Susan Pritchard
Professor Dubois
HRS 220
November 23, 2004
Word Count: 2088
LISTEN TO THE HERON’S WORDS READING ANAYLSIS
OUTLINE:
I.
Selective Summary
A. Main Claim
1. Women’s songs and positive self-images in Ghatiyali
a. Songs and stories
b. Split-image view of women
c. Rituals and festivals
d. Kinship
2. Conclusion
II.
Evaluation
A. Critic of Raheja and Gold’s claim
III.
Wider Relevance
Selective summary: Topic: Women’s positive self-images in Ghatiyali
In India the gender, songs, stories, split-image view of women, rituals and
festivals, and kinship are all tied into the positive or negative self-image of women. The
studies show that most of these are linked and almost cannot be separated. Gender and
position is a major role in the lives of the people of Ghatiyali. “Almost from the moment
I set foot in the place called Ghatiyali, the women who lived there set about to teach me
that any pretense of gender-free thought and behavior was folly.” (xxvi) There are two
sides to the Ghatiyali woman. At first Gold believed she was wasting her time spending
it with women instead of men, but she soon learned the women would teach her all she
really wanted to know about gender and power.
Ghatiyali was indeed a sexually segregated society, but I began
to perceive that women felt comfortable among themselves partly
because they had to assume postures of submission and modesty
in the presence of men. Thus I began to understand . . . that the
gestures constituting purdah, or female seclusion, were recognized
as poses – enforced by behavioral codes. Although the women of
Ghatiyali certainly accepted these codes, covering their faces and
lowering their voices accordingly, they were freer in thought, and their
domestic influence more blatant than I had anticipated. (xxx)
In hearing and seeing stories and songs from the women, Gold became aware
that women were where her study should lay. Women’s songs in Ghatiyali challenge
tradition, and give the split-image idea of women. This idea has to do with the two sides
to women’s behavior – the submissive woman and the outspoken woman. “That
Ghatiyali’s women had internalized neither submissiveness nor lack of worth was as
evident in public oral performances as in private encounters.” (xxxii) These songs and
stories give the women powerful self-images in their everyday lives. Some are very
sexually explicit also describing how the women feel. The songs and stories are the only
place in mixed company where the woman can say things she normally cannot. Gold
says, “The perspective I shall offer here, drawing on Rayasthani women’s oral traditions
of celebration and worship, is arguably a women’s perspective that contrasts with textual,
Sanskritic traditions. As such, I believe it is shared by men.” (38)
In some of the songs from rural Northern India there are certain themes. I will
take the example of songs at a wedding and the themes. “One often reiterated theme . . .
is that while a mother may be treacherous to her son, a wife will defend her husband
against such disloyalty. . . A second major theme . . . concerns the deception that is
deemed necessary if a wife is to gain intimacy with her husband. . .” (124-28) Included
in this theme is the idea that the wife and husband always maintain their bond no matter
what happens in the patrilineal family. “One of the most common themes, represented in
a number of songs that I recorded, goes much further in its depiction of the necessity for
the husband to reorient his loyalties upon his marriage. This third theme suggests that a
husband’s allegiance to and faith in his own natal kin lead to disaster.” (129) There are
many other areas and themes that songs have to do with, and are too numerous to include.
Studies by other authors give you a look at the split-image of women in India, but
do not go as in depth as Gold and Raheia do. The split-image idea is connected to the
idea of gods/goddesses and women. “Kakar . . . in his examination of Hindu mythology
and culture high-lighted a prominent disjunction between the images of a good mother
and a bad mother – the former all-nourishing, the latter threatening . . . (33) Raheia and
Gold felt that in Kakar’s earlier work, he was not able to get the sources for his material
as they were able to because he was a man. In Kakar ‘s later works they found that he
had a better grip on women, but that:
He has not revised his bleak view of South Asian female sexuality
and its potential for fulfillment. He continues, moreover, to ground
his analysis in the split-image mode, speaking of an ‘age-old yet
still persisting cultural splitting of the wife into a mother and a
whore,’ and claiming that although women may be honored as
ritual partners and mothers, ‘as a female sexual being . . . the
patriarchal culture’s horror and scorn are heaped upon the hapless
wife’ . . . (34)
Gold found that this was not true in her research of the women of Ghatiyali. She found
they had a freedom that really surprised her and her previous concepts of their life.
