Wives, widows, and concubines : the conjugal family ideal in colonial India / Mytheli Sreenivas.

Format:

Book

Author/Creator:

Sreenivas, Mytheli.

Series:

Contemporary Indian studies

Language:

English

Subjects (All):

Families--India--Tamil Nadu.

Families.

Marriage--India--Tamil Nadu.

Marriage.

Kinship--India--Tamil Nadu.

Kinship.

Women--India--Tamil Nadu.

Women.

India--Tamil Nadu.

Physical Description:

xii, 169 pages : illustrations, map ; 25 cm.

Place of Publication:

Bloomington : Indiana University Press, [2008]

Summary:

In colonial Tamil Nadu, in southern India, the family became the center of intense debates about identity, community, and nation. Developing ideas about love, marriage, and desire were inextricably linked to caste politics, the colonial economy, and nationalist agitation. At the same time, intimate aspects of marriage practice-ranging from the emotional compatibility of husband and wife to the caste politics of choosing a spouse-became subjects for public debate and targets of reform movements. This public discourse about marriage was part of a broader historical shift, as the conjugal relationship (the husband-wife pair) displaced the extended kin group as the focal point of household dynamics. The new emphasis on conjugality took varied and sometimes contradictory forms. While conjugality provided a language with which women laid claim to a host of rights, from the right to inherit a deceased husband's property to the right to seek emotional and sexual fulfillment in marriage, appeals to conjugality, and the very structures of the conjugal family, also served to reinscribe women's oppression both inside and outside marriage. Drawing on archival research and sources ranging from court cases to women's magazines, Mytheli Sreenivas maps the complex history of late colonial families in relation to the culture, politics, and economy of the Tamil region. She argues that notions of community centered around the changing family were fundamental to shaping national identity in the early twentieth century.

Contents:

Introduction: Situating families

Colonizing the family : kinship, household, and state

Conjugality and capital : defining women's rights to family property

Nationalizing marriage : Indian and Dravidian politics of conjugality

Marrying for love : emotion and desire in women's print culture

Conclusion: Families and history.

Notes:

Includes bibliographical references (pages [153]-161) and index.

ISBN:

9780253351180

0253351189

9780253219725

0253219728

OCLC:

175217911