Disruption of the Stereotypical Gender Construction through Afghan Women’s Voices in Khalid Hosseini’s A Thousand Splendid Suns

Abstract

The paper aims to explore Khaled Hosseini’s A Thousand Splendid Suns(2007) from the deconstructive perspective of gender construction through the untraditional and challenging role of women in patriarchal Afghan society. Hosseini is one of the acclaimed Afghan-American novelists whose art speaks against the concerns of discrimination and segregation on ethnic, religious and gender basis. His novels are deeply entrenched with his own observations and experiences to portray the grim realities and the woes of Afghan society that is badly torn by the unending wars on its soil. The deconstructive approach challenges the taken-for-granted patriarchal socio-cultural norms of Afghan society represented in A Thousand Splendid Suns. Women characters engage in diverse performances that question the stability of gender construction in the novel. The variability of gender in the novel depends upon performativity of the characters. In their actions, they generate multiple shades of gender identities while deviating from norms of masculinity and femininity. So performances of the characters in the novel determine their gender identities in their social existence, their sexual labelling has nothing to do with their gender identification. Therefore, the novel exhibits the stereotypical and patriarchal norms prevalent in Afghan society that are used as a justification for the persecution and discrimination of women on gender basis. The paper thus argues that the country’s rampant gender stereotypical standards are resisted and challenged by the performativity of women characters. Furthermore, the research presents an innovative approach to study gender construction in a feudal Afghan society through its interrogation of gender stereotyping.