The Trudge From Despair To Happiness: An Interpretation Of A Thousand Splendid Suns From Julia Kristeva’s Feminist Poetics

Khaled Hosseini becomes famous for his first novel The Kite Runner and continues his unique narrative ability in A Thousand Splendid Suns and And The Mountains Echoed. All of his stories are set in Afghan, telling the friendship, betrayal and redemption in families during wars. A Thousand Splendid Suns depicts the hard path of two women of their despair under the patriarchy at the beginning and their happiness in the end. The novel also praises their sincere friendship, love and motherhood.Based on the feminist poetics of Julia Kristeva, this thesis aims at interpreting the female qualities and revealing the feminist thoughts embodied in the novel A Thousand Splendid Suns. By absorbing Lacan’s symbolic theory, Julia Kristeva proposes the semiotic which originates in the pre-Oedipal stage and relates to feminine and maternity. In Kristeva’s view, the semiotic and the symbolic are two modes of signifying process, in which the semiotic always destabilizes the symbolic at its periphery or even flows into the interior and forms a subverting power. The interplay and inseparability of two modes portend the subject in the process. Besides, Kristeva demonstrates the indispensability of mother to an infant on its way to the symbolic and emphasizes the importance of mother in social productivity.After an introduction of Khaled Hosseini and his three works, the thesis overviews the research on this novel both the overseas and domestic, followed with the meaning of this thesis. Then it gives a full interpretation of the novel from three aspects based on Kristeva’s feminist poetics. Firstly, while women, represented by Mariam and Laila, are marginalized and excluded from the symbolic order as the other, their fighting emphasizes the importance between the two genders. Besides, all the characters in the novel hold two sides. The weakness of male and the doughtiness of female demonstrate that the subject are the subject in process, for they belong to both the semiotic at the margin and the symbolic at the center in their personalities. What’s more, by digging the motherhood of Mariam and Laila, the thesis displays that women tend to express their strong desire of being mother and their love for children, and are more positive and initiative in the social productivity.Based on the feminist poetics of Kristeva, the thesis reveals the marginality of female in the symbolic order and the desperate situation of women under the oppression of patriarchal system. Through scrutinizing the hard trudging progress of those women in despair, the thesis emphasizes the particularities and uniqueness of women, reveals their courage of identifying with themselves and pursuing a happier life. The female’s tragic history and their pursuit for a happy life in A Thousand Splendid Suns demonstrate the writer’s hoping for a harmonious social relationship between men and women, and his appealing for the deep attention of women’s living predicament in Afghanistan. In addition, the study from the perspective of Julia Kristeva’s feminist poetics also provides a new angle for the further research of this novel.