The Deadly Shift in Marriage

Marriage

Marriage, which seems to be as natural as breathing after attaining a certain age in our society, isn’t what we perceive it to be. It seems to be an inevitable part of life even today in many cultures. But when brooded through a critical lens, it appears to be nothing but a patriarchal social institution.

Friedrich Engels, in his book The Origin of the Family, Private Property and the State (1884), states that “The modern individual family is founded on the open or concealed domestic slavery of the wife.”

Simone de Beauvoir, in one of the seminal books to understand women and their social position in this world, The Second Sex (1949), argues that “Marriage is the destiny traditionally offered to women by society.” In her analysis, marriage is also a way in which a woman becomes the “Other” in relation to man.

Both quotations imply the historical layout of marriage. The moment a woman gets married, she becomes secondary in her own life. Afterwards, she is expected to never treat herself as primary, even by herself. This is what clinical psychologist Rashi Sahai, quoted in the Times of India, calls a “broken sense of self”.

The Desire to Save Marriage Over Saving A Life

For centuries, marriages have been surviving on the sacrifices of wives. They were sent to the husband’s house and were treated no better than a free servant. They were taunted for their looks, their upbringing, their ways of walking, talking, eating, looking at something, and whatnot.

The moment they enter their in-laws’ house, they become an object of judgement for every member of the household. The worst part is that even after years of silence, if anyone would open their mouth to revert for anything, she was accused of disrespect by mere speaking. None wants a daughter-in-law who can’t speak, but none wants them to speak for themselves.

This has been the criterion for centuries. Many books and research articles on feminism have addressed the patriarchal norms of marriage, and it’s not new to state all this, but with time as we moved forward, we forgot that many of us are still living the same lives. Many of us haven’t stepped out of this hell yet.

In the name of being liberal and progressive, we deny the existence of the patriarchal norms of marriage. We deny the existence of the toxic marriage by claiming that we now live in a society where the desired gender equality prevails. The difference is that decades ago she was made to believe that whatever is happening to her is normal, and this is what a woman holds as her destiny.

But now she knows that all this isn’t normal and that abuse is abuse whether it is coming from the husband or any of his family members. Sometimes she decides to leave, but then what? She goes to her parents, and they, belonging to the previous generation, expect her to adjust. They advise her to give it a chance. And after giving it a chance, if she returns, they ask her not to disturb their peace in the last days of their lives. Sometimes they ask her why she didn’t quit it in the first place. So first she was forcefully convinced not to break and give it chances after chances, and then she is blamed for not breaking it in the first place.

She is accused of being insecure, an overthinker, if she speaks for herself. The kids she would bear would belong to the father because of the patriarchal structure of the society. They will bear the father’s name. So even her own parents desire to contribute to making a life and family for the boy whom they have married their daughter to. They don’t think about their daughter but only about the marriage. Eventually, the marriage tends to benefit mainly the husband.

Making marriage a thing which you can never quit is one of the primary reasons for increasing crimes against spouses. Women, who are told that their lives would be the worst of any imagination if they quit a marriage, don’t see any way out. Referring to such cases, experts quoted by journalist Sonali Verma in the Times of India observe that “when someone kills a partner and hides the body, it reflects emotional coldness and the need to erase the person”. Does it mean that the society has pushed the limits to an extent where one of the married partners can not imagine her future without erasing the other?

The Loss of Her “Self”

What do we expect from a human who has lost their being? Imagine a human who doesn’t have any control over their own life. What would that life mean where you don’t possess even yourself? And most horrifying is the situation where a human doesn’t have any existence. Where there is no human existence, there will be no morality.

The moral values of a society work on the self-consciousness of its citizens, but if the society were to snatch their identity from them, then what would they feel conscious of? The fear of a ruined social image dies with the death of the sense of self. The loss of self causes the evaporation of every other human emotion, be it sadness, remorse, empathy, or sympathy. We as a society should stop keeping unrealistic expectations from the victims of our society.

Why do we act so ignorantly not to understand that even though the loss is one-sided, the consequences of that loss would not be limited to that person only. If one person in your family would get a flu, is it possible for you to be completely unaffected? It is the simplest illustration to understand that if someone with whom you are living day and night is ruined, then you too are likely to be ruined in the process, with little way out.

News Reports or A Narrative Against Females

The cases of murders between spouses have been reported in a very different light when the person who is dead is a husband. These reports raise a question: Why cannot she be a normal human who can get enraged, who can live, laugh and wail, who can be killed and can kill too? Why does society want to imprison her in its definitions? If men can kill women, why is our society expressing such shocked expressions when she is doing the act and the man is becoming the victim?

Reporting of such incidents is not the problem; the problem is the way in which these matters are being reported, and especially in the context where other similar cases were reported very indifferently, where the victim was female, and the accused was male.

The following are some reported cases of murder in which wives have been accused of their husbands’ murder:

Such reports induce us to ponder upon the question: When will we start accepting that a woman is as human as a man? She can possess all the flaws a man can possess. We are very eager to propagate and prevail that women are as good as men. Likewise, we should be ready to accept that women can be as bad as men. What is the need to establish such narratives? Why are the media and the people around us in such a hurry to declare that nowadays wives are the murderers?

Violence Towards Her Ushering Violence by Her

Everyone was appalled to read such headlines. The people who grew comfortable reading headlines of in-laws killing their son’s wife or the suicides of daughters-in-law of different families were not expecting that someday a woman could kill her husband. Maybe because a woman is taught to worship her husband as god; she is meant to serve him. ‘Pati parmeshwar’ is a word many women would have heard, even if she doesn’t believe it. So, society is appalled at how the teachings can go so wrong.

In every such news report, it is stated that “there is a chilling absence of remorse”. All this showcases that something unimaginable is happening in our society. We all know that in the meantime there are cases where wives have been killed by husbands. But those cases haven’t surfaced in such a manner, maybe because this society considers that normal.

Does this reaction conclude about our acceptance of men being much more violent than women? And if so, then why are we so surprised to see the counterpart being violent? If she has suffered violence or seen other beings of her own gender being murdered and raped so violently, wouldn’t she learn the same violence one day? What do we expect from a human when we are well aware that even an infant learns through imitation? Why couldn’t this society speculate that the violence towards women would one day lead to violence by women?

Another common response after reading such cases is to ask: if she didn’t want to be with him, why did she get married? According to them, she could say no to marriage. But have they forgotten the honour killings in their society? They should look back a little to see the horrifying honour killings which could have threatened anyone to choose not to say no.

Hence, before questioning the outcome, we should look around and see the lives of the wives of our society. And we would get all the answers behind these killings. Speaking about the moral values, society should know that a disproportionate share of moral expectation has been placed on one gender. And why is a society which has seen violence against a specific gender for centuries and accepted it as normal now horrified by such a few cases?

The intention behind this article is not to justify violence; rather, it is to question why and until when, a specific gender of humanity will be a victim only to the violence done by the other gender.