Negotiating structural inequalities
Marriage, sexuality, and domesticity in Mridula Garg’s Chittacobra
Bibliographic Data
| ID | 9003350 |
|---|---|
| Authors | Bharti Arora (0000-0003-2753-489X, Jamia Millia Islamia, corresponding author) |
| Year | 2016 |
| Volume | 53 |
| Issue | 3 |
| Pages | 430-447 |
| Publication date | 2016-11-17 |
| Open Access | Yes |
| Type | ARTICLE |
| Venue | The Journal of Commonwealth Literature (JOURNAL) |
| Journal identifiers | ISSN: 0021-9894 • E-ISSN: 1741-6442 |
| Publisher | SAGE Publishing (PUBLISHER • US) |
| DOI | 10.1177/0021989416671172 |
| OpenAlex | W2553161452 |
| Language | EN |
| References cited | 8 |
The patriarchal, virilocal, patrilineal structure of the family in India not only exploits class upper-caste/middle-class women’s claims to equality within marriage but also renders their sexuality as particularly tied to the reproductive project of heterosexuality. Moreover, the institutionalization of marriage produces asymmetrical gendered relations to an extent that women are reduced to being men’s property and possession, rigidly placed under their sexual ownership. This is mirrored and upheld by the institutional structures of the nation, especially the legislative and adjudicatory framework and how it approaches marriage, incidents of extra-marital affairs, divorce, legitimate progeny, and varied property laws. The latest example of this is the Government Ordinance rejecting the recommendations by the Justice J. S. Verma Committee to criminalize marital rape. Thus, the patriarchal biases inherent in the structures of the nation-state are not willing to reconsider marriage and women’s negotiation of their sexuality out of the hegemonic framework that naturalizes consent. Through a reading of Mridula Garg’s Chittacobra, this article focuses on the discourses around sexuality and intimacy within and outside the institution of marriage, highlighting how the gendered biases endorsed by the family–community–nation continuum negate other modes of identifying relationships and concerns of sexuality that may rest on mediation of lived experience and individual subjectivities. Although first published in 1979, the concerns raised by Garg in Chittacobra significantly illustrate how patriarchal institutions like marriage, even as late as the contemporary context, operate with categories like good and bad women, constantly rendering them fluid and temporal, offering an insight into and interrogating the concomitant structures of the violence inherent in this intimacy
Human sexuality · Patriarchy · Political science · Sociology · Anthropological Studies and Insights · Gender Studies · Law · South Asian Cinema and Culture · South Asian Studies and Conflicts
| Highly cited | No |
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