Subversion and Submission: Gender and Sexuality in Khaled Hosseini’s And the Mountains Echoed

Abstract

Sex and gender are very problematic concepts, as in many languages they are referred to using the same word. Now a days, everybody knows that sex is biological whereas gender is a social construct. In poststructuralism, gender came to be considered as a cultural construct. Society attributes certain gender roles as typical to men and women, and the “deviants” from this pattern are branded as tainted. Gender is something that evolves through performance. Sexuality differs from both, being the expression or representation of sexual desire and orientation. Patriarchy has constituted the “natural” principle that the people of opposite gender are attracted to each other for the fulfilment of desire. Hence, heterosexuality becomes the practice of patriarchy to perpetuate the politics of male domination. The present paper tries to explore Khaled Hosseini’s novel And the Mountains Echoed in the light of these concepts of gender and sexuality. It analyses how the traditional Afghan society has forced human beings to stick to the normative gender roles and sexualities. Minor sexualities were not at all identified as existing, leading to the existence of veiled selves within accepted appearances.