During the 20th century women in third world countries had very limited to no rights at all. They could not speak their minds; They were unable to work outside their home; They had to remain completely covered from head to toe and they were denied the right to be educated. Women were forced to obey outrageous laws that kept them silent for many years without having any say or any way of defending their rights. As the years have passed, there have been many works of literature showing the experiences that women have suffered. The role of women in third world countries is questionable as evidenced by the way women are portrayed in A Thousand Splendid Suns.
Women have always been the most affected during times of social and political conflict. An example of a third world country where women have experienced this is Afghanistan. Afghanistan is one of the most challenging places in the world to be a woman. In the article Life as an Afghan women we learn that 9 out of 10 women are illiterate and their life expectancy is 44, one of the lowest in the world. We can also see the causes of all the difficulties of being an Afghan woman. More than fifty percent of Afghan girls are married or engaged by the age of 10. They are forced to marry far older men whom sometimes meet for the first time at their wedding. Afghanistan remains a deeply conservative society, where men dominate and hand out ruling that offer girls and women to settle debts and disputes. Girls that marry at such a young age do not continue their education and are more likely to be abused by their husbands. There is also an unfair division of girls and boys attending school. There are approximately three times more boys attending school than girls. These are some of...
... middle of paper ...
...role of women in third world countries is questionable as evidenced by the way women are portrayed in the work of literature A Thousand Splendid Suns by Khaled Hosseini
Work Cited Page
Google. "Life as an Afghan woman." Trust in education. 21 Mar. 2014. Retrieved from http://www.trustineducation.org/resources/life-as-an-afghan-woman/ Google. A thousand Splendid Suns. Rough Rider Blog. 21 Mar. 2014. Retrieved from http://rriderlausd.org/blog2/?p=4603 Yahoo. Rollback of Women's Rights: Not Just in Afghanistan. 02/14/2014 National Geographic Daily News. 21 Mar. 2014. Retrieved from http://news.nationalgeographic.com/news/2014/02/140220-women-rights-afghanistan-karzai-arab-spring-sharia-world/ Hosseini, Khaled. A Thousand Splendid Suns Chapter 7. Pg. 137
Hosseini, Khaled. A Thousand Splendid Suns Chapter 16. Pg.254
In a nation brimming with discrimination, violence and fear, a multitudinous number of hearts will become malevolent and unemotional. However, people will rebel. In the eye-opening novel, A Thousand Splendid Suns written by Khaled Hosseini, the country of Afghanistan is exposed to possess cruel, treacherous and sexist law and people. The women are classified as something lower than human, and men have the jurisdiction over the women. At the same time, the most horrible treatment can bring out some of the best traits in victims, such as consideration, boldness, and protectiveness. Although, living in an inconsiderate world, women can still carry aspiration and benevolence. Mariam and Laila (the main characters of A Thousand Splendid Suns) are able to retain their consideration, boldness and protectiveness, as sufferers in their atrocious world.
Women in Afghanistan don’t have as much freedom or no rights compared to the men in their country. Men are seen as strong ,controlling and Powerful. They often say that women are treated worse than the animals. Women are not treated really well in Afghanistan Men and Women should be treated the same.Hopefully one day we will see the rights and responsibilities change and women are valued as much as men
Since the tragedies of September 11th 2001, Americans have really opened their eyes to the political state of Afghanistan. The poor treatment of women in Afghanistan is an issue that, for many Americans, just seems to be coming to light as a serious concern that requires outside attention. Extreme Islamic leaders in the country persist in limiting the freedom that Afghan women have. Women in the Taliban-controlled country suffer unusually hideous acts of torment and are forced to abide by outrageous regulations because of stringent enforcement methods. Afghan women daily live lives restricted by Taliban law and risk having to endure cruel punishment and torture, yet Afghan political leaders continue to justify the their treatment of Afghan women.
What if you risked being assaulted every time you left your home? How would you feel if your husband was in control of every aspect of your life? Afghanistan women encounter both of these circumstances on a day-to-day basis. Many are faced with physical and emotional abuse by their husbands and families. Women’s rights in Afghanistan were majorly affected by the rule of the Taliban, a government group who stripped women of their human rights, established discriminating laws, and whose legacy still affects Afghan women today.
Khaled Hosseini’s novel, A Thousand Splendid Suns, tells the stories of women in Afghanistan in the late twentieth century. Hosseini shows the women’s strengths, weaknesses, tribulations and accomplishments through their own actions, and how they are treated by other characters in the book, particularly the male characters. Hosseini portrays men in A Thousand Splendid Suns to create themes of justice and injustice within the novel. The justice, or lack thereof, served to the male characters is a result of their treatment and attitudes toward the female characters in the book and towards women in general.
