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And they lived happily ever after

An exploration of the institution of marriage

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Gender And Sexuality Education Philosophy with Children Reflections on Pedagogy

13-15y Age Group

RHEA KUTHOORE

Oct 10, 2021 · 12 min read

You may be wondering: What is a post about marriage doing on this blog? Why is it important for 14 and 15 year old children to discuss marriage? Isn’t it a decision that they may have to make at a much later point in life?

Come, let us take a trip down memory lane! In what ways were marriages a part of your reality as a child?

When I was young and in love, I had dreamy images of marrying my crushes and loved the idea of 'always and forever.' I was swayed by television shows such as ‘One tree hill’ and ‘Dil Mil Gaye.' I thoroughly enjoyed the weddings that I attended as I danced all night. My friends often laugh when recollecting how I had returned to school, after summer one year, with the 'Twilight' book in my hand. I used to relate to stories that involved love triangles and heart breaks.

Children, from a young age, are exposed to the realities of marriage in one way or another. At home, children see their married family members. Through books, films and media, children are exposed to different kinds of marriages. Many of the popular children's books are fairy tales wherein a prince and a princess live 'happily ever after.' Sometimes, families and friends discuss a child's future wedding: when will it happen? To whom can they get married to? What will be their responsibilities after the wedding?

In India, furthermore, there are many cases of child marriages and runaway brides. Inter-caste and inter-religious marriages are still a taboo and many young people are killed for the same reason. As many children are raised under the pressure of strict gender norms, their sense of self-worth often becomes linked to their marriageability.

Class Activity

We first spoke about our own families -- who are the members of our family? Where did they grow up? Where did they study (if applicable)? If and where do they live and work now? If and when did they get married and what was the nature of it (love, arranged, mixed or something else)?
What gender norms do we observe at home? Have we thought of the reasons for the same? What are some gender norms that we are told to follow? How did it make us feel?

By listening to the intimate details shared by others in the room, we understood the ways in which their families were similar to and different from our own. I believe that knowing another person's context is crucial when making meaning of their perspectives.

We read 'The odd one' and 'Public Disgrace' from 'Mother Wit' to gain perspective on the challenges faced by women in marriages. In 'The odd one,' a woman is accused of being an irresponsible wife as she goes to work. 'Public Disgrace,' highlights the irony of a man who is a 'social worker' and yet blind to his own wife's labour.

To better comprehend the history of the institution of marriage, I shared three pieces of information with the class. Additionally, I gave them an acting prompt based on the information as it helps us imagine scenarios from the past. The children split into groups and stepped into different roles to make meaning of past contexts.

· Until Britain’s Married Women’s Property Acts of 1870 and 1882, everything belonged to the husband; the wife was penniless on her own account, no matter her inheritance or her earnings. Another revealing instance of how marriage is understood by the State is provided by Section 497 of the Indian Penal Code regarding adultery, under which a man can bring a criminal case against another man for having an affair with his wife. The wife is not culpable under this provision, nor can a woman use this provision against another woman or against her husband. The assumption is that the wife is the husband's property, a passive object over which no other man has rights.

PROMPT: Do a dramatic enacting of a court session in which a wife is accusing her husband of cheating. She chooses to make humorous, yet convincing, arguments in order to convince the judge to take the matter seriously.

· The sex-based segregation of labour is the key to maintaining not only the family, but also the economy, because the economy would collapse like a house of cards if this unpaid domestic labour had to be paid for by somebody, either by the husband or the employer. Consider this: the employer pays the employee for his or her labour in the workplace. But the fact that he or she can come back to the workplace, the next day, depends on somebody else (or herself) doing a whole lot of work the employer does not pay for-cooking, cleaning, running the home. When you have an entire structure of unpaid labour buttressing the economy, then the sexual division of labour cannot be considered to be domestic and private; it is what keeps the economy going.

If tomorrow, every woman demanded to be paid for this work that she does, either the husband would have to pay her, or the employer would have to pay the husband. The economy would fall apart. This entire system functions on the assumption that women do housework for love. In 2010, a significant judgement by the Supreme Court in India pronounced on the value of the domestic work carried out by women. A homemaker died in a motor accident, and her husband claimed compensation. A tribunal awarded him an amount, calculating an unemployed wife's income as a third of the husband's income. The husband appealed in the Supreme Court, seeking an enhancement in the amount. In its judgement, the Supreme Court increased the amount considerably, and further held that to see women's home based work as being without economic value, displayed gender bias.

The judges suggested that not only the particular law in question (the Motor Vehicles Act) but also other laws should be changed, and the question of the value of women's work should be taken up by Parliament (Gunu 2010).

PROMPT: Through your act, share how work outside homes is tied to work inside homes and bring out the implications of the same on the members of a family.

· Dowry: In its most basic form, it can be understood as a form of inheritance of parental property prior to the death of the parents, for daughters who otherwise lack inheritance rights. It is because of this aspect of dowry that some argue against a dowry boycott without strengthening women's inheritance rights, since dowry provides women with at least some form of property that could stand them in good stead in their marital homes.

However, others argue that dowry is transacted between the men of the two families, and the control over a woman's dowry lies not with her but with her husband and his family. What has also become visible in South Asia since the 1980s is the violence associated with dowry-its non-voluntary character, oppressiveness and systematic dowry-related violence against women in their marital homes.

