The Disappearance By Chitra Banerjee Divakaruni

Yet in America, it is quite different. As stated by Paul Hockings, the Indian culture believes that a woman must obey the men in their lives in a certain order. For instance, a woman should obey her father first, next her husband, and finally her son. The head male of the family, whether it is the father, husband, or son is in charge of the entire family. The head male is also important in arranging marriages. The head male of the family, has to compensate or receive compensation at the time of a child’s marriage. In the Indian culture, the primary purpose of a marriage is to bring families together. It is usually not done out of love or romance. If a marriage is not approved or arranged by the parents involved, then the act is frowned upon. In America, marriages are not typically arranged and people do not receive compensation during a

“The Disappearance” was written by Chitra Banerjee Divakaruni. This short story contains a satire mood. In the short story “The Disappearance,” we are introduced to a husband and his wife. The husband settles down and marries an Indian girl. On the outer shell, everything seems great until the wife vanishes.

According to Lynn Gehl, women who marry outside their own community lose their status within those boundaries and will not be able to regain their original level of influence upon transferring to their husband’s community. The Indian Act marginalized women and made them an outsider within their own culture (Ghel, 2000, p.67). This oppression stripped women of their rights socially, politically and economically and made them dependant people by European standards. The Indian Act took away the voice and influence aboriginal women had in their communities by creating a sexist environment dominated by their male counterpart. Taking away the traditional equality and replacing it with a male-supremacy frame of mind disenfranchised women of their right to fully participate in decision making processes within the family.

In the Indian society women were viewed similar to slaves, in the fact that they were not allowed to possess any property. All of “the wealth in which they earn is acquired for him to whom they belong” (“From The Laws of Manu” pg. 64). Women of the Indian society were also given away by their father in marriage, therefore, they were not given the privilege to choose their significant other. The Indian society viewed women as being a piece of property rather than a human being. A woman was also not allowed to independent from their father or husband.

This made men feel even more powerful, because women would listen to them and couldn’t do anything about it. “Linking women’s adaptability to their training as wives in their culture of origin (a logic that again caricatures such cultures as uniformly patri-archal), Mukherjee understands immigration through a marriage

According to Hinduism the female was created by Brahman as part of the duality in creation, to provide company to men and facilitate procreation, progeny and continuation of family linage. The Vedas suggest that a woman’s primary duty is to help her husband in performing obligatory duties and enable him to continue his family tradition. Her primary duty is to give birth to his children and take care of them. Hinduism is a predominantly male dominated religion. Woman play a secondary role. The situation is gradually changing. It is difficult to draw generalizations about the status of present day Hindu women because of society is complex. In general, life in cities is much different from life in the rural areas. Those who live abroad live in different conditions than those who live in the country. Yet, we have ample indications that women are still subject to many restrictions and disabilities in rural area as well as urban areas. The financial independence of woman and the education levels of the family play an important role in this regard. Women in urban areas face numerous challenges in their professions and personal lives. But overall, life is better for them compared to the past. Love marriage outside of the caste or community are scorned and sometimes the couples are killed or excommunicated by the elders in the family or village. Widows can now have a life of their own and even remarry. They draw a lot of sympathy. But

In Trumpet, Jackie Kay engages with the distinctions and confusions between biological sex and constructed gender through the use of multiple narrators. Each character has their own views and confusions of gender and sex and their feelings towards this particular situation involving Joss Moody. There are characters whom believe that gender and biological sex are the same and others whom believe that there is more fluidity involving the relationship between the two, and believe that gender is constructed and not under a biological category. Biological sex is defined by our anatomy as female, male or intersex and it includes our internal and external sex organs, chromosomes and hormones. Whereas gender is the socially constructed roles, behaviours,

