Polygamy In The Film Raise The Red Lantern

Marriage practices vary across cultures. Every culture has its own way of conducting marriage according to their traditions and customs. Most cultures share common customs and practices, while some cultures have unique practices. Marriage refers to a social union agreed upon by the couples to unit as spouses. The union of couples implies sexual relations, permanence in union, and procreation. This research paper focuses on comparing marriage practices in American and Indian culture. There is significant difference between the two cultures in marriage practices.

In the book of Wild Swans: Three daughter of China by Jung Chang tells about the experiences of the life of Chang’s Mother, Grandmother, and Chang herself. The book starts off with Chang’s Grandmother Yu-fang. She was forced to be a concubine for a warlord general at a young age. She eventually escapes with her child after marrying a wealthy doctor, she continue to raise her child even rejected by her husband’s family. De-hong a happy girl who grew up normal until she start getting into politics. De- hong joined the Kuomintang party until the communist beat them. She then married Wang, an officer in the army, and they both began working for the Communist party where they are prosecuted for their affiliation and sent to detention camp. Chang is born in the middle of this political turmoil, she grew up through many of the hardship of China. The role of women and family in society was important and it changes throughout the story of each woman. The time of Chang 's great-grandfather “following the custom, my great-grandfather was married young, at the fourteen, to a woman six years his senior. It was considered one of the duties of a wife to help bring up her husband.”(Chang, Jung. ""THREE-INCH GOLDEN LILIES"" In Wild Swans: Three Daughters of China, 2. New York: Simon & Schuster, 1991.) Therefore in the lives of the three woman it will tell us about the role of women and family in the society .

As Anthropologist Kimber McKay challenged the world’s outlook on what we believe to be a traditional, normal marriage, I was intrigued by the results of her fieldwork that displayed the different types of marriages occurring around the world. In her research in the Nepalese Himalaya, she lived within the community of polyandrous people participating in their daily life. In Humla, it was common for a polyandrous woman to marry a man and his brothers. McKay shared a video from a polyandrous woman that described the relationship she had with her two husbands. Here are her words: “If the husbands agree with it (polyandry) then it’s good. One can take care of the local work and the other can do outside work.” I hypothesize the reason polyandry

In some cultures, people didn’t marry for love and those who did were looked down upon; whereas in modern times, it’s the opposite in many parts of the world. Coontz tells of a culture where,“A Taita man normally marries a love wife only after he has accumulated a few more practical wives” (255). This shows the different perceptions of marriage between the Taita peoples, who let men remarry several times in loveless marriages, and those of certain religions that forbade divorce, as well as today’s society where people often marry for love the first time around. The perceptions differed in that some societies believed in remarrying and marrying without love, while others didn’t. Coontz explains some very different marriage traditions than what Bennett says is normal and right-A man and a woman who fit traditional gender roles- as shown in his essay, “Complementary nature of men and women-and how they refine, support, encourage, and complete one another” (272).

In the ancient Chinese culture, the role of women was very restricted. They were raised by their parents until the age of marriage to be given away to another family. When living under their father’s roof he was the one they had to obey to, once married they then had to obey to their husband. Women were restricted to the walls of their home, which is no longer the case nowadays.

There are many beautiful traditions that man has come up with in order to survive. One of these traditions is the idea of marriage. Two people coming together in a fulfilling relationship and creating children. Needless to say, marriage is the backbone of society as a whole. However, it has not stopped oppressive people from using these beautiful and fulfilling traditions to oppress a vulnerable population and indoctrinate the invulnerable to look the other way.

Marriage is described as two people as partners in a personal relationship. There are two typical ideas of marriage that we know today. The first one that comes to mind is the one we all know, based on love, but there is another one that some may not even know of and its arranged marriages. Arranged marriage is not typically in our culture we know but in different cultures arranged marriages are their normal marriage. Throughout this essay, I will discuss the importance of realizing cultural diversity and how we apply the perspectives we gain from cross-cultural comparison to our own experience using central concepts about marriage to compare and contrast marriage in several cultures.

