Depiction of Female Characters in Two Contemporary Novels the French Lover and a Thousand Splendid Suns

Abstract

Taslima Nasrin and Khalid Hosseini being significant writers put their experiences, observation and views regarding societal norms and practices. According to both of them, violence against women is an age old practice and Afghan and Bangladeshi women are an integral part of it. Since the position of Afghan and Bangladeshi society are vulnerable, women have endured a tough existence as they came to grips with a double subjugation in the form of patriarchal authority and the oppression emanating from the persistent conditions of the conflict. This present paper studies the vital subject of Afghan and Bangladeshi women’s experience as narrated in two contemporary novels of Khalid Hosseini and Taslima Nasrin. This paper in the light of their two contemporary novels attempts to argue, how the patriarchal subjugation, cultural imperialism, powerlessness, exploitation, marginalization and persistent conditions of conflict have multiplied the oppression on women in both the societies under study.