All over the world, marriage is filled with traditions, many of which can be considered patriarchal. In the Netherlands, most women take their husband's last name and are 'given away' by their fathers. Is marriage truly patriarchal, and is it so everywhere? This essay will look at marriage in the Kpelle. The Kpelle are the biggest ethnic group of Liberia; just a little over 20% of the population is Kpelle. The Kpelle people can be found in Sierra Leone and Guinea as well, and have been in West-Africa since the 16th century (Erchak; 1998). Their ideal marital type is a polygynous marriage, although monogamy has become more common since the late 20th century (ibid.). This essay will look at how women navigate power through marriage in Kpelle …show more content…
The polyganous marital type seems to be the symbol for women's unequal position. However, women in Kpelle society are often quite powerful before and in marriage, and this essay will thus provide a counter-narrative for women's position in marriage. I will argue that Kpelle women have a powerful position before going into marriage, largely maintain this in marriage, and have a lot of agency to create, enhance, and gain power in marriage. This essay will first provide a brief background on marriage in the Kpelle and analyze how women navigate power in marriage in the Kpelle. Afterward, I will discuss the representation of marriage in media and development discourse, and present certain arguments in favor and against the theory presented in this essay. I will conclude with my opinions and thoughts on this topic and the development thereof, and a brief summary of this …show more content…
Bledsoe (1976:372) describes that men want to marry to improve their position by having access to women's production and reproduction. Women marry for male labor or wealth, which often goes to her family. From this perspective, it becomes immediately clear that women hold power that men need to improve their social position. Women do not simply marry because they have no capital and need a provider, but it is rather a mutually beneficial exchange that both parties need. Since women do the majority of agricultural work and domestic work, men gain power by marrying as many women as possible (Bledsoe, 1976:376). Since the husband legally gets the outcomes of the productive and reproductive services of the wife, he needs to have a wife to gain power and wealth. Although this patrilineal ownership is not an indication of great legal rights for women in marriage, it does give women the bargaining chip to socially negotiate power. Since men do not produce themselves, their position in society and wealth are largely dependent on marrying. (Bledsoe; 1976:377). A Kpelle man's power is also dependent on his children. They can work for him, and thereby generate income. However, a man's children are only legally his if they are from marriage. Considering this, it appears that for man's social position it is crucial to marry and thus women hold some power in negotiating marriage
Men were required to provide, while women submitted under their authority (15). Although they assumed this would allow for a happy marriage, this ideal was rarely upheld and led to many arguments within the household (15). Influenced by their upbringing, most women married despite these
Hegemonic Discourse in the Dick Van Dyke Show, The depiction of the character Sally Rogers in the Dick Van Dyke Show is as a flawed, unattractive, undesirable professional woman. This is a classic archetype of structures and character development. The representation of this central character is an example of the hegemonic approach to television that characterized the 1960's as this show and others of its era were used as a subtle tool of control and marginalization of women. The Dick Van Dyke Show displays a dominant pattern of gender social relations as women were presented in a manner that was only validated if they were married and confined to the home.
However, there is one other style of marriage which is an alternative to the Independence style called
Throughout history the existence of patriarchy has threatened women’s rights to equality and self-determination. Patriarchy manifested itself in the marriage practices of early modern European society and became the foundation on which couples built their love and partnership. During the sixteenth century, literature describing ideal wives and husbands was a popular genre, but works about female gender roles were more prevalent. The Bride, a poem published by Samuel Rowland’s in 1617 details the duties of a good wife and life partner.1 The duties listed in Rowland’s poem were very common for women at that time and can also be seen in Steven Ozment’s book, Magdalena and Balthasar. Ozment’s book documents the relationship of Nuremberg Merchant Balthasar Paumgartner and
William Shakespeare’s Comedy, Taming of the Shrew is a play that takes place in Padua where Lucentio, a student Begins chasing a girl he is interested in, Bianca. As Bianca already has two suitors, who neither seem to catch her interest, a couple men on Lucentio’s ‘team’ start to develop a plan to be able to woo Katherina, the older sister, so then lucentio can gain the rights to Bianca. After this all works out, Petruchio is going to embarrass Kate, and quickly teach her that he is in charge. Petruchio and his servants deny her food and sleep. Kate is treated horribly, until she eventually obeys him.
