Resumo de Arranged Marriage - Chitra Banerjee Divakaruni

In Chitra Divakaruni?s Arranged Marriage, she has opened a window of exploration into a world many of us may find foreign. Chitra?s tales of ethnic Indian women and their lives catapults us into a realization that though marriage customs may seem vastly different, often there are familiarities in which our worlds and customs collide, reflecting a shared womanhood.In Divakaruni?s Arranged Marriage, her true feelings on the subject are realized in very artistic fashion. She has used the lives of each of the women to demonstrate that though their cultural practices are interpreted, experienced and viewed differently there is not much difference between the relationships in Indian culture, verses those in Western cultures. Essentially Chitra enables us to see the complexities within our own cultural norms, allowing us to reflect on what relationships are, and how we go about choosing and experiencing them. For example in her first story, The Bats, she shows that as in a western marriage, arranged marriages do not always work out for the best. Often times there are abuses, in which the wife feels helpless to leave, as well as helpless to stay. Experiencing abuse, and the cyclical fashion in which women endure it, is not only an aspect of arranged marriages, it unfortunately affects marriages in western customs as well. ?He wants us to come back. He promises it won?t happen again.? (11) Interestingly she shows how social pressures are often the largest obstacle in an abusive marriage, true also to western marriages. ?I couldn?t stand it, the stares and whispers of the women down at the marketplace.? (12) In Clothes, Divakaruni expresses the true happiness that can be experienced in an arranged marriage. She reflects the hope and the happiness of exploring love with someone. In this story she exposed how even when all things seem to have worked out just perfect, it all can change instantaneously, and often in dramatic fashion. Again finding similarities with western culture, where we often experience blissful love, and in heart wrenching manner, we often loose it. ?My breath roller-coasting through my body, my unlived life gathering itself into a scream.? (31) As women we wonder how we will go on, how life can be uttered without our companions, the pain of such loss is universal. Divakaruni expresses the duality of loss well with, ?Air fills me- the same air that traveled through Somesh?s lungs a little while ago. The thought is like an unexpected, intimate gift.? (33)In Ultrasound, we see that within a culture there are often many levels of adherents. Though both women have chosen traditionally arranged marriages, one lives in a culturally conformed lifestyle, of her choosing, while the other has brought with her the cultural traits she chose to integrate with the American culture she has only in some aspects, adopted. In western cultures, marriages take on many appearances. With the example of the two cousins who have chosen marriage on different terms, we find a common thread in the quilt of womanhood. ?So maybe it?s fitting that Prajapati, the winged and capricious god of marriage, set us down in such different places-me here in San Jose with Sunil, and her in provincial Burdwan, the eldest daughter-in-law of a large, traditional Brahmin family.? (207) The conditions and expectations of women are invitingly portrayed. ?I know the stories. Women chastised, even beaten, because they couldn?t have children,? and ?Five years might not seem that long to people in America, but where we come from, it is. Marriages can be broken in half that time, and barren wives sent back to their parent?s home in shame.? (217) This image allows us to reflect on just how similar our cultures are, based on the expectations of women?s roles. In Arranged Marriage the author allows her true feelings on the subject of arranged marriages to flow lucidly intertwined with each character and their story. The subject itself is one filled with many conditions, variables, and terms. There is no clear-cut, yes I believe in arranged marriages, or no, all arranged marriages are bad. For this author it seems that arrangement of marriage is just another term for the experience of marriage. Each individuals experience is different, with or without arrangement. Just as in Western cultures, each variable is the couples own. Chitra seems to confer throughout her book, the theme that life is a myriad of experiences, some good, and some bad. In the end we are each given chances at happiness, as well as pain. Without pain we find no happiness, and in happiness we retrieve our pains. In her last story of the Indian woman living as a divorcee, in Meeting Mrinal, she encapsulates this theory by saying, ?The glasses glitter like hope. We raise them to each other solemnly, my son and I, and drink to our precious, imperfect lives.? (300)

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