Although Gold mentions, in Kakar’s more recent work, that he establishes that women
yearn for more intimacy, but men do not feel the same, which leads to frustration for the
women.
O’Flaherty goes into more depth of the split-image idea than Kakar.
She traces from the Upanishads a split in Hindu myth between
dominated ‘goddesses of the breast’ and dominating ‘goddesses
of the tooth,’ or genitals (90-91). This split she also formulates
as the sacred cow and the profane mare (239-80) or the fertile
mother and the erotic whore (247-49). She suggests that such a
mythological split is reflected in behavior patterns that in turn
resonate in later myths, thus proposing a more complex, dialectical
inter-relationship between the natures of deities and humans than
psychological projection. (35-36)
She feels that worshipers, mainly men, who were the writers of the Sanskrit texts,
introduced this split. She does not believe this idea goes along with Kakar’s idea of the
split-image.
In Bennett’s book Dangerous Wives and Sacred Sisters, “she is primarily
concerned with contrasting two opposing perceptions of women in kinship complexes,
which she labels ‘patrifocal’ and ‘filiafocal’ and which pertain to the respective roles of
wife and sister.” (35) Bennett did not concentrate on the earthy references from women
about sexual activities in which Gold brings forth. Her research had more to do with
relations between a bride and the husband’s family. One example being that of a young
bride who has to kowtow to the husband’s sister, and is sometimes treated very cruelly.
It is Bennett’s concern to understand the ritual and social life of
women in terms of these binary tensions that leads her then to
focus on striking absolute splits in women’s roles. By doing so
she neglects investigating the many ways that women, playing
their multiple, responsive roles, may also forge for themselves
and voice a sense of unified id\entity. (36)
Rahea and Gold see the views of these other three authors to be parallel views,
and “. . . draw heavily on mythic images of the feminine. And, for all three authors,
women as genetrix is a critical fulcrum.” (37)
Trautmann states in his research that the bride is given away to her husband’s
family so her allegiance is then to the husband’s kin. Her family is given gifts and
payments for the purchase of the bride. Rahea and Gold say, “This particular set of
cultural propositions about patriliny, gift giving, and marriage has played a critical role in
anthropological understandings of kinship and social life in South Asia.” (75) I do not
see this as being any different than dowries and everything belonging to the husband in
the earlier western world. The western world has just changed these ideas with the
process of time, whereas, it has not changed in a lot of the world.
The authors state that women are very important in Hindu festivals and rituals,
and seem to know more about religion and gods than the men. “One of the major
arguments of this book is that the performances associated with Hindu festivals and the
many rituals surrounding birth, children, and weddings are both expressions of and
sources for women’s positive self-images.”
“This notion that the acceptance of a bride involves the acceptance of evil as well
is unambiguously articulated in the Sanskrit verses that are recited at every wedding
ritual, and much of the ritual is, in Pahansu, structured around this central concern.” (82)
In this ritual a letter is written by the Brahman priest of the bride’s family. During the
ritual the groom sits outside his house and women from his family circle dishes of grain
over his head. Then in the phera rite gifts are given from the bride’s family to the
groom’s, and the bride is given away and breaks her connection with her natal kin. There
are many more rituals and traditions that are preformed in families having to do with
birth, marriage and death, and usually always have to do with the kinship and the women.
The representation of women as both ‘one’s own’ and ‘other’
to their natal kin that are encoded in these two kinds of prestations
are contextually distinct perspectives, and although women tend
to reflect on both kinds of gift giving as indicative of their natal
kinsmen’s regard for them, the existence of the two perspectives
nonetheless indicates a contradiction at the heart of North Indian
kinship ideology. (92)
Conclusion:
Gold studied women mainly in the town of Ghatiyali. Women in other parts of
India may not conform to this study. In fact, Gold stated:
As I undertook to write about Rajasthani women I set
out to educate myself in the current literature and found
that much of it focused on sufferings, abuses, and
discriminations to which women were subject. Moreover,
there were chilling case studies and equally depressing
statistics confirming cruel realities. It has always been
difficult for me to reconcile these bleak images with my
memories of Ghatiyali. (preface, xxxi)
She suggests that these songs and stories of the women for the most part contradict the
split-image idea, which she feels is imposed on them. “The power of oral performances
spills over into everyday identities, just as it certainly draws upon them – as I will show
in chapter 5, where I explore one accomplished singer and storyteller’s life history.” (67)
She states that, “David Parkin, writing on the ‘creativity of abuse’ in Kenya, says of ritual
insults that they ‘free speakers to experiment with alternative, normally hidden, views of
personal worth and power relations’ (1980:62).” (67) It seems a possible idea for the
songs and stories of these Indian women are to let out feelings that they are not socially
allowed to say and do among men, which gives them a powerful self-image. I thought it
most interesting that women use the heron to tell their stories and that the heron
symbolizes predatory hypocrisy. Does this tell us why women act one way in their
everyday lives, and act another in these songs and dances? Maybe the symbol of the
heron tells they know that outwardly there feelings are false.
