Deplorable Afghan Women Characters in ‘A Thousand Splendid Suns’: Women Empowerment Epitomized
- Author Sulok B. Raghuwanshi
- DOI
- Country : India
- Subject : Women Empowerment
Keywords : Polygany, the Talibans, Burqa, Chadari, Gender Apartheid, Purdah, Sharia Law
Abstract
The novel ‘A Thousand Splendid Suns’ by Khaled Hosseini is a narrative told from the perspectives of the two women chafabracters, Mariam and Laila. Each shows how they were raised, what they lost as the result of war, and how in the end, their strength and enduring hope helped them face their fate. The story covers three decades of anti-Soviet jihad, civil war and Taliban tyranny seen from the perspectives of two women. Mariam is the scorned illegitimate daughter of a wealthy businessman, forced at age fifteen into marrying Rasheed, who grows increasingly brutal when she fails to produce a child. Eighteen years later, Rasheed takes another wife, fourteen year-old Laila, a smart and spirited girl who’s only other options, after her parents are killed by rocket fire, is prostitution or starvation. Mariam and Laila become allies in a battle with Rasheed, whose violent abuse is endorsed by custom and law. The author gives a forceful portrait of despotism where women are dependent on fathers, husbands and especially sons, the bearing of male children being their only path to an accepted social status. Each woman in the end is forced to accept a path that will never be completely happy for them. Through the analysis of the marginalized status of Afghan women in the light of the novel ‘A Thousand Splendid Suns’ by Khaled Hosseini we learn that these women in burqa of Afghan stand as an example for every woman in the world stating that their relentless endurance of hope is the only key to survive in the world of continuous trials and tribulations. The paper essays to track the journey of these characters from being someone vulnerable and deplorable to the molder of their own destiny at the backdrop of the ‘Talibani’ culture.
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