Compare the ways in which the writers of your two chosen texts make use of different voices. You must relate your discussion to relevant contextual factors.
Bronte in Wuthering Heights and Hosseini in A Thousand Splendid Suns aim to give a voice to their oppressed female characters in their respective patriarchal societies (the Georgian/Victorian period and ISIS ruled Afghanistan) through utilising narrative voice and perspective.
Both authors use interchangeable and unreliable narrators to distort the truth of the women's stories, giving the reader a subconscious bias. Lockwood is the main narrator within 'Wuthering Heights', he is written by Bronte as an ignorant character, constantly making mistakes about peoples character. At the beginning
…show more content…
By doing this Hosseini allows the reader to connect with and have sympathy for both main female characters. Especially in highly emotional scenes when Mariam sees "Nana dangling" from a tree, having committed suicide and when Laila's parents are killed "It hurts. It hurts to breathe". In contrast Bronte wrote 'Wuthering Heights' in first person but from the perspective of an outsider Lockwood ("I have just returned...) and Nelly, who is still distanced from Catherine and Heathcliff. This could have been used by Bronte to isolate Catherine from the reader. This may represent here geographical location on the moors or her oppression in the restrictive 18th century society, when the novel was set. An era in which Catherine's free and open nature, Nelly described her as being "a wicked wild slip " would be unacceptable and expected to change as she grew into a proper young woman - the Victorian stereotype of the 'Angel of the House' (similar to Isabella Linton). Hosseini however may be trying to create a sympathetic, emotional connection between character and reader, to show how the women are more free to be who they want to in a 20/21st century