Equality In A Thousand Splendid Suns

In Khaled Hosseini’s A Thousand Splendid Suns, the peaceful lifestyles and standard equality of women’s lives is drastically changed to discrimination and abuse by means of forced marriage, restriction of education, and additional punishments they received. Not only do most of the women not have control of whom and when they marry, but they usually have no control of their lives while married. Lack of education is also extremely common for women in Afghanistan. Women are often denied any chance of receiving a proper education and could be banned from schools. Women may suffer many severe punishments compared to men or would suffer for reasons that do not incite punishment. We can see these points executed by watching the occurrence of

Mariam’s marriage is arranged without her knowing; shortly after she starts living with Jalil as seen in the quote by Jalil’s wife “Your father has already given Rasheed his answer” (Hosseini 49) which shows how quickly Mariam was forced into marriage. Mariam is married off to Rasheed who is more than twice her age and is forced to move to a city where she can hardly understand the local dialect. Rasheed still turns violent to Mariam after she fails to bear children of her own. Layla’s marriage is under much different circumstances. After Layla’s parents are struck down by a stray missile in the city, Rasheed and Mariam take Layla in to help her recover from her injuries. Shortly after Rasheed proposes to Layla, she says yes in order to protect her unborn child, and because she is deceived to believe that Tariq, the father of Layla’s child, has died. Shortly after Layla birthed her daughter, Rasheed again turns abusive because Layla fails to birth a son. Neither girls’ marriage is successful nor loving. Neither girl has a choice in the marriage. Khaled Hosseini’s use of the simile “like a compass needle that points north, a man’s accusing finger always finds a woman” (Hosseini 7) shows the interpretation as how a woman is blamed and punished through no fault of her

These instances include education, and the special rules women must abide by to avoid punishment. Since Mariam grows up isolated outside of town due to being a “harami” (bastard), she never received a proper education in her youth as seen by Nana’s quote “There is only one, only one skill a woman like you and me needs in life, and they don’t teach it in school… and it’s this: Endure.”(Hosseini 19) Nana says this in opposition to Mariam’s desire for education as she believes it is unnecessary. After Mariam moved to Kabul with Rasheed, she knows little of the ongoing foreign affairs and of current politics and is forced to rely on Rasheed to inform her. Layla, however, does receive a proper education in her younger years, but it is unfortunately cut short due to the war that raged in Kabul. Once the Taliban takes over Afghanistan, they institute a set of rules which restricts women from going to school, to work, and force them to wear only burqas. Layla is extremely against this as she says “They can’t make half the population stay home and do nothing…This is Kabul, women here used to practice law and medicine; they held office in government-“ (Hosseini 279). Layla says this to further express her hatred of this new system that imposed itself on women. Under this new law, if a woman is found to be adulterous, she will be stoned. If a woman is in public, she must be accompanied by a man. Women