Marriage requires the wife be her husband's property. For women are, after all, forced to take on, rather than given, their husband's surname after marriage; required to be their husband's property, so that they can be taken care of, oppressed, controlled; forced to have Mrs. as their only title; stripped of their name like Virginia Woolf's Clarissa in Mrs. Dalloway is "being Mrs. Dalloway; not even Clarissa any more... being Mrs. Richard Dalloway," and therefore loses her identity when she becomes her husband's property, for this is how the world sees Clarissa now (the title of the book itself shows how Clarissa must be forced to be identified as her husband's property, bound to their marriage; whereas Mukherjee's Jasmine gives her a choice of identity as she fumbles around redefining herself); like Martha Hale, of "A Jury of her Peers," written by Susan Glaspell, is primarily referred to as "his [Mr. Hale's] wife... Mrs. Hale" by the narrator, and her friend only as "Mrs. Peters;" therefore, it makes sense that these two women can only bring themselves to call their old friend "Minnie Foster, though for twenty years she had been Mrs. Wright;" they would like to continue to she their friend the way she used to be, rather than owned and identity-less (Woolf 8, Glaspell 2). Such are the small things women do in attempts to fight against their circumstances.
Such are the small things women do in attempts to fight against their circumstances only if ownership by their husbands is something they wish to fight against. For Jasmine, the character Bharati Mukherjee wrote as the center of her novel Jasmine, does not mind being her husbands property; as a fourteen year old girl in Hasnapur, India, she wanted the imagined joint store with her husband, Prakash Vijh, to be called "Vijh & Wife" even after given the option of "Vijh & Vijh" (Jasmine sees herself as Mrs. Vijh, because she does not know any better, while Clarissa is forced to see herself as Mrs. Dalloway by society and because of class); and this small detail of word choice, shows that some women, women unlike Mrs. Hale and Mrs. Peters (if only sarcasm could be read in the voice or written word) do not mind being owned by their husbands; do not mind being given the title "wife" and nothing more; not even her own husband's last name in celebration of her love for him (Mukherjee 89). For marriage, being Mrs. Hale or Mrs. Peters. or Mrs. Vijh, does not have to be a controlling system, or display the ownership of Mr. Hale, Mr. Peters, and Mr. Vijh; the ownership of a great, powerful man (just because he is a man) over the owned, controlled woman; for being Mrs. Hale can be being Offred, Offred with Luke, where, despite both poo-pooing her mother's feminist views, Luke treated Offred as an equal, just as Prakash did with Jasmine, who was, perhaps, too young to think and act against the world she knew in Hasnapur where a woman's whole life revolved around their husband and it was expected by society that she kill herself should her husband die; being Offred with Luke was equality between man and women before their society was gradually taken over by Gilead and Offred's access to money was dependent on her husband, her job stripped from her, her rights. Such are the small things that are taken away that further insinuate and create female inferiority.
Such are the small things that further insinuate and create female inferiority, break women, and keep women down; like Offred being owned by an atypical brand of marriage in Gilead, owned by Fred and Serena. For Gilead dictates that Offred has an obligation to Fred and Serena (different from the religious obligation Offred has to herself and to society to keep herself chase and respectable); Offred's obligation is to remain fertile; an obligation to be in the best condition possible for child bearing, child production, child birth; she is obliged to reproduce with her Commander, so that the two people she is "married" to, Fred and Serena, can be kept happy, can get what they want. Mrs. Peters is owned by Mr. Peters so that he may have a clean house, a nice meal, and endless jars of jam stacked in the cupboard. For "having things slicked up" is her duty to her husband (Glaspell 8). Such are the things that women are obliged to do in marriage.
Such are the things that women are obliged to do in marriage, like Clarissa is obliged to wear "a look of extreme dignity" at the possibility of the queen having driven by (as she is aristocratic and wears that burden through her marriage to an official); and like, also, Jasmine is obliged to take care of Bud, despite having never taken a legal oath to him, though they will soon have two children together (Woolf 13). Such is marriage that women have obligations, that women are made inferior, that women are owned by their husbands, forced to fight in small ways against their circumstances.
No comments:
Post a Comment