Forced Marriage and Domestic Violence
Think your relationships are complicated? Imagine being forced into marriage immediately after your mother's suicide - that's the nightmare Mariam faces at just fifteen. Her forced marriage to Rasheed exposes the most devastating forms of female suffering in the novel.
Rasheed's chilling declaration - "I can't stand the sound of a woman crying" - reveals his complete lack of empathy and sets the tone for their relationship. What follows is systematic abuse disguised as "wifely duties", including what readers recognise as rape (though legally unrecognised in Afghanistan at the time).
The seven miscarriages Mariam endures represent both physical trauma and society's reduction of women to mere baby-making machines. When Rasheed's violence escalates, Hosseini uses powerful imagery of Mariam "spitting out pebbles, blood, and fragments of two broken molars" to show irreversible damage - just like broken adult teeth, some suffering can never fully heal.
Remember: The broken teeth symbolism is crucial for exam answers - they represent permanent damage that mirrors Mariam's psychological trauma and the irreversible nature of abuse in patriarchal societies.