Domestic Ivory Tower

A Marriage begins with love and vibrancy of enthusiasm to display that love. Taking up from last times discussion about a woman’s role in a marriage versus a man’s role, I’d say it’s better to have friendly conversations that it’s a nuclear setup at the outset if that’s what you desire. If both are by definition partners how do you plan to share that responsibility? A wife may want to continue with her career. She may not wish marriage to be a death knell to all her dreams and ambition and yet may desire home hearth and kids as well. This might pose polarizing perspectives.

He may understand the need for extra finances but is unable to consider sharing in cleaning cooking washing machine operations.

If love is there, the congeniality springing from a sense of justice might work out flexible permutations and combinations.

My take is that men are less amenable to see themselves in the home zone. This is likely to be a disquieting and antiquated perspective.

Moreover, when the wife is intelligent and accomplished she may also not allow her aspirations and free will to be trampled under chauvinistic platitudes that her grandmother meekly acquiesced to.

My thoughts on this are that choosing marriage should not be about ending one’s own life choices and giving into a life of housekeeping. Surely it isn’t fair that I should be disadvantaged, even with my advanced education and capabilities because I chose to get married. I cannot figure out this traditional ‘domestic Ivory Tower’syndrome that a husband would want to bind a wife into. In so many cases of my friends, he was a liberal, progressive-minded boy-friend! However, the day after marriage he tells his newly wed wife it’s house kitchen, cooking meals will woo his visiting family to wow. If you are your own man she wants to be her own woman too!

You love him and he loves you – there’s mutual concern and so you work it out like a loving business negotiation! After all marriage is serious business.

And if she chooses to be the home maker respect her contribution.

It’s a tough, tiring, demanding, full-time engagement that only love for the family oils to smooth working. Especially these days of just ‘You Two and Your Two!’ and domestic help more and more a will-or-wisp.

My super smart friend Shauna is telling me her story with her voice breaking with frustrated desperation! Shauna was her husband’s super smart batch mate at India’s prestigious business school ‘IIM’. Her soon to be husband came from a very conservative, well-known family.

They were proud to ‘acquire’ the intelligent, educated, smart bride. And yet in their culture, unconventional forays outside family and home were not even matters to be thought about, let alone acted upon. To her befuddlement, her IIM batch mate husband didn’t and even couldn’t see any dichotomy either.

She shares, “Surely it isn’t fair that I should be disadvantaged, even with my advanced education and capabilities?

I cannot figure out this traditional “Domestic Ivory Tower” syndrome that my husband wants to bind me into.

He was a liberal, progressive-minded boy-friend but the day after marriage he tells me it’s house, kitchen, cooking meals will woo his visiting family to wow! I detest it when he proudly says ‘Shauna has made the vegetable curry and the baked dish and also the pineapple upside down.’ To think I was his batch mate at IIM and even scored better! The worst part is he does not even note my dejection. So complacently certain is he that I am as happy in this arrangement?”

This kind of ‘arrangement’ leads to dejection and disillusionment that eventually leads to the cracks showing up. This may be a change happening, but men seem still to be the traditionalists trying to ‘fit’ wives into the home-hearth model.

The modern woman however, is increasingly looking for options outside this domestic domain she sees herself unfairly trapped in.

She is willing to look at matrimony as a partnership, and would like it to be the partner deciding the future with him at all levels.

It is a time of transition, women are increasingly educated, accomplished and nature has treated them equally in giving them as much intelligence as men. Today they seek out opportunities and fulfill their aspirations. In our current times women wish to exercise their choices, whether as home makers or as proficient money-earners self-employed or in work places or professions. The want to decide for themselves.

––  The writer is a columnist, designer and brand consultant. Mail her at nishajamvwal@gmail.com