A Thousand Splendid Suns Analysis

A Thousand Splendid Suns by Khaled Hosseini takes place in Afghanistan, from the mid 1960’s to early 2000’s. It follows the life of Mariam, the illegitimate child of a rich businessman. A child bride, she is abused by her husband, and eventually attempts to flee her city, Kabul, during the Civil War and the regime of the Taliban. While the events of A Thousand Splendid Suns are not relatable to many people living in countries such as the United States and Canada, readers are able to connect the events of Mariam’s life to real life situations happening in the Middle East and parts of Africa.
After her mother commits suicide, Mariam lives with her father for a short time, while he and his wives secretly arrange a marriage between Mariam and
a cobbler, Rasheed. At the age of fifteen, Mariam is forced to marry a man 30 years her senior. At first, Rasheed is understanding of her turmoil, but he soon makes it clear that he expects her to start “behaving like a wife” (Hosseini 58). Unfortunately, this is a common occurrence. Globally, there are more than 700 million women alive today that were married as children. Over a third of these females were married before the age of fifteen (UNICEF).
Child marriage, while in decline, happens for a number of reasons. Patriarchal societies, gender norms, tradition, illiteracy, and poverty all attribute to child marriage and maternal and infant death. In countries such as Pakistan or Ethiopia, the education of males is seen as more important. Families in poverty often “sell” their daughters in order to support themselves. When girls ages 12-14 have access to education and school supplies, they are 94% less likely to become child brides, and those who “underwent an educational program on the harms of child marriage were 67 percent less likely to be married” (TakePart). Educated girls and girls from wealthy families are much less likely to be the victims of child marriage.
Mariam, like many other Afghan women, is the victim of domestic violence and marital rape. Her husband, Rasheed, forces himself upon her a few weeks into their marriage.
Mariam was afraid. She lived in fear of his shifting moods, his volatile temperament, his insistence on steering even mundane exchanges down a confrontational path that, on occasion, he would resolve with punches, slaps, kicks… (Hosseini 89).
Like many other child brides, Mariam suffers violence at the hands of her husband. “Girls who marry before the age of 18 are twice as likely to report being beaten, slapped or threatened by their husband than girls who marry later” (ICRW). Child brides often show signs of sexual abuse and PTSD.
When Mariam is forty-three, her husband decides to take on another wife, their young neighbor Laila, whose parents were just killed in a bombing.
The fourteen year old is forced to accept his marriage proposal, as she is pregnant with the child of her (now deceased) friend, and lover, Tariq, and the fact that the ongoing war makes it too dangerous for girls to be alone.
Once again, the aspect of polygamy, specifically polygyny (one man married to more than one woman), is largely practiced in the Middle East and Africa. While many nations allow polygamy, only 10-25% of the men in those nations practice polygamy. Women forced into marriage often end up in polygynous marriages, like that of Mariam and Laila. They have little say in their lives and are forced to quit school and have multiple children. Despite the fact that A Thousand Splendid Suns is a work of fiction, there is something very tangible about Mariam’s story. It is a story that could be about any of the 700 million women today who were child brides, or a story of one of the 150 million girls that will become child brides in the next decade (ICRW). This story is moving, because it could very easily have been a biography. Millions of girls in developing countries have the same story as Mariam and Laila. That is why this story has such a profound
impact.