The Taliban are still in power in many parts of the country, denying people the rights they deserve, and committing crimes against humanity. Women’s rights are nowhere near where they should be, they are treated like property, because that is how the culture sees women, there is violent acts committed on girls when they try to stand up for themselves, and people don't speak up against this ugly truth, nearly as much as they should as fellow human beings.
"Life as an Afghan Woman." Trust in Education. N.p., n.d. Web. 27 Feb. 2014. .
Travesties are committed against women every day, in every country, in every city, town and home. In Afghanistan women are not only discriminated against, they are publicly reduced to animals. Women are deprived of basic human rights: they are not allowed to travel outside their homes without being completely covered by the traditional shroud-like burqa; they are not allowed to speak or walk loudly in public; they are not allowed to laugh or speak with other women; they are not allowed to attend school nor work; they are expected to be invisible; they are the ghosts of what were once educated, notable, and successful women. With their ruthless and extreme laws, the Taliban have effectively removed the physical presence of women in Afghanistan. The Taliban have stolen the very souls of these women and have turned them into the “living dead” of Afghanistan. The Taliban’s harsh restrictions and extreme religious laws have tainted the freedoms and basic human rights of the once valued and prominent women of Afghanistan.
...present powerful characters, while females represent unimportant characters. Unaware of the influence of society’s perception of the importance of sexes, literature and culture go unchanged. Although fairytales such as Sleeping Beauty produce charming entertainment for children, their remains a didactic message that lays hidden beneath the surface; teaching future generations to be submissive to the inequalities of their gender. Feminist critic the works of former literature, highlighting sexual discriminations, and broadcasting their own versions of former works, that paints a composite image of women’s oppression (Feminist Theory and Criticism). Women of the twenty-first century serge forward investigating, and highlighting the inequalities of their race in effort to organize a better social life for women of the future (Feminist Theory and Criticism).
Since the starting years for ladies in Afghan have had for all intents and purposes no rights or opportunities. The effect of the Taliban forced restraint was most intensely felt in urban areas where ladies had delighted in moderately more important opportunities. At the point when the Taliban assumed control, ladies were not permitted to go to class and others have been compelled to leave their employments. The Taliban had issued orders denying ladies from working
Women roles have changed drastically in the last 50 to 80 years, women no longer have to completely conform to society’s gender roles and now enjoy the idea of being individuals. Along with the evolution of women roles in society, women presence and acceptance have drastically grown in modern literature. In early literature it was common to see women roles as simply caretakers, wives or as background; women roles and ideas were nearly non-existent and was rather seen than heard. The belief that women were more involved in the raising of children and taking care of the household was a great theme in many early literatures; women did not get much credit for being apart of the frontier and expansion of many of the nations success until much later.
In modern American society, women’s rights have become so much of a political controversy that oftentimes we forget the global reality of the female situation: that every decade, more girls are killed simply for being girls than all people in every genocide of the twentieth century combined. This is the reality that Pulitzer Prize-winning journalists Nicholas Kristof and Sheryl WuDunn describe in their novel Half the Sky: Turning Oppression into Opportunity for Women Worldwide. Half the Sky chronicles Kristof’s and WuDunn’s journeys across third world Asia and Africa to uncover the truth about three abuses that afflict the world’s women on a massive scale. Namely, the novel portrays how the devastating realities of sex trafficking and forced prostitution, gender-based violence, and maternal mortality are based in the cyclically oppressive, ultra-conservative cultures of the third world and lays down a clear path for how we, as citizens of the western world, can help.
The women of Afghanistan have been through every hardship imaginable. Khaled Hosseini uses his novel A Thousand Splendid Suns to show his readers how women’s rights changed through out the last half of the 20th century and how the different governments affected the women differently.
Education of women in Afghanistan is still a big problem facing the Afghan community. The serious situation of illiterate women in Afghanistan ins...
These women are treated just like the lady of Shalott, who was placed in an excluded tower far away from human interaction. She also, could not look down her window at life passing by, but she could see through “a mirror clear, Reflecting tower’d Camelot” (Tennyson, 45-50). This mirror was displaying to her what she could never have; freedom. Freedom is exactly what most women in these countries, Pakistan, India or Afghanistan, cannot attain. In the book, A Thousand Splendid Suns,