Khaled Hosseini’s A Thousand Splendid Suns centers around the predicament of women in Afghan culture which powers women to wear the veil (burqa). This veil is a veritable image of both the harsh idea of male dominance and the stifling impacts of accommodation concerning women, much similarly that dresses of specific hues and uncommon caps that women are made to wear in Margaret Atwood’s Handmaid’s Tale confine women’s development, opportunity, and even vision and cut them off from specific encounters. For instance, Offred in The Handmaid’s Tale is not permitted to talk except if addressed and is not supposed to make eye contact unless commanded to do so. A comparable situation is displayed in A Thousand Splendid Suns. The burqas in Afghanistan are utilized to make women submissive to their husbands. Mariam rapidly takes in this from her husband, Rasheed, who also upholds this work, saying, “But I’m a different breed of man, Mariam. Where I come from, one wrong look, one improper word, and blood is spilled. Where I come from, a woman’s face is her husband’s business only. I want you to remember that. Do you understand? (63). Women are to be secured by their burqas at all times, except if at home with their husbands, isolated and separated from society. Women are hushed by this thin layer of fabric that encompasses their bodies and powers them into submission.
The burqa is Rasheed’s method for advising Mariam to recall that she will never again be permitted to go outside the house without it. Mariam now feels an impression of contracting. Her husband’s will is as forcing and relentless as the mountains approaching her previous town. Mariam has married a man who is unyielding and stern. She understands that she has turned into a spouse bound by antiquated guidelines and controls.
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Tragically, Mariam, in the same way as other women in the middle to low classes in Afghanistan, is constrained by her husband to wear a burqa. He discloses to her that clients came into his store with their spouses dressed too provocatively and that they put their uncovered feet forward for him to measure. The type of isolation and corruption of women caused by the act of wearing a burqa is not so for the privileged. Rasheed says,
The women come uncovered; they talk to me directly, and look me in the eye without shame. They wear makeup and skirts that show their knees. Sometimes they even put their feet in front of me, as the women do, for measurements. and their husbands stand there and watch. They allow it... They think they’re being modern men, intellectuals, on account of their education, I suppose (63).
Rasheed needs Mariam, to be his property and forces his will on her and forces her to carry on with an actual existence of inaction. He cautions her,
“There’s a teacher living down the street, Hakim is his name, and I see his wife Fariba all the time walking the streets alone with nothing on her head but a scarf. It embarrasses me, frankly, to see a man who’s lost control of his wife” (63).
To get rid of Mariam, Jalil and his spouses constrained Mariam hastily to wed Rasheed. The main essential right of her own life is accordingly grabbed from her by the mullah and the observers there including her father, who constrained her to agree and sign the marriage documents. In the wake of coming to Kabul with Rasheed consistently she fears that this will be the night when he will do what spouses do with their wives, but to her surprise she learns from Rasheed that he wants to rest alone in his very own room. Before long, one night, he visits her around evening time and begins to caress her and touch her. He lies next to her and plays the marriage game. She grits her teeth fully expecting the agony yet is completely astonished at how troublesome it is. Rasheed appears not to comprehend what she is encountering and sees just to his own needs. “The pain was sudden and astonishing. Her eyes sprang open. She sucked air through her teeth and bit on the knuckle of her thumb” (69). When it was done, he rolled off her panting. As he lay there beside her, he said “There is no shame in this, Mariam, It’s what married people do” (70). Anyway when he returns to his room, he forgets her to hold up the agony, to take a look at the solidified stars in the sky and a cloud that wraps over the essence of the moon like a wedding veil. Ironically, this is an assault because Mariam even discloses to him that she wouldn’t like to do what he requests. The love-making is without wanting to and it indicates how much life has changed for her.
