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A Thousand Splendid Suns Gender Analysis

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A Thousand Splendid Suns by Khaled Hosseini follows the lives of two women, Mariam and Laila, and the novel portrays the dichotomy of gender in the Afghanistan culture. Gender plays a large role in all of Afghanistan’s social institutions, and we can observe this even at the very start of the novel. For example, Mariam’s mother, Nana, is shunned and placed in a recluse area by Mariam’s father Jalil since Mariam is a harami, or in other words, a bastard. Nana was a maid for Jalil when they had an affair, and when he found out that she was pregnant, he sent her away to small house in a seemingly hidden and isolated village. Only on Thursdays is when Jalil visits Mariam, showing that she is not worth any more attention than that. Likewise, it …show more content…

Her mother, a deeply troubled woman, verbally abused Mariam, telling her that she is a harami (4), she also told Mariam most likely untrue but nevertheless chilling stories of her birth (11), and she also threatens to kill herself and then does commit suicide when Mariam leaves her to visit Jalil (26). Nana is on all accounts unstable, but I surmise that a part of her mental illness is due to the Afghan environment and its treatment of women. Nana is bitter that she is the one who bears the weight of the affair while Jalil can live fruitfully with his three wives and his nine “legitimate” children (5). The Afghan social structure is highly gendered, with men being at the top of the hierarchy and women as their inferiors as they are typically seen as a maid or a housewife/child bearer. Nana certainly internalizes sexism, which influences how she parents Mariam. Nana chooses to not educate Mariam, which reveals that she sees no value in the education of women. Nana hinders Mariam’s life even more by doing this, as she inevitability lacks social interaction with people her age, which is crucial in child development. Likewise, by being refused an education, she does not have a support system or a distraction from Nana’s

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They represent the plight which the Afghan women have been facing since ages. These characters give hope to the countless women who still suffer the dominance and hardships of the Afghan society. The actions of these characters symbolize their strength to endure things as they join together and retaliate against the man, and in turn the society, who has taken away their rights to live their lives according to their own choices. The ‘thousand splendid suns’ represent the thousands of Afghan women with immense potentialities who are still under the clutches of patriarchal domination and are forced to hide behind the walls. Khaled Hosseini has beautifully portrayed the cruel realities of the lives of Afghan women through Mariam and Laila and this is what separates A Thousand Splendid Suns from literary works that deal with Afghan women.

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The readers clearly can identify that his agenda was not to rid Nana of his home but the issue of hiding his child from the world to protect his image as an honorable man. There is evidence that Jalil did indeed have some affections for Mariam which is evident by is visits and the way he lied to please her however his love for her was always outweighed by the fact that he had to maintain his “so called name” to society in the fear of “losing face” thus he could never give Mariam he love she deserved or that he truly wanted leading to Mariam’s discrimination from his other legitimate children. Furthermore, the fact that Jalil visits Mariam years later signifies he did not intend nor take pleasure in this

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