This paper will dig into the rites of passage we call marriage in the American culture, from
Since the earliest times in history, women were treated inferior to men. From birth, she would face constraints on her economic independence, legal identity, and access to her property. These restraints would narrow her choice of marriage or spinsterhood. Her economic dependency was ensured by her father or husband, and women were not permitted to own land (Berkin 4-6). After she wedded, all of a woman’s rights and property became that of her husband's (Berkin 5-6).
Marriage is how a family starts and grows, but in these two dystopian societies, marriage has been altered by their government. In
Marriage in the 1700s and 1800s was judged by those closest to and the society that surrounded the couple which caused great strain within families. Both novels consult the idea of suitable matches and how love was valued above money and status. In an era filled with deep class prejudice, it was easier to marry someone from your own class as a woman since marrying below it was deeply frowned upon while marrying above provided its own issues which are explored in Pamela. If a woman did not have a substantial dowry, such as money or property, potential husbands from good families were unlikely. Pamela, for example, was an educated girl but yet she was still a servant with a family that has little to offer due to her father’s declined fortunes.
In chapter 1, Banks claims that marriage has been changed in the most recent quite a few years, developing from a social contract intended to guarantee monetary strength (or upgrade) and reproduction to something that is more relationship-based. He analyzes why African Americans keep up the least marriage and most noteworthy separation rates in the country, concentrating most pointedly on the high probability a black lady will stay single, a result of the shortage of black men in the marriage showcase, their number exhausted by high detainment rates. This "man deficiency" leaves the individuals who are accessible sought after and with less force to focus on one lady. We progressively wed for individual satisfaction and frequently would like to accomplish some budgetary strength before we marry. Banks investigates the upsetting — and regularly implicit —
Equality of genders is a basic human right that all should posses. However, in the novel A Thousand Splendid Suns, by Khaled Hosseini, the reader explores Afghanistan’s true nature of extreme gender inequality towards women and how it affects all the characters within the novel. The novel explores how within a marriage, women have unequal rights, undergo major amounts of physical abuse, and are emotionally and mentally tormented by their very own supposedly beloved husbands. A marriage is defined as a union of two people as partners in a personal relationship.
This proposes that there is a clear bias in the way we nurture girls to be more refined than boys, and encourage them to be more attentive on domestic aspects… basically everything society deems make “a good wife”. Boys are not taught to be good “house-husbands” and marry well, in fact they are taught the complete opposite. They are first and foremost projected to aim for personal success. If a man were to marry and start a family, it is often understood as being a respective choice he makes for additional gratification, but girls learn early on that marriage is not merely a goal, it’s as if it were an obligation; an unmarried man does not magnetize the same societal disgrace as an unmarried
Arranged marriage is a controversial practice in many cultures around the world. However, studies have found that roughly 85 percent of Indians prefer to engage in this tradition, and have a higher rate of marrital success than a marriage based on personal choice. (Dholakia, 4) Yet, even considering these statistics, it remains a concept that is met with dissapproval, thought to be archaic and demeaning to those involved. Chittra Banerjee Divakaruni’s short story Clothes depicts a young woman transition, from being obliged to follow this cultural norm, and the shifts in her mentality throughout this process. It is not unreasonable for the reader to view the protagonist, Sumita, to be a victim of this presumably inhumane practice.
Marriage is an important institution in a society and although there have been changes in the trend of marriage pattern, it is still very clear that marriage still matters. Marriage exists and its main aim is to bring two people together to form a union, where a man and a woman leave their families and join together to become one where they often start their own family. Sociologists are mostly interested in the relationship between marriage and family as they form the key structures in a society. The key interest on the correlation between marriage and family is because marriages are historically regarded as the institutions that create a family while families are on the other hand the very basic unit upon which our societies are founded on.
The first key part studies the cultural influences on marriage, starting with our societies plethora of options. The overabundance of everyday choices leads people to constantly assess their decisions and