Afghan Women’s Voices; an Impasse: Patriarchy’s Autocracy in the Select Afghan Novels

Abstract

Addressing various complexities; the social and cultural mandates imposed by a patriarchal and religiously blinded society act like hot iron jabs on bare skin for women is the unequivocal and expected focal point of any feministic author. However fatally dominant the atrocities against women all over the world are, it cannot be denied that the deadly and unbearable conditions in which women survive with difficult access to the bare minimum have become the foregrounded element in South Asian Literature. This research attempts to put a spotlight on the certitude of the revolutionary Afghan-American writers; Nadia Hashimi and Khaled Hosseini, on how the strangled voices of struggling and suffering Afghan women need to be heard and paid attention to. As the victim of extreme marginalization and the internalized sexism of Afghan society, these women undergo harrowing experiences of oppression in a Nation where religious and cultural dominance forcefully drills in the concept of ‘othering’ and subalternity of women. The prevalent phallocentric hegemonic society evidently corrodes the possibility of gender equality and women’s prosperity. The aim of this literary analysis is to depict the impasse of the muffled voices of women from Third World Nations like Afghanistan, through selected female characters of Nadia Hashimi’s The Pearl That Broke Its Shell, A House Without Windows, and Khaled Hosseini’s A Thousand Splendid Suns. Three of the novels in scrutiny are absolute page-turners. These strong narratives, give a magnified look into the plight of Afghan women and lead the way to the mapping of the cultural and social representation of women by cautious application of feminist theory. The rituals, beliefs, and cultural structures are additives to the impasse of the Afghan women’s voices; already faint and hushed by the patriarchal norms that the deluded society forcefully exercises. The study aims at discussing the difficulties that the women of these three novels undergo; keeping the strong and impactful backdrop of the horrible gender issues; the representations of the struggles of female characters, gender inequality, and forced subordination. These complicated and entangled issues have been sketched in many such South Asian literary works which prominently depict the predicament or impasse of Afghan women whose voices have been deliberately silenced. The cultural practice of ‘Bacha Posh is the only exception among these clearly designated social menaces. The ‘reflex mechanism’ of Afghan families who are lacking a son, compels them to disguise a female child into a male one. There are many instances from all three novels showcasing the brevity of the female protagonists, shown in a powerful light, which highlights the various ways in which the women make efforts to break free from the shackles of the oppressive manipulation of the patriarchal society. These tiny acts of courage that women muster up to show and defy the oppression, might seem to be the bare minimum at the surface level but concludes that the subaltern can speak.