EVALUATION
Rahea and Gold’s claims did well in supporting their thesis that women’s lives in
Northern rural India are complicated, and what they are showing on the outside to others
may not be how they feel and think on the inside. They chose many stories, songs, and
rituals that showed these views very well. Although, one most remember that these ideas
may not apply to other parts of India since they did only study women in the north. They
chose many examples that showed that women really do have quite a bit of power and
freedom.
WIDER REVELANCE
As we have studied in many of our readings, Rahea and Gold show that there are
many difficulties that one finds in studying gender and religion. There may be one thing
we see when we look at something, but there are many underlying aspects one must look
at to filter out the truth. Their stories show that women are much more important in their
roles than a lot of people believe. Many people take a look at something they really do
not understand, and make a value judgment by their own standards. These books and
others show us how to understand the differences.
Daniel J. Stevens
Dubois/HRS 220
November 23, 2004
Total Word Count: 2279
Reading Analysis: Listen to the Heron’s Words
Reimagining Gender and Kinship in North India
Gloria Goodwin Raheja and Ann Grodzins Gold: Chapters 2, 3, and 4
Outline
I.
Introduction
II.
Selective summary
A.
B.
C.
Chapter Two (Gold)
1.
The split female image
2.
Components of sexuality versus fertility
3.
Refutation of the split image
Chapter Three (Raheja)
1.
Women as a threat
2.
Transfer of kinship
3.
Observations on giving
4.
Contradictions in perspectives
Chapter Four (Raheja)
1.
Marginal power
2.
Subversive undertones
III.
Evaluation
IV.
Wider Relevance
Authors Gloria Goodwin Raheja and Ann Grodzins Gold collaborated on their
independent fieldwork studies in North India to produce the text Listen to the Heron’s Words:
Reimagining Gender and Kinship in North India. Raheja and Gold, although admittedly different
in their own interests and intellectual styles, discover a convergence in their thoughts and
preliminary writings on North Indian women’s oral traditions and lives (xiv).
They point out
that one of the major arguments of the book is that the performances associated with Hindu
festivals and the many rituals surrounding birth, children, and weddings are both expressions and
sources for women’s positive self-images (xxxiii). What results from their use of secondary
sources and own observations is a work replete with the manipulative and contradictory nature of
kinship and gender roles in North India.
Dissimilar to the ethnographic study of the Anastenaria by Danforth, author Ann
Grodzins Gold does not expose a personal involvement or vulnerability in her treatment of
Chapter Two. Drawing from a number of secondary sources beyond her own fieldwork she
tackles the portrayal of Hindu women whose cultural image is inherently split (30). She begins by
suggesting that the split image is established in two linked perceptions, 1.) For Hindus there
exists a deep disjunction between women’s sexual potency and their procreative and nurturing
capacities as respectively dangerous and essential to men (30) and, 2.) The split female image
derives from women’s several strongly contrasting domestic and ritual roles within the kinship
system (31). The most notable of those involves the roles of daughters and sisters contrasting
sharply with the roles of wives and sons’ wives.
Given these two perceptions of Hindu women, what exactly is the split image? Gold
briefly examines three cases by writers of varying backgrounds to explain the predominant
concept of the split image before offering her own alternative and complementary view. The split
image in each of these cases concentrates on the conflict between sexuality and fertility. Although
the approach may have varied somewhat in each case, the summary findings were very similar.
They each describe, as Gold puts it, “discontinuities between female beings’ (women’s or
goddesses’) sexuality and their fertility, or among their various roles as erotic partners, wives and
mothers” (37).
