narratives of three generations of urban middle-class - eTheses ...

and reproduce institutionalized heterosexuality at the level of practice and imagination
(Hockey et al., 2007). Anandita’s and Suparna’s critique of Sunanda’s subversion of
hetero-normativity is significant here. It illustrates generational amendments but not
outright rejection of the hetero-normative codes of femininity: conforming to norms ‘to an
extent’, by the ‘newly wed’ who cannot afford to resist ‘all the time’ and needs to do a
‘lot of adjusting’. ‘To an extent’ is to what extent, is significant in terms of generational
continuities of ‘practices of intimacy’ and their gendered inderpinnings.
The narratives reinstate the cultural prioritization of family relations, expectations, and
‘practical duties’ and ‘compromise’ within the family especially within the in-laws’ family
over professional commitments such as Sunanda’s commitment to ‘feminist equality’.
Being ‘too obsessed with career’ at the cost of one’s duties as a wife and daughter-inlaw
is a pathology even within ‘modern’ pratices of coupling. The difficulty in handling
social ‘criticisms’ as a ‘newly wed’, the desire for its recognition in society and the
everyday social accountability of a woman to her immediate family and to the broader
society, set limits to the unbounded reflexivity of constructing one’s identity and
intimacy. It empirically illustrates an important research question of how self and
emotions are shaped by social relationships (Morgan, 2011: 11-20). It also illustrates
that “macro-level social order is dependent on micro-level (inter)action for its
accomplishment and reproduction (Scott, 2009: 16). The narratives interactionally
reinforce the ‘traditional’ structured gendered inequalities, behind the maintenance of a
heterosexual family and a ‘happy’ conjugality even within ‘modern’ practices of coupling.
Narratives which suggest that adjustment/compromise in a marraige is primarily the
‘duty’ of the woman, whereas it is ‘greatness’ of the man, actually demonstrate the
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