just told you about one of the books i am at...Janaki, one of the sisters, who elopes from home to stall an arranged marriage, chooses to marry a Muslim film star... she is Indian, and Merchant is talking about 1990s...
the other one i am reading, Doris Lessing's The Golden Notebook is about two sigle Brit women who have chosen to remain single, having gone through relationships, borne children, seen it all... for the purpose of gaining fullness of life... avidly political, one of the women, Anna, who lives in a commune for a period, is appalled that there are certain "behaviours" expected from women, and this none states, but her then boyfriend...
Anna is Lessing's creation in the early 1960s, while talking about the post-World War II London and Europe at large...
so irrespective of spatial difference, cultural separateness, or time, women have remained women...
women...one half of the human population... but expected by ALL to follow rules laid down by some others, meet the expectation parameters of some others... and many a times these "some others" could well be very close to her... Janaki runs from the writ of her father and aunt who are having a rollicking time over Janaki's dead mom... Anna dumps her "modern" boyfriend because he is feudal while a member of the Socialist Party...
and these are not very far from our own lives, are they? we have, to an extent, followed stereotypes...how long will we keeping running, dumping, throwing out? how long more will we keep meeting only others' expectations?
i hope our daughters have freer choices when it comes to their lives... that they will be looked as humans first, women later... that they can live without the burden of expectations...
can we ensure this little for them? the first step should be us, the moms... let us free them of our expectations first... expectations from daughters, not at the human level... let us create human beings, not bring up "daughters".
The Hero’s Journey
3 days ago
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