Focalization of Afghan Women’s Repression and Resistance in “A Thousand Splendid Suns” and “My Forbidden Face”

Hiqma Nur Agustina; Manneke  Budiman

doi:10.35516/hum.v51i3.2126

Authors

Hiqma Nur Agustina Department of English, State Polytechnic of Malang, Malang, Indonesia https://orcid.org/0000-0001-9894-0356
Manneke Budiman Department of Literature, Faculty of Humanities, Universitas Indonesia, Indonesia https://orcid.org/0000-0002-8903-0972

DOI:

https://doi.org/10.35516/hum.v51i3.2126

Keywords:

Afghan women, female voices, focalization, patriarchal repression, women’s resistance, interpretation of Islamic texts

Abstract

Objectives: This study aims to portray the Afghan women’s repression and resistance in two novels written by Khaled Hosseini and Latifa, “A Thousand Splendid Suns” and “My Forbidden Face”. These two diaspora writers’ works show the ways in which Afghan women are trapped by the repression and dominance of local traditions, unequal gender relations, and masculine interpretation of the Qur’an and the Hadist.

Methods: This study utilizes the narrative theory which is focalization and narrator to reveal how these women keep struggling to be free from various conflicts in the two novels.

Results: The result of this study shows the authors’ works in telling the women who experienced repression and did the resistance both in two novels. The type of fozalizator and narrator in both texts are different. In “A Thousand Splendid Suns” is the external focalizator and the heterodiegetic narrator, meanwhile in “My Forbidden Face” is internal focalizator and homodiegetic narrator.

Conclusions: This study concludes the strength of the words, phrases, and sentences used by the two authors are able to show male domination and oppression of female characters in the two texts. The women are internalized by Afghan patriarchal local culture. They could not get their freedom to determine their life.

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