Endurance and resilience: a study of the subaltern voice in a thousand splendid suns

Abstract

Dedicated to the women of Afghanistan, Khalid Hosseini’s second novel A Thousand Splendid Suns delivers a heartbreaking portrayal of women in Afghanistan during the years of Soviet occupation, then the civil war and the Taliban dictatorship. According to Gayatri Chakravorti Spivak, the subaltern women are more susceptible to oppression and pressure than subaltern men because they are the second sex destined to be silent. The subaltern women community in Afghanistan portrayed through the lives of Nana and her daughter Mariam, Laila and her daughter Aziza in the novel, is triply suppressed by patriarchy, militarization and religious fundamentalism. This paper studies the existence of the subaltern women community in Afghanistan as portrayed in the novel A Thousand Splendid Suns and their attempts to “speak”. The two central characters Mariam and Laila, belonging to two different generations and brought together by their violent and cruel husband Rasheed, develops a mother-daughter relationship between them and use their love as a weapon to combat patriarchy. Through them the novel tells the story of a thousand splendid women who through their courage, endurance and resilience becomes the hope and future of Afghanistan.