Wait a second!
More handpicked essays just for you.
More handpicked essays just for you.
An essay :spousal abuse
Essay on spousal abuse
Don’t take our word for it - see why 10 million students trust us with their essay needs.
Recommended: An essay :spousal abuse
Spousal Abuse in today’s society is extremely prevalent. All across the world, cases of spousal and domestic abuse are happening. In Khaled Hosseni’s A Thousand Splendid Suns, Spousal abuse plays an imperative role as development to the character’s emotions.
Hosseni’s application of spousal abuse in the novel inflicts a feeling of sympathy and sorrow for Mariam and Laila. Mariam and Laila are victims of abuse in a patriarchal society. In their polygamous relationship with their husband Rasheed, he oppresses them emotionally, verbally, and physically. After Laila is brought back from the police, Rasheed promises that if she ever tries to run away again, he “swear[s] on the Profit’s name [he] will find [her]”(272) and if he does, he will
beat Mariam first, then [Aziza], and [her] last”(272). He says he will make her watch as he beats her friend and her daughter then he will beat her. In Afghanistan today, women are often treated by their husbands as Mariam and Laila were by Rasheed Recently, a woman was beat, strangled, and killed by her husband because she kept having girls. In the novel, Mariam experienced abuse by her husband because she had 7 miscarriages and was unable to give birth to a child. Rasheed treated Aziza, Laila’s daughter, very poorly, whereas he treated his and Laila’s son very well and liked to spoil him. Hosseni had good druthers encompassing the relevant issue of spousal abuse into the novel. Ultimately, his abusive manner led to Mariam killing him and Laila running away with her true love. Although spousal and domestic abuse is becoming less rampant, it is still found all around the world.
Under any circumstance a woman is seen as being at fault. In the novel A Thousand Splendid Suns by Khaled Hosseini, many male societies systematically victimize women. Forcing women to be dependent on men causes them to be victims in households and society. For example Nana says to Mariam, “Like a compass needle that points north, a man’s accusing finger always finds a woman. Always” (Hosseini 7). The systematic victimization of women by patriarchal societies is a main theme in the novel, which is shown in the relationships between the men and women in the novel.
“Anyone can have a child and call themselves a parent. A real parent is someone who puts that child above their own selfish needs and want.” – unknown. “Rules of the Game,” a short story crafted by Amy Tan, depicts a conflict between mother and daughter. Waverly, a young female chess prodigy, lives in San Francisco’s Chinatown with her family. As Waverly develops into a great chess player, the pressure and control of her mother becomes too much to handle. Waverly’s mother has a mentally abusive relationship with her daughter. The Mother fails to give Waverly room to grow and she puts an unhealthy amount of pressure on such a young girl.
Mariam and Laila face a lot of social injustice yet they do not attempt to challenge the issues because they are told to endure all forms of pain and social injustice. From a very young age, Mariam was told by her mother that all she needed to do was to withstand any pain and suffering, it’s the one skill she needed.” Endure . . . Women like us. We endure. It’s all we have”(17). In addition, Laila also suffered the injustice of society since she was a single mother it was not safe for her to live on her own so she had no choice but to marry Rasheed. The society gave women no choice but to endure and that’s the main reason why Laila and Mariam were unable to take a stand. However, close to the end of the novel Mariam decides to take initiative and fights back. She finally takes action because she is driven by the love she has for Laila and her child since they are the only family she’s had that loved her. So when Rasheed her husband attempts to choke Laila to death, Mariam reflects on how much injustice she has faced and how unjust both her husband and the society have been towards her and other women. At this point, Mariam realizes that she must end her and Laila’s suffering once and for all. So she takes Rasheed’s life. Although Mariam is executed as a form of punishment, she is very successful at taking a stand to end the oppression and injustice. Mariam knew her actions were fatal yet she still did what she knew was right. Furthermore, she sacrificed herself and didn’t regret her action instead she was pleased that “she was leaving the world as a woman who had loved and been loved back. She was leaving it as a friend, a companion, a guardian. A mother” ( 329). Her actions freed Laila and her child from Rasheed’s abuse and helped them build a better life. Thus Mariam was successful and did not want to endure the injustice or see Laila suffer, she did it by
