be lost in a world of emotion, stress, and confusion. Nobody would understand what they suffer during the war. There’s no denying the fact that the book describes the psychological development of women, rather than the history of Afghanistan. The war has not only brought the great disasters to the Afghan people, but also makes their every moment in the threat of death, especially the women, life is miserable for them. Their lives are no longer belong to themselves. They aren't human beings, but things. The novel provides an opportunity to understand deeply for readers about Afghanistan’s’ life under the war-torn

Mariam is uncomfortable with this. “‘I… I don’t want this,’ said Mariam, numb with contempt and helplessness. ‘It’s not your decision. It’s hers and mine’” Rasheed bites back in response (Hosseini 214). Mariam knows she has no choice in the matter, so Rasheed and Laila wed. Lala agrees to marry him because she is pregnant with her true love’s baby, but she is told that the father is dead. Rasheed expects Mariam to clean up after Laila, to do anything Laila wishes. Instead, she tells Laila “‘you may be the palace malika and me a dehati, but I won’t take orders from you. You can complain to him and he can slit my throat, but I won’t do it. Do you hear me? I won’t be your servant’” (Hosseini 225). This is the first time she “stated her will so forcefully” in the same way Rasheed does constantly (Hosseini 226). Mariam and Laila coexist in their household peacefully, secretly disdaining Rasheed. After years and years of abuse, Mariam, Laila, and Aziza, Laila’s baby, attempt an escape to Pakistan. They are caught, and when Rasheed finds them, he beats them terribly. Mariam is locked in a shed, and Laila and Aziza are barricaded to their room. No food, no water, and no sunlight for three days. This is the point where both women decide they have had enough, but do nothing about it because they are forbidden to do so. More years pass, more abuse is endured. Eventually, when Tariq, Laila’s first love, shows up at their door, and Rasheed finds out, he decides to beat the women. Laila fights back, but to no avail. At this point, Mariam realizes that he intends to kill. Mariam runs to the same shed she spent three days in, takes a shovel, and kills Rasheed to save her life, Laila’s life, and Laila’s children’s lives. “It occurred to her that this was the first time that she was deciding the course of her own life” when she brought the shovel down on his head (Hosseini 349). She commits

A Thousand Splendid Suns by Khaled Hosseini takes a solid focus on the lives of two young women, Mariam and Laila, who grow up in a struggling and turbulent Afghanistan. This book emulates the lives of those who have actually been affected by the extreme changes of power within their culture. From the Soviets to the Taliban, these people are caught in a war they cannot win but must deal with the consequences of. The lives of Mariam and Laila are consumed and silenced by those with power over them, namely males with traditional values. The book conveys the idea that even with an immense amount of destruction and terror wrought throughout Afghanistan, underneath lies a beauty that has been muted but it still provides hope for the future.

Throughout Khaled Hosseini’s novel, The Kite Runner, the reader observes many injustices committed due to the presence of the Taliban and cultural conflict in Afghanistan. One of the most concerning issues in Afghanistan is the mistreatment and inequality that women face on a daily basis due to Taliban mandates. Women in Afghanistan are treated as inferior beings to men and are unable to stand up for themselves due the laws the Taliban enforces. Hosseini uses the wives of Amir and Hassan, Soraya and Farzana, to represent the injustices to which women in Afghanistan are subjected.

The Taliban’s policies limited each and every woman's freedom of movement. Women in Afghanistan could only leave the premises when accompanied with a male. The main characters Mariam and Laila, were restricted from leaving the premises due to the Taliban and Rasheeds attitude. Rasheed was married to Mariam at first, and later asked for Laila’s hand in marriage. This triggered conflict between the two women and revealed Mariam’s attitude of jealousy and protection over her husband.