The women are subjected to the ideas of how men believed the perfect woman should be: pure. The third wife shows how women in China were supposed to be pure and devoted to only their husbands. After having an affair with the doctor, the third wife was to be hanged because of the family’s old customs and traditions. Even though the Master thought fondly of her (he often chose to stay the night with her), it was not enough to save her from being exiled. This creates a double standard. Although the Master can sleep with a different wife every night, the second that it is known that the third wife has strayed, she is immediately hanged for her disloyalty. This double standard this is placed on women is portrayed through the entire movie. Songlian was an educated woman; there was a moment in the film when she wished to play her flute, and, upon finding it missing, she

In recent years, marriage has become not only a relationship with one man and one woman, but in America same sex couples and men who have multiples wives are able to wed as well. Indian and Japanese men and women are able to wed through an arrangement of both families. In ancient China, Chinese couples also had arranged marriages, but in modern times the tradition has faded. Although the way people get married is different a woman’s role in the marriage is similar culture to culture throughout ancient India, China, and Japan, divorce is a common practice in American now, but thousands of years ago there were still laws and criticisms among couples in Indian and Chinese Civilizations preventing such action, and life after a death of a

The Death of Woman Wang, by Jonathan D. Spence, paints a vivid picture of provincial China in the seventeenth century. Manly the life in the northeastern country of T’an-ch’eng. T’an-ch’eng has been through a lot including: an endless cycle of floods, plagues, crop failures, banditry, and heavy taxation. Chinese society in Confucian terms was a patriarchal society with strict rules of conduct. The role at this time of women, however, has historically been one of repression. The traditional ideal woman was a dependent being whose behavior was governed by the "three obedience’s and four virtues". The three obedience’s were obedience to

     In years past, the American Dream for most young girls’ is to grow up and be married to Prince Charming and to “Live Happily Ever After!” Although this may be expected - it is rarely fulfilled. Marriage is the legal and binding union between a man and woman. Yet when couples marry, they vow to stay by their partner’s side ‘till death do us part.’ Currently that vow seems to have little or no value in today’s society. The current statistics for survival of marriage are quite grim. The divorce rate in the United States is somewhere between 50 percent and a startling 67 percent. (KSL News) One contributing factor the growing epidemic of divorce is the parting of different family

Marriage is a ritual that marks a change in status for a man and a woman and the acceptance by society of the new family that is formed (Rosman & Rubel, 1981). Marriage, like other customs, is governed by rules (Rosman & Rubel, 1981). Anthropology has represented marriage as the definitive ritual and universally translatable regulative ideal of human societies (BORNEMAN, 1996). Marriage also the act of joining two persons of opposite sex together to become as husband and wife. Many people in the society have different opinions or outright misconception of the meaning of marriage. While some people see it as a union between a man and woman, others take it to mean an agreement made between a man

Established with Adam and Eve, still surviving, marriage is the oldest institution known. Often the climax of most romantic movies and stories, whether it may be ‘Pride and Prejudice’ or ‘Dil Wale Dulhaniya Ley Jaein Gey’, marriage has a universal appeal. It continues to be the most intimate social network, providing the strongest and most frequent opportunity for social and emotional support. Though, over the years, marriage appears to be tarnished with high divorce rates, discontentment and infidelity, it is still a principal source of happiness in the lives of respective partners. Although marriage is perceived as a deeply flawed institution serving more the needs of the society than those of the individuals, nevertheless, marriage is

Marriage is a union that has been around for as long as humans have walked the earth. The human race depends upon the union of its members, and as such, the subject of marriage has been an issue that receives more intense scrutiny and attention than many would likely believe. In today's day and age, with humanity continuing to move in a modern direction, many argue that marriage is a union that should be entered into freely and should be based exclusively on the love between two people. However, I argue that arranged marriage, which has taken place throughout the ages and throughout the world, is a union that offers its observers a marriage based in support, longevity and love, and is an institution that should not be frowned upon.

For many people, the most magical day of their life is the day they marry the love of their life. After years of searching for that one special person, you have finally committed yourself to spend the rest of your days on earth growing with that one special someone. Unfortunately marriage isn’t always so special. For some, it is a sentence to slavery. Today, one out of every three girls in the developing world is married before the age of eighteen with the largest concentration existing in Southwest Asia (“United Nations Population Fund”). The marrying of young boys and girls, even in cases where it is not forced, can lead to physical abuse and torture, health complications and the termination of any possible future educational endeavors ("International Center for Research on Women", 2006).