Hosseini needs to paint the scope of powers debasing women in Afghanistan, from the hyper valuation of male youngsters to occasions of assault inside arranged marriages. Personal connections are discolored by different ills of society and love is frequently close to fantasy. Rasheed weds Mariam for his very own fulfillment and to replace his drowned child with a male child. He tells Mariam amid her first pregnancy that on the off chance that she delivers a boy the name will be Zalmai and the girl child’s name she can pick herself whatever she loves. The swaddling garments he brings are intended for a male child. Hosseini paints the picture of male male-dominated society where young girls are abhorred and not viewed as beneficial anymore.
Before Mariam's first pregnancy, Rasheed takes her on excursions to various parts of Kabul demonstrates her lovely things, and offers her the best nourishment and desserts. Mariam strolls close to Rasheed, stumbling every so often on the burqa’s hem. Mariam, who has never been inside a restaurant, thinks that it's odd at first to lift her burqa to put morsels of food into her mouth. She endures this for her husband, their relationship, and their future expectation. When he takes her around Kabul, stops at a weaving shop and requests that her hold up outside the shop. While she waits for him, she watches the people going by. She sees modern women in the city of Kabul. They do not cover their faces, wear dresses that show their legs, wear make-up, and style their hair. They all have swinging handbags and stirring skirts. Their nails are long, polished pink or orange, and their lips are red as tulips. They stroll in high heels rapidly, just as on critical business. They wear dark sunglasses and Mariam envisions that they all have university degrees and work at their very own workplaces with all the extravagances of life. She even observes women smoking behind the wheel of a car. They beguile Mariam and make her mindful of her lowliness, plain looks, absence of yearnings, and obliviousness to such a significant number of things.
What Rasheed fears is not his religious belief system but just his inner self and his control over his wife. He is a successive consumer and lost his child, Yunus, who was suffocated directly under his eyes however he did not see the accident as a result of his drunken state. If women are to wear burqa and keep their hair secured, men are not authorized to investigate the naked photos of women and to keep in their ownership the photos of the private parts of women. In Rasheed’s room, Mariam detects a few magazines underneath the weapon. She is astounded to see that,
“on every page were women, beautiful women, who wore no shirts, no trousers, no socks or underpants. They wore nothing at all. They lay in beds amid tumbled sheets and gazed back at Mariam with half-lidded eyes. In most of the pictures, their legs were apart, and Mariam had a full view of the dark place between them. In some, the women were prostrated as if- God forbade this thought- in sujda for prayer. They looked back over their shoulders with a look of bored contempt… Surely the women on these pages had husbands, some of them must have had. At the least, they had brothers. If so, why did Rasheed insist that she cover when he thought nothing of looking at the private areas of other men’s wives and sisters?” (75).
She currently contemplates all his discussion of respect and legitimacy, his objection to female clients, and appearing of their feet to him. She cannot pass judgment on which act is more regrettable – Rasheed’s magazines or her dad Jalil’s additional conjugal relations with Nana.
In any case, Mariam justifies the entire thing contending with herself that Rasheed has lived alone for a considerable length of time and has sexual requirements not the same as hers. “For her, all these months later, their coupling was still an exercise in tolerating pain. His appetite, on the other hand, was fierce, sometimes bordering on the violent” (75). Mariam in the long run returns everything where she has discovered it. This is unsuitable however more particularly it is unmentionable. Mariam is driven emotionally and here again, she presents her will to Rasheed and regrets that she has sneaked around in Rasheed’s room. She ponders what thing of substance she has found out about him truly. As she completes her work, she feels distress for Rasheed. He, as well, has had a hard life set apart by misfortune and tragic turns of destiny. Additionally, it torments her to think of Rasheed, hysterical and defenseless, begging the lake to spit back his child. For the first time, she feels a family relationship with her husband and reveals to herself that they will make great friends all things considered.
Men from the middle to low classes, being of lesser education, may feel just as if they are not ready to deal with women being more friendly and agreeable than themselves. As a result of this frailty, they compel women to wear burqas with the goal that they can think about themselves and hold authority over them. They should be responsible for their home condition since they are not responsible for the outside one. This overabundance of forceful conduct just as the requirement for self-reassurance drives these men to request that their spouses must wear burqas openly.
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