Woman gets married to a man with a great hope and expectations about their good relationship with their husband. Their expectation was a loving and caring relationship. When the same husband start abusing physically and mentally she becomes depressed. Cleofilas a lady with a great hope before marriage expresses her feeling as, “The first time she had been so surprised she didn’t cry out or try to defend herself. She had always said she would strike back if a man, any man, were to strike her. But when a . . . until the lip split and bled an orchid of blood, she didn’t fight back, she didn’t break into tears she didn’t run away . . . .”(Cisneros 346) The writer tells about relationship between Juan and Cleofilas as, “If they are lucky, there are tears at the end of the long night. At any given moment, the fists try to speak.”(Cisneros 347) The journal from library resource center says, “She is beaten so often and so severely that by the time she decide to leave him, the lady at the health clinic notes in astonishment that, ‘The poor lady’s got black and blue marks all over.’”(Rouster 10) Men and women both have equally important hand to run a house. To run a house there must be peace and love in their lives. Woman wants her to be treated equally as a part without whom the chariot of the family cannot run smoothly. She finds herself so unlucky and unhappy if her
The response to abuse has metamorphosed drastically from Janie’s time to present day. During the days of the early 20th century in which the novel was set, spousal abuse was accepted and even promoted in some cases. Astonishingly, when Tea talks with the men about beating Janie the men respect Tea Cake and admire the way Janie stays quiet during the ordeal saying, “wouldn’t Ah love tuh whip a tender woman lak Janie” (Hurston 148). They ignore the fact that Tea Cake beats her just to show other people that he is in charge; he beats her because of his own insecurities. In Alice Walker’s novel The Color Purple it is shown that the men as well as the women encouraged spousal abuse. When Harpo seeks advice on how to deal with Sophia it is Celie, another woman, who advises him to beat her. Although spousal abuse still occurs in many households today, it occurs in secrecy because there are laws that have been erected to protect against this type of abuse, and the punishment for this crime is harsh. Today, if a man hits a woman he is less of a man and a disgrace, not praised and admired as in the past.
From start to finish, one could see how much Mariam values Laila, Aziza, and their friendship. The first example is when Mariam vows to help Laila while they are in the hospital for Laila’s unborn child: “I’ll get you seen, Laila jo. I promise” (287). This simple promise is a deep portrayal of Mariam’s desire to help Laila find a doctor and deliver her baby. Additionally, one can see Mariam’s love for Laila when she protects her from Rasheed’s grip of death, “‘Rasheed.’ He looked up. Mariam swung. She hit him across the temple. The blow knocked him off Laila” (348). Rasheed was going to kill Laila, but Mariam steps in and knocks him off of her with a shovel to save her life. Mariam forms a tight-knit bond with Laila, and when Hosseini includes their relationship, one can see how Mariam values Laila enough to kill another man. The author also describes their relationship after Mariam and Laila discuss plans for leaving: “When they do, they’ll find you as guilty as me. Tariq too. I won’t have the two of you living on the run like fugitives.” … “Laila crawled to her and again put her head on Mariam’s lap. She remembered all the afternoons they’d spent together, braiding each other’s hair, Mariam listening patiently to her random thoughts and ordinary stories with an air of gratitude, with the expression of a person to whom a unique and coveted privilege had been extended” (358). The love Mariam has for
“Like a river flows so surely to the sea darling, so it goes some things are meant to be.” In literature there have been a copious amount of works that can be attributed to the theme of love and marriage. These works convey the thoughts and actions in which we as people handle every day, and are meant to depict how both love and marriage can effect one’s life. This theme is evident in both “The Storm” by Kate Chopin and “The Yellow Wallpaper” by Charlotte Gilman; both stories have the underlying theme of love and marriage, but are interpreted in different ways. Both in “The Storm” and in “The Yellow Wallpaper,” the women are the main focus of the story. In “The Storm” you have Calixta, a seemingly happy married woman who cheats on her husband with an “old-time infatuation” during a storm, and then proceeds to go about the rest of her day as if nothing has happened when her husband and son return. Then you have “The Yellow Wallpaper” where the narrator—who remains nameless—is basically kept prisoner in her own house by her husband and eventually is driven to the point of insanity.
