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Prevelance of depression in women essay
The gender roles in the sun also rises
Role of women in a thousand splendid suns
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Many women from around the world live day to day under the shadow of gender roles. While their spouses are away at their jobs, the women are expected to cook, clean, and take care of their kids, all before the husband gets home from work. From A Thousand Splendid Suns by Khaled Hosseini, Nana is a single housewife who birthed and raised her only daughter Mariam by herself, while doing daily house chores, taking care of her medical conditions, and battling depression. While Mariam was approaching her early preteens, Nana suddenly decided she had endured enough pressure and hung herself. On the whole, the events leading up to Nana’s death proves a desperate act of suicide. One factor influencing Nana’s desperate suicide is her harrowing life from the past and present. Before her life with her only child Mariam, Nana took a job as a maid …show more content…
As stated previously, Nana was shamed not only by her former employer and his employer’s wives, but her own father, the only other man in her life. The pivotal result from this is her severe depression which she kept through her life with Mariam. One of the specific factors contributing to Nana’s depression is Jalil’s betrayal and irresponsible actions with one of his employees. A result of this is Nana having to birth Mariam herself, cutting the umbilical cord and all. However, Mariam, the only other person in Nana’s life that actually loves, cares for, and stays with her, has Jalil visit their little hut that he built for Nana. Every week, she attempts to dress herself up in her most appealing clothes and masquerades herself behind a face which says that she is fine as a single mother, when in reality, she is not. “Despite her rants against him when he was around, Nana was subdued and mannerly when Jalil visited” (20). In sum, Nana’s passionate hate for the man who turned her life inside-out affects her daily mood and mindset, ultimately leading Nana to her
For her 15th birthday, Mariam asked Jalil if he could take her to his cinema to watch Pinocchio. She also asked if Jalil could bring her brothers and sisters so she could meet them. Both Nana and Jalil thought it wasn’t a good idea, but Mariam insisted on going, so Jalil said he would send someone to pick her up. Mariam did not like this idea and said that she wanted to be picked up by Jalil. Jalil reluctantly agreed. Later that day, Mariam gets the backlash and hate from her mother from her decision: “Of all the daughters I could have had, why did God give me an ungrateful one like you? …How dare you abandon me like this, you treacherous little harami!” Mariam wakes up the next day, disappointed and fed up since Jalil did not come to pick her up. She heads out to town to find Jalil herself. She makes it to his house when a chauffeur tells Mariam that Jalil was “away on urgent business.” She slept outside of his house and was awoken by the chauffeur, telling her that he would take her home. Mariam snatches away from the chauffeur’s grip and turns around towards the house, to see Jalil in an upstairs window. It was then that Mariam figured out that all she was to Jalil was a disgrace. Jalil had always been careful with the information he told Mariam. He may have loved her, but only on his own terms. Once Mariam realizes that her father allowed her to sleep on the street rather than bring her into his
Janie's Grandmother is the first bud on her tree. She raised Janie since she was a little girl. Her grandmother is in some respects a gardener pruning and shaping the future for her granddaughter. She tries to instill a strong belief in marriage. To her marriage is the only way that Janie will survive in life. What Nanny does not realize is that Janie has the potential to make her own path in the walk of life. This blinds nanny, because she is a victim of the horrible effects of slavery. She really tries to convey to Janie that she has her own voice but she forces her into a position where that voice is silenced and there for condemning all hopes of her Granddaughter become the woman that she is capable of being.
Suicide often follows depression, proving false the stereotype of depression being only general sadness. Depression can be anything from temporary to extreme, and from insignificant to greatly significant. What significant might be characterized as could be the outcome of a loss of ones life. In a case where a woman's husband committed suicide, the woman later said, "'He was like anybody else with depression. But it was much more extreme than he ever let us know'" (Robinson, R. 33). However, Ona Leong appeared no different up to the day that she jumped; never even appearing depressed. Throughout the novel, the impact of suicide is seen from within the home, leading back to early childhood.
