“A woman needs money and a room of her own if she is to write fiction,” said Virginia Woolf about women in a lecture on “Women and Fiction” in 1928. I am sure Woolf would have agreed that irrespective of whether a woman wants to write or not, she has the right to privacy and financial independence.
Nearly a century later, women now have their own money and their own rooms. Not all women in all places, of course. But there’s no denying that the prospects for women are much better today than they were a century ago. Thanks to the trailblazing women who fought for our rights and heralded a world where women could aspire to reach unprecedented heights.
But even today, does she have an identity of her own separate from the men in her life? Not completely. At least not in the society I have grown up in. A woman’s identity, right from the moment she’s born to the moment she dies, is tied to the men in her life.
As soon as she’s born, she takes her father’s surname as her mother has already given up her own. Growing up, she is flooded with rules about what she should and shouldn’t do if she wants to find a suitable groom for her in future. Her training to become a good (house)wife begins even before she is ready to make a choice about whether she wants to be one or not.
As soon as she enters the third decade of her life, the hunt for a groom begins. If she is in her late 20s and still unmarried, even if it’s a conscious choice, she is constantly questioned about it. On the other hand, if she chooses to marry, she is ‘given away’ to the groom’s family. The term ‘Kanya Daan’ (giving away your daughter) always reminds me of ‘Gau Daan’ (giving away cows), as if a woman were not an individual but a domesticated animal.
Once her parents marry her off, she belongs to another family. Her identity is now tied to her husband. She has to give up her father’s surname and adopt that of her spouse. She has to sport a ‘red bindi’, ‘sindoor’, a ‘mangal sutra’ and several other markers of matrimony. She has to declare to the entire world that she belongs to her husband.
Even in death, she has to carry these markers of her marriage. If she dies before her husband, she is all decked up as a bride. Sounds romantic? Heaven forbid the husband dies before her, the same markers are now forbidden for her. Red is a colour she is no longer supposed to wear. She has to wipe off her sindoor, take off her mangal sutra and forgo her red bindi. She has to declare to the entire world that the man she belonged to has ceased to exist, and so has her identity as a married woman. Her new identity is that of a widow, and she must look like one.
We have come a long way from ‘sati pratha’. Women are no longer burnt alive. They’re no longer forced to shave off their head and wear only white after the demise of their husband. But, women have not yet been able to separate their identity from that of their husbands. The existence or non-existence of their spouse dictates what they wear, how they look and how they behave.
But I believe things are starting to change. Women are beginning to question these outdated norms. They are choosing to shatter societal expectations about how they are supposed to dress up, look or behave. The ball has started rolling. What we need is a safe space where women are not judged for their choices but encouraged to have an identity of their own: as individuals, rather than as daughters, daughters-in-law or wives.
