| Abstract: | This article comparatively examines the portrayal and position of women in Khaled Hosseini’s A Thousand Splendid Suns and Deborah Ellis’s The Breadwinner. Although both works depict female characters living within restrictive social and political environments, they approach Afghan women through different genres and narrative positions. Hosseini constructs the experiences of Mariam and Laila through a narrative deeply connected with Afghan history, marriage, motherhood, domestic violence, and female solidarity, whereas Ellis presents Afghanistan primarily through Parvana, a young girl who assumes traditionally male responsibilities in order to support her family. Using a qualitative comparative approach informed by feminist literary criticism, the study investigates gender inequality, patriarchal authority, resistance, identity, family responsibility, and female agency. The study proposes a distinction between relational agency, foregrounded in Hosseini’s novel, and adaptive agency, emphasized in Ellis’s narrative. Hosseini foregrounds intergenerational solidarity, caregiving, sacrifice, and resistance within domestic relationships, while Ellis emphasizes mobility, economic responsibility, and the disruption of prescribed gender roles. The comparison demonstrates that these literary representations of Afghan women cannot be reduced to a single narrative of victimhood; instead, they reveal complex relationships among gender, family, political circumstances, survival, resistance, and individual choice. |
