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

phase of de-mystification can, in fact, be re-read as over-expectations and overromanticization
of the cultural mandates of heterosexuality and womanhood rather than
refusal of it. What is therefore important to note is that beneath the de-romanticization of
marrraige, and an expectation of gender equality in marraige among the third
generation, there is, in fact, an ever-increasing expectation from heterosexual conjugal
companionship. Moreover, the commonly narrativised socio-cultural conditions that
circumscribe ‘choice’ of ‘the right’ man for marriage, problematizes the idea of gender
equality in marriage.
Many interviewees like Priya, for instance, narrativized in their period of courtship a
waiting period between love and marriage in which the boy would work towards
becoming “fit for marriage” or “marriage material” in order to be approved by the girls’s
family and her society. This gendered angle implies that both individual and society still
place relatively more importance to the social standing of men in marriage in terms of
his financial position and educational and professional qualification which are ideally
desired to be ‘more’ than the woman’s. This reconfirms institutionalized heterosexuality
and its hegemonic codes of masculinity and femininity (Beauvoir, 1972) despite claims
for gender democracy (Giddens, 1992)
As we can see therefore, love marriages which are arranged and domesticated avoid
the devastating possibility of being excommunicated (Mody, 2008: 157) as in the case
of Pushpa and Bimal who suffered a societal non-recognition of their relation but where
Pushpa never came out of the desire for such familial legitimation of her ‘incomplete’
marriage. What primarily comes across as an important theoretical point is a
sociologically enduring and significant influence of the family in both real and imaginary
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