In Hindu culture we discover that sexuality is inherently dangerous and that true virtue is
found in motherhood. The components of sexuality versus fertility are adopted largely from a
male point of view and are perpetuated to maintain patriarchal control. Gold’s argument for
presenting an alternative point of view is based solely on women’s songs recorded in Ghatiyali,
the Rajasthani village where she lived during the time of her fieldwork (31). The perspective she
offers draws upon Rajasthani oral traditions of celebration and worship that provide women’s
perspective on women (38). Her goal is to show that women do not necessarily perceive
themselves as conflicted as they play out their varying, and demanding, gender roles (31). As she
explains, “Rajasthani folk culture, transmitted in women’s songs and stories, supply many images
of females that are simultaneously seductive and fertile, erotic and domestic, and positive” (38).
The key term to refuting conflict is “simultaneously”. She adds, “This lore gives an impression of
women as sexually playful and exuberant, taking pleasure in their own bodies and celebrating
their bodies’ capacities both for erotic engagement and for painful but fruitful birth giving” (38).
Gold’s careful review of women’s songs reveals a complex purpose that allows women to
deal with a variety of situations, relationships and encounters through verbal expressions. She
explains the various categories and sub-categories of songs emphasizing an appropriateness of
timing that maintain a positive outlook. Her examples includes songs that reveal veiling as both
magnetic and repellant, infidelity as associated with fertility and the bawdiness of playful
intercourse. Her argument searches women’s songs for coexistence, not inversion or subversion
(44). She states, “Folklore persuasively offers images of female nature that include a sexuality not
rampantly destructive but seeking mutuality with males” (66). She argues for the fusion of sexual
and maternal aspects of female nature and points to a generative rather than destructive image of
female power (67).
By contrast, Gloria Goodwin Raheja explores in chapter three the conflicting destructive
nature of kinship in Hindu culture. When studying kinship it becomes apparent where the notion
of women’s sexuality as dangerous comes into play. As Raheja points out early in chapter three,
“Women’s sexuality may be viewed as dangerous and destructive in male expressive traditions
and in many ordinary conversations partly because of the perceived threat that sexual bonds
between men and women pose to the solidarity of males within the patrilineal household” (73).
This perceived threat to the patriline might cause a woman to be viewed as an outsider in her
husband’s home throughout her life. Raheja views women’s songs of sexuality and fertility in
Northern India as implicitly challenging the lines of power within North Indian kinship (73). In
her argument, she draws upon women’s songs that speak more directly to their predicament of
being a sister and a wife and the effect kinship has on their status.
First, Raheja discusses the transformation of the daughter as “one’s own” to “other”. The
concept of “one’s own” speaks to her status as daughter in her own home or natal home. The
transformation to “other” occurs when she is married. As she explains, “The woman is said to
undergo a transformation at the wedding, in which she becomes the “half-body” of her husband,
of one substance with him”(75). All that remains with the natal kin after this transformation is a
“relationship” (75). The alienation of natal kin and bond to the husband’s kin, or conjugal kin, is
deemed necessary to prevent interference from the natal kin and strengthen the patrilineality of
the conjugal home. The most contradictory and complex aspect of this change in kinship occurs
with the practice of gift giving.
Gift giving, and the concerns it brings for women, begins with their birth. While the birth
of a son in Hindu culture may bring great joy, the birth of a daughter brings sorrow. The sorrow is
stemmed in the recognition that a sizeable dowry must be assembled. The irony in this situation is
that although the parents may feel grief at the birth of a daughter, they feel as much grief upon her
departure when she marries. According to Raheja, gift giving does not center merely on the
gifting of a daughter in marriage. Gift giving actually escalates and becomes the primary
responsibility of the married women as they assume the gift giving responsibilities of their
husbands. Gift giving, as a tradition in North India, is ritually prescribed for various occasions
and there are numerous culturally elaborated rights and obligations implicated in the acts of
giving and receiving (79). The complexity of gift giving as outlined by Raheja is more than I have
space for in this paper but the significance lies in the maintenance of natal ties for the married
woman.
Briefly, there are three types of gift giving, 1). dan, 2.) milai and , 3.) vada. Dan is
associated with the gifting and acceptance of a wife and “are given to married daughters and
sisters and their husbands” (85). More importantly, when a bride returns to her native village she
is now deemed appropriate for receiving dan (85). The act of receiving dan ensures the well
being of her brothers and their children. Milai is given when a brother visits the conjugal village
of his sister (90). Vada are gifts given to a woman by her mother, her brothers and their wives as
she is about to return to her conjugal home after visiting her natal village (90). According to
Raheja, “The primary significance of milai and vada prestations is that they signify their
continuing identity as “one’s own” to their brothers” (91). Thus, the contradictory nature of the
transfer of kinship for a woman as she is married and becomes “other” to her natal family. The
traditions and rituals surrounding gift giving would appear to undermine the patriarchal control
and strength of the conjugal family.
