Post B

"Yes. But I've seen nine-year-old girls given to men twenty years older than your suitor, Mariam. [...] What are you fifteen? That's a good solid marrying age for a girl" (44).

A man is telling Mariam this after she learns that she will be marrying a man who is thirty years older than her; he is 45 years old. As I read this quote, I became angered and saddened by Mariam's situation. Mariam is fifteen. At age fifteen, the average American is in ninth grade and has just gotten their drivers permit. Most likely, the thought of who their spouse will be has not even crossed their mind. In this situation, Mariam isn't in ninth grade because she was not granted the gift of being educated. In this situation, Mariam cannot drive because she is a woman. Her mother has just hanged herself, and now she is being forced to marry a complete stranger who is thirty years her senior. There is definitely something wrong with this picture.

I can't remember the exact time I learned of the concept of arranged marriages, but it must have been around fifth or sixth grade. Before then, I always found that I could grasp almost any concept thrown at me. But not this one. It's not that I didn't understand what arranged marriages were, or how they worked. I couldn't understand why a society would forbid women to choose who their spouse was. I asked my mom and dad why, and every time they would give me the same beat-around-the-bush answer, "It's because thats what the people of that religion believe." Of course I would then ask why they had that view on marriage, and they would answer, "That's how things work in those societies." Looking back, I don't think they were trying to be general on purpose, I think they just didn't have a concrete answer for me. I still don't have a concrete answer for myself. I hope that through reading A Thousand Splendid Suns, I can help myself better understand the motives for such a thing.