Discussion B, D. Hoffmaster, Period 5

In his novel A Thousand Splendid Suns, Khaled Hosseini utilizes characterization of Mariam and her new husband Rasheed to examine gender relations and their patriarchal state in 1970’s Afghanistan.  Primarily, Mariam views her arrangement with Rasheed with fear and anxiety. Mariam thinks that having to “clean after this man, Rasheed, cook for him, wash his clothes” are “painful acts of perversity, that filled her with dread and made her break out in a sweat.” (Page 49) Mariam is only fifteen years old at this point. The thought of marrying is daunting in the eyes of people twice, if not three times, her age. However, in the (viewed by westerners as backwards) Afghani society, arranging marriages (another supposedly barbaric institution) between young women and older men (Rasheed is supposedly somewhere between forty and forty-five) is the norm. Rasheed is a very traditional Afghani male; he believes that a woman is her husband’s property, and enforces the rule of not allowing other men to gaze upon her very strictly. When Mariam learns of his demands that she not allow herself to be seen by males, she feels that Rasheed’s “will felt...as imposing and inmovable as the Safid-koh mountains looming over Gul Daman.” (Page 71) Mariam’s view of Rasheed is similar to the view that many women have of men in the patriarchal society present not only in Afghanistan, but in the world at large. Domination begins not with a show of physical force, but rather a force of will. Once one has a person dominated mentally, their spirit drained, physical domination comes soon afterwards. Mariam finds out that Rasheed was looking at nude magazines before and possibly while she is with him, a clear contradiction from his value system of respecting women as their husband’s to do with. However, Mariam explains it away as, “He was a man, after all, living alone for years before she had moved in. His needs differed from hers.” (Page 83) Mariam is disgusted with this, but she accepts it as just a natural part of Rasheed being male. Instead of being indignant, she is accepting. Rasheed can clearly get away with anything short of murder, and Mariam would justify it. Based on this, Hosseini paints a clear picture of gender relations that can still be applied in today’s world, thirty years in the future; men have the power, while the women willingly submit because they do not know much else. Some break free of the chains that bind them, but others are content to live in their servitude to man.