The contradictions in the perspectives of kinship reveal themselves in the songs of the
women of North India. The songs, according to Raheja, do not reject one image or another of the
relationships in kinship. She states’ “Rather, a reflexively ironic awareness of the discrepancy
between the two sets of representations is the predominant characteristic of the songs” (93).
Songs typically utilize a number of points of view in competing voices and perspectives while
emphasizing ties to the natal village thus stressing the contradictions in relationships and the
emotional disharmony of unresolved conflict (94).
Lastly, in chapter three, Raheja explores the desire by women to maintain close ties to
their natal village. Typically, marriages at a distance are preferred over marriages in nearby
villages because it removes the natal kinsmen. The advantage is for men as it reduces the
opportunity for interference from the natal family when disputes arise in the husband’s home and
thereby reduces the threat to the husband’s rule (106). Women, however, despite the danger of
subverting their husband’s authority in his own home, construct ties to their natal village so that
they might escape a total submission to the authority of the husband’s senior kin (109). Raheja
presents ten cases of creatively crafted natal ties that enabled various women to resist certain
aspects of patrilineal ideology (119). She views these cases as a negotiation and renegotiation of
identities and relations of power within their conjugal village to reconfigure the pattern of kinship
relations there (120). The importance of this, as she puts it, “demonstrate that women have only
partially and incompletely internalized the ideals of patrilineal kinship” (120).
Chapter four examines, through women’s songs, yet another type of perceived subversion
to enable a woman to redefine conjugality. The subversion suggested does not limit a husband’s
authority but seeks to gain intimacy in the marriage without interference from the husband’s
family. The varying perspectives here are once again curiously contradictory as wives and
mothers, sisters and daughters, form vastly different perspectives. As Raheja reminds us, “these
two perspectives are alike in that both express acute awareness of the tensions and contradictions
within North Indian kinship relations that result from a woman’s movement from natal home to
conjugal home” (122). The themes of the songs studied demonstrate the shifting perspective of a
woman as she moves from daughter and sister to wife and mother. The former stresses the
importance of the brother-sister tie over and against the brother’s tie to his own wife; the latter
speaks more subversively of the expectation that conjugal bonds will be far less important than
relationships through men (147). The viewpoint of the sister rejects the notion that she must
distance herself from her brother who might side with her in times of dispute against her in-laws.
The viewpoint of the wife rejects the notion that sexual intimacy with her husband should be
controlled so that his ties to his patrilineal kin are not placed in jeopardy (148).
Raheja has presented a carefully crafted argument for the conundrum by which North
Indian women find themselves. Women of North India are four parts in one as they find
themselves moving from daughter and sister to wife and mother. Each role they must play
requires a varying set of rules of engagement in the community and within the family. There are
rules for the conjugal village and rules for the natal village. The sister who despises his brother’s
wife will one day be faced with her own husband’s sister. The wife who despises her mother-inlaw will one-day be a mother-in-law herself. Yet, in the ritual traditions and performances of
women’s songs, all of these manifestations of a woman in North India come together.
Gold, however, did not see the varying roles of women as conflicted but as a fused entity.
Her blending of “seductive and fertile” with “erotic and domestic” resolves for her the conflict as
a sister/daughter and wife/mother can be all of those things without being subversive or
threatening. The ritual traditions and women’s songs she examines allowed women to deal with
the varying degrees of relationships through an appropriate time and place. She removed the
negative from veiling, infidelity and bawdiness and turned them into positive aspects of
womanhood within the context of Hindu culture.
Wherever the two authors may have disagreed, their conclusions, as outlined in the
preface, are the same, “The object woman of the male tradition is a speaking, imagining, singing,
acting person, whose multiplicity – both in artistic expressions and in everyday negotiationsmakes her all the more whole and strong” (xxxv). The fieldwork carried out by Raheja and Gold
is significant because they question culturally held norms derived from observations of
predominantly male ethnography. Gold specifically argues that “split images may indeed derive
from watching, rather than listening to, women. They may be based on assumptions of female
voicelessness that subject women readily to definitions by others”(33). The key to the work of
Raheja and Gold is the fact that they took the time to listen to women.