In “Suicide Note” composed by Janice Mirikitani, Mirkitani describes the speaker as a college student who kills herself after not receiving a perfect grade point average. When people look at her body lying down on a cover of snow, they perceive that her suicide is due to her inability to become perfect. However, on a deeper meaning, the suicide symbolizes her inability to realize the concepts of family love, hard work, and happiness. To begin with, when Mirkitani’s speaker experiences the stress from her parents as a daughter, she compares herself to a son in the family. The speaker describes herself as “if only [she] were a son,.
As Mariam waits for Jalil she finds herself very bored, “She watched a caterpillar inching along the foot of an immature thistle,” her boredom shows that her home can be very dull (30). One of the reasons she decided to leave, “for the first time in her life, headed down the hill for Herat,” was because she wanted an adventure (30). Living with Nana in a small house outside of Herat with nothing to do can be very unentertaining. Mariam was able to believe everything Jalil had been saying because she had not been anywhere outside her home. Mariam had waited for Jalil for a while, “she waited until her legs were stiff,” which shows that she believed everything he said, she believed that he was gonna come (30).
In the very beginning of A Thousand Splendid Suns, Nana is introduced. Nana has faced her share of prejudice and disapproval with being ill with “jinn” and also giving birth to a “harami”. This child out of wedlock instantly changed the way the world saw her, now she is doomed to be thought of with nothing but shame. The most tragic thing is that Nana herself believed this herself; she even, “wished my father had had the stomach to sharpen one of his knives and do the honorable thing. It might have been better for me.
Mariam is the one who must endure for her whole life. She is a Harami, she “killed” her mother, and now, by killing Rasheed, she also takes Zalmai’s farther away. She may choose to suicide like Nana, her mother did. Mariam talk to Laila: “I’ve killed our husband. I’ve deprived your son of his father… How do I ever bring myself to look at him. Laila jo?” (Hosseini 358). After all, Mariam has to endure that much, how can she continue to endure the rest of her life? But, in another hand, Mariam knows she has her own value, she is the one who full of love and also being loved, so she would do something better than suicide. Mariam say: “ For me, it ends here. There’s nothing more I want… You and your children have made me so very happy” (Hosseini 358). With Mariam, there is no regret if she leaves this world. Mariam sacrifices herself to bring more loves, hopes to Laila and the children in order to endure.
In Charlotte Perkins Gilman’s short story “The Yellow Wallpaper,” a woman who suffers severe depression identifies the suppressive influences of society upon women in the exemplification of a woman being strangled by the domestic patterns of society behind yellow wallpaper. Readers witness the woman undergo various changes from being a compliant woman who obeys her husband, to a woman who breaks free from the chains of societal norms, which include being the submissive sex in matrimony.
Mariam’s strength is immediately tested from birth and throughout her whole childhood. She has been through a lot more than other children of her age, and one of those challenges is the hope for acceptance. She is looked at as an illegitimate child by her parents, and they say there’s no need to attend school. We learn right away what the word “harami” means when Nana uses that to describe her own daughter. She says, “You are a clumsy little harami. This is my reward for everything I’ve endured. An heirloom-breaking, clumsy little harami” (Hosseini 4). Nana especially pushed Mariam away from pursuing her goals. She said there was no need for education and men always find a way to blame it on a woman. This pushed Mariam away from her mom and closer to Jalil, but he refuses to acknowledge her and his wives look at her with cold stares of disgust. Mariam only feels loved by Jalil through all of this, mainly because he brings her things and shows her some love. She asks him to do something with her outside of the kolboa and he first agrees, but never brings her because of his fear with his wives and the structures of Afghan culture that frown upon it. He starts to act as if she was a burden to him and Mariam’s hope for acceptance is crushed. She realizes the truth, especially once she reaches adulthood. In Afghanistan, marriage is not all about love for eachother, it is about traditional role...
The first two people Janie depended on were her Grandmother, whom she called Nanny, and Logan Killicks. Janie’s marriage to Logan Killicks was partially arranged by Nanny. Nanny had felt the need to find someone for Janie to depend on before she died and Janie could no longer depend on her. At first, Janie was very opposed to the marriage. Nanny responded with, “’Tain’t Logan Killicks Ah wants you to have, baby, it’s protection. ...He (God) done spared me...a few days longer till Ah see you safe in life.”(p.14) Nanny instilled the sense of needing a man for safety on Janie that Janie keeps with her throughout her life. After Nanny’s death, Janie continued to stay with Logan despite her dislike for him. She would have left immediately, however, if she did not need to depend on him.