The two main themes, forgiveness and betrayal are ever so present in The Poison of Unforgiveness. However, the plot is different in a few ways. Most notably, we found it important to document the fact that it took great strength for the woman to get over her fear of being heartbroken — in order to trust her boyfriend in the first place. Furthermore, in Sula Nel forgives only her husband — but not her best girlfriend (which marks the rejection of feminist logic). In our adaptation, she willingly forgives both her friend and her boyfriend (… but for her own personal sanity). Finally, in Beyonce’s “Forgiveness” chapter of Lemonade Beyonce provides her husband, who betrayed her, with a card of redemption. However, in our adaptation, the girl dances to “Sand Castles” only as a solidification and mark of truly being free of the poison of unforgiveness. In contrast to Beyonce’s version, she does not actually take her boyfriend back or stays close friends with the girl— but she genuinely forgives both of them. Her forgiveness is symbolized as the flower blooms in the dark room — exploring her resilience in spite of betrayal. We believed these changes were imperative because they provide a critical lens of how fair and counter-patriarchal forgiveness materializes in platonic friendships versus romantic relationships. Additionally, it explores the unique strength in
Marriage can be seen as a subtle form of oppression, like many things which are dictated by social expectations. In Kate Chopin’s The Story of An Hour, Louise Mallard finds herself in distress due to the event of her husband’s death that makes her question who she is as a person. The author cleverly uses this event to create the right atmosphere for Mrs. Mallard to fight against her own mind. As the short story progresses, we see that Mrs. Mallard moves forward with her new life and finds peace in her decision to live for herself. This shows that marriage too is another chain that holds oneself back. Not wanting to admit this to herself, Louise
From an outside view, everything in relationships seems to be wonderful. However, on many occasions, taking a deeper analysis of the women and their daily lives, one can realize the true dangers they face around their husbands. It is important to understand the reasons why the women in the following stories behave and feel the way they do. Firstly, in the story “Hills Like White Elephants” by Ernest Hemingway, the female character is in danger because her boyfriend wants her to have an abortion. Secondly, in the story “The Story of an Hour” by Kate Chopin, Mrs. Louise Mallard is at risk because her husband, throughout years of marriage has limited her freedom. Finally, in the story of “The Chrysanthemums” by John Steinback, it is the frustration Elisa Allen feels towards her life because her husband never shows admiration towards her beauty which leads her to have a melancholic and miserable life. Even though men took an important role in the stories, it is clear they were the cause of the women’s suffering and perilous lifestyles.
Oppression of women in our patriarchal society is seen daily. Men dominate women in so many ways it becomes hard to distinguish one form of oppression from another. In the movie Sleeping With the Enemy, a young woman battles daily with an abusive, domineering husband. Although the outside world may view Laura's life as perfect, the viewer sees the whole truth. Laura's perfect life consists of an attractive, wealthy husband who would do anything for her-even kill. They live in a beautiful mansion on the coast, and Laura does not have to work if she so chooses. Every day Laura is tortured and ridiculed and criticized by her husband. Her husband, Martin Burns, is obsessed about keeping the household in perfect condition. If one towel is out of line, one can out of order in the cupboard, or if dinner is slightly late, Laura receives a severe beating. The only way for Laura to escape from her tyrannical husband is by staging her own death.
While it has traditionally been men who have attached the "ball and chain" philosophy to marriage, Kate Chopin gave readers a woman’s view of how repressive and confining marriage can be for a woman, both spiritually and sexually. While many of her works incorporated the notion of women as repressed beings ready to erupt into a sexual a hurricane, none were as tempestuous as The Storm.
The bleak tone of this story takes a particularly sad and disturbing tinge when the wife illustrates a scene from early on in her marriage where she tries to get her husband to satisfy her desire and provide her with mutual satisfaction, only to have him rebuke and reprimand her. In fact, the husband responds in such a particularly brusque and hysterical manner that the reader can see how traumatized the wife would have been at ...
Not attempting to hide, Mrs. Mallard knows that she will weep at her husbands funeral, however she can’t help this sudden feeling of seeing, “beyond [the] bitter moment [of] procession of years to come that would belong to her absolutely” (Chopin, 16). In an unloving marriage of this time, women were trapped in their roles until they were freed by the death of their husbands. Although Mrs. Mallard claims that her husband was kind and loving, she can’t help the sudden spark of joy of her new freedom. This is her view on the release of her oppression from her roles of being a dutiful wife to her husband. Altogether, Mrs. Mallard claims that, “there would be no powerful will bending hers in that blind persistence with which men and women believe they have a right to impose a private will upon a fellow-creature” (Chopin, 16). This is the most important of Mrs. Mallard’s thoughts, as she never officially states a specific way when her husband oppressed her. However, the audience can clearly suggest that this is a hint towards marriage in general that it suffocates both men and women. Marriage is an equal partnership in which compromise and communication become the dominant ideals to make the marriage better. It is suggested that Mrs. Mallard also oppressed her husband just as much as he did to her when she sinks into the armchair and is, “pressed down by a physical exhaustion
...the story he is inviting the reader to condemn the mistreatment of women and lack of freedom in the family particularly under the institution of marriage. The attitude of the author gives the story a condemning tone. The tone is appropriate for the theme which is a strained relations in the family and specifically in marriage relations.