PROMPT: Enact a scene in which there are three characters — a bride, groom and one of their parents. They are having a conversation about dowry. Through your dialogue, bring about their points of view on the ethical aspects of dowry.

Through the stories and activity, we saw how the institution of marriage affects people's lives in different ways, and the ways in which it connects to the economy and the law.

We finally read 'Marrying the Hangman' by Atwood. It dramatises the 18th century law in Quebec that allowed a man to escape a sentence of death by becoming a hangman and a woman to escape the sentence by marrying one. Through this poem, Atwood comments on the societal norms that governed the lives of people.

Marrying the Hangman

Margaret Atwood

Click the image to open the poem with its analysis

She has been condemned to death by hanging. A man
may escape this death by becoming the hangman, a
woman by marrying the hangman. But at the present
time there is no hangman; thus there is no escape.
There is only a death, indefinitely postponed. This is
not fantasy, it is history.

-

To live in prison is to live without mirrors. To live
without mirrors is to live without the self. She is
living selflessly, she finds a hole in the stone wall and
on the other side of the wall, a voice. The voice
comes through darkness and has no face. This voice
becomes her mirror.

-

In order to avoid her death, her particular death, with
wrung neck and swollen tongue, she must marry the
hangman. But there is no hangman, first she must
create him, she must persuade this man at the end of
the voice, this voice she has never seen and which has
never seen her, this darkness, she must persuade him
to renounce his face, exchange it for the impersonal
mask of death, of official death which has eyes but
no mouth, this mask of a dark leper. She must
transform his hands so they will be willing to twist
the rope around throats that have been singled out
as hers was, throats other than hers. She must marry
the hangman or no one, but that is not so bad. Who
else is there to marry?

-

You wonder about her crime. She was condemned
to death for stealing clothes from her employer, from
the wife of her employer. She wished to make herself
more beautiful. This desire in servants was not legal.

-

She uses her voice like a hand, her voice reaches
through the wall, stroking and touching. What could
she possibly have said that would have convinced him?
He was not condemned to death, freedom awaited
him. What was the temptation, the one that worked?
Perhaps he wanted to live with a woman whose life
he had saved, who had seen down into the earth but
had nevertheless followed him back up to life. It was
his only chance to be a hero, to one person at least,
for if he became the hangman the others would
despise him. He was in prison for wounding another
man, on one finger of the right hand, with a sword.
This too is history.

-

My friends, who are both women, tell me their stories,
which cannot be believed and which are true. They
are horror stories and they have not happened to me,
they have not yet happened to me, they have
happened to me but we are detached, we watch our
unbelief with horror. Such things cannot happen to
us, it is afternoon and these things do not happen in
the afternoon. The trouble was, she said, I didn’t
have time to put my glasses on and without them I’m
blind as a bat, I couldn’t even see who it was. These
things happen and we sit at a table and tell stories
about them so we can finally believe. This is not
fantasy, it is history, there is more than one hangman
and because of this some of them are unemployed.

-

He said: the end of walls, the end of ropes, the opening
of doors, a field, the wind, a house, the sun, a table,
an apple.
She said: nipple, arms, lips, wine, belly, hair, bread,
thighs, eyes, eyes.

They both kept their promises.

-

The hangman is not such a bad fellow. Afterwards he
goes to the refrigerator and cleans up the leftovers,
though he does not wipe up what he accidentally
spills. He wants only the simple things: a chair,
someone to pull off his shoes, someone to watch him
while he talks, with admiration and fear, gratitude if
possible, someone in whom to plunge himself for rest
and renewal. These things can best be had by marrying
a woman who has been condemned to death by other
men for wishing to be beautiful. There is a wide
choice.

-

Everyone said he was a fool.
Everyone said she was a clever woman.
They used the word ensnare.

-

What did they say the first time they were alone
together in the same room? What did he say when
she had removed her veil and he could see that she
was not a voice but a body and therefore finite?
What did she say when she discovered that she had
left one locked room for another? They talked of
love, naturally, though that did not keep them
busy forever.

-

The fact is there are no stories I can tell my friends
that will make them feel better. History cannot be
erased, although we can soothe ourselves by
speculating about it. At that time there were no
female hangmen. Perhaps there have never been any,
and thus no man could save his life by marriage.
Though a woman could, according to the law.

-

He said: foot, boot, order, city, fist, roads, time,
knife.
She said: water, night, willow, rope hair, earth belly,
cave, meat, shroud, open, blood.
They both kept their promises.

We analysed the poem through the lens of these two questions:

‘To live in prison is to live without mirrors. To live without mirrors is to live without the self.’ What do you make of this quote? What does the mirror symbolise in this situation and how is it connected to the self? (Hint: The next line is, ‘she is living selflessly’)

In what ways is the poem commenting on marriage (use concrete examples from the poem)?

Reflection

The poem led to a conversation about desires. Which desires are not recognised by the institution of marriage? Polyamorous and homosexual relationships were mentioned. We wondered: if marriage do, in fact, have anything to do with love and living happily ever after?

Throughout our discussion, we sought to grapple with the institution of marriage through a critical lens. The intention was not to preach any specific notion of 'right' or 'wrong' but to create awareness about the status quo.

RHEA KUTHOORE is an educator who is passionate about facilitating philosophical and feminist thinking amongst young people.

Thinking Rhizomatically

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