The hijab/burqa is often used as a symbol for women’s behavior. In Hosseini’s A Thousand Splendid Suns, one of the large ways that women present themselves is through the hijab and much of their appearance is dependent on it. Most of the women are not expected to go through higher education so the way they are seen is much more reliant on their aesthetic value rather than their intellectual value. On page 22, when Jalil visited, Mariam noticed that “Nana was subdued and mannerly.” The words “subdued” and “mannerly” are often associated with the submissive role that many of these women have forced upon them in their society. They are expected to look nice, wear their “best hijab”, act respectfully and cover their flaws. Nana was seen

She is an American feminist, author and social activist. Feminism is for Everybody provides an introduction to the idea of overlapping systems of oppression. Two of her ideas are of a significant importance to this study. The first is that patriarchy reinforces other oppressive systems such as racism and classicism. It is one of tools to keep male domination as she argues in her introduction that “In return for all the goodies men receive from patriarchy, they are required to dominate women, to exploit and oppress us, using violence if they must to keep patriarchy intact” (Watkins,7). The other idea is “sisterhood” and women solidarity. This idea helps in analyzing the empowerment that the Afghan women in the novels receive through helping each other out in every complicated situation which is asserted in the third chapter of the book that entitled Sisterhood is Still Powerful “To demand control of our sexuality, effective birth control and reproductive rights, an end to rape and sexual harassment, we needed to stand in solidarity”

The significance of A Thousand Splendid Suns is the endurance that women must possess in order to survive, but also the role of women in the Afghanistan society. Hosseini writes about the difficult life of Mariam and Laila as they bear the hardships that arise over the three decades of anti-Soviet jihad, civil war, and Taliban tyranny in Afghanistan. Hosseini identifies these hardships as something they’re forced to endure as women till they die. As Mariam grows up, the ability to endure, said by her mother, becomes a skill she uses until she dies, as well for Laila. Hosseini’s novel focuses greatly on the lives and struggles of women who have to endure the adversity and suffering at the hands of men, making clear in his novel that perseverance and endurance are absolutely necessary to survive as women in a society of men who oppress and disparage women.

Straying away from the stereotypical timid housewife, women in the West were given room to create new identities. In the movie Duel in the Sun (1946), Pearl engages in a shootout in the desert with a man. While in the movie The Outlaw (1943), Rio McDonald ambushes gunfighters in order to avenge her brother’s death. Although women often stood in the shadows of their more rugged male counterparts, these movies and characters proved that women were just as “rugged” as men, shocking the world with their ruthless behavior and unladylike behavior.

When Mariam and Laila first hear the ‘Voice of Shari’a’, a stark image of control is conveyed through the repetition of ‘you will not’ and ‘forbidden’. Hosseini uses this imperative to establish a repressive society in his text, developing the reader’s image of the world he writes in. Hosseini reveals the suffering experienced by women in Afghanistan through the ‘pragmatic, almost indifferent tone’ of the doctor when describing their working conditions. The use of such a listless tone represents the lack of respect men have for women, and demonstrates the long-standing oppression these women face, having been beaten to the point of

Both of them are diasporic novels and of a great importance to the Afghan literary movement. In addition, each of the previous mentioned works tackles a specific side of the novels. For example, each of them discusses one of a variety of issues concerning women form a specific perspective. Gender equity, domestic violence, cultural constrains and war effects were discussed as specific topics. The articles didn’t study them as interrelated fields that reinforce gender discrimination. Also, some topics have not been discussed such as patriarchal women. If all these issues put together, they will represent a canvas of what an Afghan woman’s life is. This study aims to put these novels in a broader portray to draw a complete picture of the status of the Afghan women using the selected novels A Thousand Splendid Suns and The Patience

The culture of Afghanistan is very important all throughout this book, whether it be family life, values, or even religion; they all play a heavy role throughout the whole story. The family life between Mariam and Laila are very different, but also have some similarities. Mariam grew up with just a mother in a little hut far from town. Her estranged father came to visit once a week. She finds out that he has three wives and nine other children. Jalil wants nothing to do with Mariam until her Nana kills herself, then he allows Mariam to stay at the house. Jalil, Mariam’s father, soon finds her a suitor, a forty something man named Rasheed, and they wed. Laila has a very different childhood than Mariam. She goes to school and gets a quality education, and her family life is very simple until news that her brothers were killed in war. Laila’s life then gets turned upside

Women's rights have diminished in the society of Taliban authority; they are banned to laugh loudly, to play sports, to even talk or shake hands with non-mahram males, and most importantly to study in schools or any other educational institution. In this novel, A Thousand Splendid Suns, Khaled Hosseni tells the lives of Mariam and Laila, presenting the heartbreaking reality of women in Afghanistan. Their story portrays the inequality and the poor education system Mariam and Laila goes through in their childhood, marriage, and adulthood.