A Thousand Splendid Suns: The Oppression Of Women

In A Thousand Splendid Suns, Hosseini establishes Mariam as a powerless, young woman, set to marry a cold, abusive husband to demonstrate the easy oppression against women in a man-ruled culture. While Rasheed, her husband, is seen as important in his own eyes, Mariam is treated as an object for him due to her social status as a woman, than as an equal to him. In the end Mariam breaks out of the social norms of by uniting with another woman to achieve what she most desires, freedom, and gives up her life of living with Rasheed. To achieve what you most desire you must sacrifice something else. Gilman’s The Yellow Wallpaper focuses on the oppression of a mentally ill woman, but the view of the author is shown in a different perspective with a different attitude towards the tyranny over woman: it is not the stern, dominance of men in the culture that is, to
Despite her own personal suggestions, her husband simply dismisses the ideas, claiming he is a physician and he knows best and controls her. In the end the woman breaks through by finally tearing down the wallpaper symbolizing the woman breaking out of the gender norms into her own person. In conclusion, both stories really ask the same question: is it possible for a woman to break through the oppression of the social status and gender roles of women who are at a personal disadvantage?
In A Thousand Splendid Suns, Hosseini portrays Mariam as a meek young girl in her culture that is naive to the ways of the reality of the world. However her mother tries to already enforce her to be aware of the gender roles and the suppression of women. In the book her mother says,“Like a compass needle that points north, a man’s accusing finger always finds a woman.” (Pg 7) At first Mariam only agrees with her mother to make her mother happy. The author at the beginning of the