In the typical Indian family, gender construction manifests itself especially in the roles of men and women in the household. As Judith Lorber so aptly put, “gender is a process of creating distinguishable social statuses for the assignment of rights and responsibilities” which in turn, creates the social differences that define a “man” and “woman” (Lorber). It is these differences that are used to construct and maintain an established gender order within the family. In the conventional Indian family, the order is such that the roles of the women in the household revolve around the roles of the men. This structure was something that I saw from an early age in my parents’ marriage. Though my parents defied the Indian norm of the arranged marriage, they still represented the quintessential model of an Indian couple in many other ways. My mother left her job to become a stay-at-home mom when I was about six years old. However, even before she left her job, she was implicitly expected by my father to shoulder most of the housework including cooking, cleaning, and caring for my older brother

An analysis of example can be derived from the aforementioned discriminatory sexist roles in India that prior to globalization highly favored the male population verses the female population. The female population in India has previously been less than second class citizens. Indian women's cultural roles have been previously defined by traditional customs that are centuries old and no longer apply in this day and age. Previous to globalization, Indian women were to take total domestic responsibility. They were not allowed formal education as the majority of teachers and pupils were male, and the chances of a female remaining chaste was slim in those settings, and related to tradition, females

This joint family, like any social organization, must face problems such as acceptable division of work, relationships and specific family roles. These familial relationships are managed on the basis of a secular hierarchical principle. In fact, all Indians owe respect and obedience to the head of the family, who usually is the father or the oldest man of the family community. In The Gift of a Bride: A Tale of Anthropology, Matrimony and Murder by Nanda and Gregg, it is explained that, “females [are] placed under the perpetual guardianship of first their fathers and elder brothers, then their husbands.” (Nanda & Gregg 22) Thus, all the spending decisions, studies and profession, or marriage, are exclusively the responsibility of the father after the possible discussions with the other men of the family. Age and sex are the basic principles of this hierarchical system. The eldest sons enjoy greater unchallenged authority than their cadets. Of course men have more authority than women, but older married women have an important role within the family. In fact, the authority of a woman depends on the rank of her husband inside the group. Traditionally, the wife of the patriarch rules over domestic affairs and has considerable power over the other women in the community, especially her daughters- in-law.

The article ¨Is Arranged Marriage Really Any Worse Than Craigslist?¨ by Anita Jain perfectly relates to ¨This Blessed House¨ it touches on the topics of arranged marriages and complications that come with the issue. Anita being an indian woman herself, talks about her first hand experience with her arranged marriage and the general aspect of the situation. Although the text touches mostly on her personal experience and it gives you an inside look of the lives of women and the process and expectation women have to exceed to go through the process of having an arranged marriage. According to the article Indian women didn't really have a choice and were introduced to the topic as early as they could remember, pressured to get married as early

Upper caste women may undergo dramatically different experiences than lower caste women. For example, lower caste women do not practice sati, because it is mostly prevalent among upper caste women. Thus, they may not comprehend how sati may function as a tool of control of female sexuality. On the other hand, upper caste women may not comprehend the experiences of widow-remarriage as practiced by lower caste women. Granted that, Mohanty makes a great point by asserting that it is impossible to analyze and treat Indian women as an ahistorical and monolithic group of people. Indian women are heterogeneous, and significant attention must be given to the components of race, class, imperialism. Furthermore, given their background, many of Western feminists in India were supporters of the colonial government and saw themselves as agents of the civilizing mission. They believed that Indian women were incapable of speaking for themselves, and thus were also incapable of liberating themselves. They disregarded that Indian women were victims of both British imperialism and the patriarchal Indian society, and thus the oppression they faced greatly differed from that of Western women. If anything, western women participated in their

These are the standards that men and women are held to in many Indian cultures. However, from the view of western audiences there is a lack of parity

Feminist movement has a great deal in this regard. The feminist writings of Indian literature probe into the pathetic situation of women in the male-dominated society in general and in the institution of family in particular. In order to

In today’s society, the imagery of men and women are portrayed in their different personalities. The ideal male is always characterized as being competent, stable, tough,