A Thousand Splendid Suns Perpetuates the Idea That Being a Woman of the Working Class Will Dictate Your Future - to What Extent Do You Agree with This Statement?

 “A Thousand Splendid Suns perpetuates the idea that being a woman of the working class dictates your future.” To what extent do you agree with this statement?

Evidence to support the title statement can be found throughout ‘A Thousand Splendid Suns’. Karl Marx (1859) states in ‘Towards a Political Economy’ “It is not the continuousness of men that determines their existence, but their social existence that determines their consciousness”. This quote explicitly links to the protagonist, Mariam in ‘A Thousand Splendid Suns’ (ATSS) as shown by the first chapter of the book where she is called a “harami” and is described as a “person who would never have legitimate claim to other things other people had”. Here, Hosseini has presented the idea that Mariam is destined to not have any significance within society because of her being a “harami” (bastard). This links to the Marxist statement because it can be argued that if Nana were not of the working class, Jalil would not have deemed it appropriate to impregnate Mariam’s mother, Nana, with a “harami” child, a sin within Islam and considered deviant in Afghanistan. This is typical upper class behaviour according to H. Bertens in ‘The Politics of Class Marxism’ who states, “Capitalism turns people into things”. Jalil had the decency to marry the other three women who bore his children but never contemplated this with Nana, the housekeeper, whose social status in Herat may have programmed him to think it’s okay to take advantage of her. We see this concept of Jalil seeing Mariam and Nana as ‘things’ by the way he doesn’t care for their living conditions in a “kolba” away from the rest of the city.

Regardless of Jalil’s apparent abuse toward Nana, her daughter Mariam still has faith in him as her father, as she believes he will bring her “happiness” that Nana “never had”. Based on this, it can be argued that within the Afghani society, as portrayed in this novel, men have the ultimate power as they are often viewed as a source of hope that women should desire. Despite having been raised by her mother, Mariam still believes that Nana is the one with the “wretched heart” and living with Jalil will bring her life happiness.

Mariam’s decision to follow her father, and Laila’s marriage to Rasheed, could both be viewed as examples of typical female choices in this patriarchal society. It was never an option for either Mariam or Laila to find success independently; they were both under the impression that a man was necessary in order to live happily, as Hosseini presents a society where men were the superior sex in Afghanistan at the time. On page 270, Laila says “Everybody wants a Jack to rescue them from disaster”, implying a sort of ‘knight in shining armour’ is what a woman needs if she wants to find happiness in this life. However, this is proven incorrect in the novel because, as a reader, we can assume that Mariam’s life would have been somewhat better if she had stayed with her mother, rather than getting married, even if a Jinn possessed her, as she would not have had to bear the torture put on her by Rasheed. An example of Rasheed torturing Mariam is when he “swung the belt” at her for not obeying his commands. From this we can suggest that the dictation of Mariam’s future was not solely down to Mariam’s social status and gender but also her situation and particular personal decisions she faced.