The characters of Nana and Mariam show the archetype of a mother by sacrificing to make their children’s life better. Towards the beginning of the book Nana describes Mariam’s birth to Mariam and mentions, “ I cut the chord between us myself. That’s why I had a knife.”(11). As Nana mentioned she sacrificed throughout her pregnancy though the pain and separated the umbilical chord herself because she wanted her child to have the best chance that she could. She also mentions the knife, which could have been use to kill the baby, similar to what Laila almost did with the rusty bicycle spoke. In addition, the knife could have been used to kill herself to end her suffering. Nevertheless, Nana does not carry out this plan and instead she decides to give up her feelings for the child’s. Mariam too goes through moments where sacrifice is necessary. For instance, when the drought hit and Rahseed looses his shoe store she realizes that in order for her family to survive she must ask Jalil, her father, for money. In order to contact her father she travels in the hot sun, calls the mayor, and says, “I know you have important things to tend to, but it is life and death”(310). Mariam swallows her pride and begins to realize her negative reaction towards her father w...
Janie decided that she must separate from Logan in order to revive her dream of true love. Ultimately, Janie’s interpretation of love matured just as she had, so she began to alter her knowledge of love. Nanny loved and cared for Janie, but she also deceptively manipulated every aspect of her life. Nanny lived the life that she longed for through Janie’s life. “Here Nanny had taken the biggest thing God ever made, the horizon.and pinched it in to such a little bit of a thing that she could tie it about her granddaughter’s neck tight enough to choke her.
Nanny has learned the lesson that love is not synonymous with love, and she thinks Janie is just too young to realize the truth. As a slave near the end of the Civil War, Nanny gave birth to her white master's child, who became Janie's mother. But the white man disappointed Nanny when the his wife realized the baby is her husband's, his wife went into a jealous rage; she declared that Nanny would receive a hundred lashes in the morning and watch her baby sold off when it is a month old, but he didn't do anything for Nanny and his own child, and Nanny had to escape with her baby eventually. This painful heartbreaking experience has taught Nanny a harsh lesson that love cannot always be trusted; more than that, love cannot play a only part in marriage. Unlike her young granddaughter Janie who is youthful and only sees the reason to marry is if is true love. ¡§the inaudible voice of it all came to her.
Nanny, Janie’s grandmother and caregiver, impressed her beliefs of marriage onto Janie at a young age. Nanny’s beliefs on marriage and love are a result of her past experiences with both rape and slavery. Nanny believes that financial security is the most important aspect of marriage rather than love. Janie, however, believes that marriage is about finding love rather than financial security. The conflicting beliefs within Janie are included within the novel in order to develop the meaning of the work. The meaning of the work is developed through Janie’s internal conflict with Nanny’s beliefs and her own personal beliefs on love and marriage. The conflict within Janie’s mind highlights the the conflicts within Janie’s three marriages. Initially Janie follows her grandmother 's advice and it leads to a loveless marriage. While thinking about her marriage to Logan Killicks, Janie thinks “finally out of Nanny’s talk and her own conjectures she made a sort of comfort for herself. Yes, she would love Logan after they were married” (Hurston 23). Janie allows her grandmother to place into a marriage with a man that she has to learn to love after the fact. The conflict within Janie’s mind forces Janie into marriages which are destructive but also give Janie the opportunity to learn from her mistakes. Janie learns and grows throughout her three
According to a Maternal Mortality Ratio (MMR) study of 2008/09 done by the ministry of health and population in Nepal, suicide was found to be the leading cause of death among the Nepalese women. Nepal is a landlocked country with the population of 26.5 million among whom 51.5% are female while 48.5% are male (Central Bureau of Statistics, 2011) . Nepal offers a variety of diversity in regards to its religion, values, ethnicities, and geography, which have a huge impact on the socio-economic status of the people. In addition, Nepal is hugely a patriarchal society with a transparent social and economic disparity throughout the country due to its hindu caste- based hierarchy. As a result we can see that there is a huge unequal gap between the marginalized and disadvantaged groups who are usually the people at the bottom of the caste hierarchy (untouchables or Dalit and Janajati).