A Thousand Splendid Suns Women

You live in a small house where you are restricted to household duties. Should you do any of these tasks poorly, you will at the mercy of your unruly husband. This husband is . … This nightmare was the reality of many women under the Taliban. Through their oppression in society by laws, societal standards, and other male characters, Their Eyes Were Watching God and A Thousand Splendid Suns portrays the female experience as an uphill battle in which basic human rights and dignities are stripped, opening them up to major abuse.

In these novels, women are stripped of all individuality and characterized as unintelligent, weaklings that need men. In Their Eyes Were Watching God, one man remarks that “beatin’ a woman is like steppin’ on baby chickens”.

This is especially present in Their Eyes Were Watching God with Jody. When jody starts to get old he gets very insecure about his age. To deflect the attention off of his age he starts to ridicule Janie about how she is so old even though he is about ten years old. It is clear that aging is bothering Jody and “he didn’t want her to stay young while he grew old”. Jody tries to drag Janie down just to feel better about himself. He needs the focus to be on someone else so people do not realize that his own body is weakening. Jody’s actions highlight how he has a complete disregard for Janie’s feelings or even state of being and is just using her as his shield. This reinforces his thoughts on women as he never thinks twice about how he hurts Janie in this situation and he finds it completely acceptable because she is a women. This is a continuous theme throughout both books. The best example of this in A Thousand Splendid Suns is not with Rasheed but Jalil. Similarly to Jody, Jalil has a reputation to protect so when Nana has an unwanted child with him, he chooses to shame her and make the story Nana’s wrongdoing. Jalil knows that he can do this because Nana is a somewhat poor woman and that society will not trust her word against his. In this case Jalil, manipulates the public opinion and takes advantage of the fact that Nana is a woman for his own personal gain. Even if Jalil does not oppress women like Rasheed does, his actions show that women are always the first to be blamed and can be