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Marriage: Option or Obligation?

“And they lived happily ever after …” it’s only a fairytale. I found this statement, made by a friend of mine. And it makes me to think to write about what women should and should not do about marriage. In one afternoon, my friend (25 years old single women and still study psychology in S-1) and I (27 years old single women) talked about the fearful things faced by women and children when marriage become a broken bridge to happiness. She mentioned many examples to describe how marriage ruined women’s and children’s life and only create more broken family in this planet. I agree with her that marriage do sometime made matters worse than before, but I disagree when she said that marriage cut off the freedom of woman. It is true that many examples of woman whom had been cut off their freedom by marriage – by their husband. But there are two kind of woman related with marriage: woman who considerer marriage as obligation or option.

Being single is fun for fearless female. But avoiding marriage for them is a dangerous choice. Both religion and social culture had involved deeply in women’s marriage life and choices. For several women, marriage is a matter of an option rather than an obligation. When women choose not to marry, (suddenly) society had its right to judge that the women had neglected their destiny. Being virgin is such ashamed thing to do – and merely a sin. Deep inside every woman’s heart laid their need to be loved and to gain freedom at the same time. And marriage had often not become the solution for these, but it always consider as it by society. Does ‘marriage’ is an obligation or an option for women? Who decide that ‘married women’ is better than ‘single women whom delay their marriage’ or women who did not (choose not) to marry?[1]

When Aida Vyasa posted her writing above in the internet – in her Blog, few man replied her writing and gave comments that man also need to be loved and to gain freedom at the same time. So the problem of freedom, to be loved and dignity over gender is not a woman’s problem but also man’s problem as women’s rival in this context – rather than partner.

Last night (May 19^th, 2007) I saw a monologue by Naomi Srikandi in LIP

Yogyakarta

. The story was about Shakuntala – a novel character of Ayu Utami’s Novel, Saman and Larung. It was a story about women who belief that marriage is a bitchy hypocrite (in Bahasa: persundalan hipokrit). In her novel, Ayu Utami describeb Shakuntala as women who had trauma about men who treat her so bad, about family who teach her that marriage is solution of all problems, and how important virginity is. Shakuntala is a merely complete description about the feminist in common.

“Namaku Shakuntala. Ayahku menyebutku sundal. Sebab aku telah tidur dengan beberapa laki-laki dan beberapa perempuan. Meski tidak menarik bayaran. Ayahku tidak menghormatiku. Aku tidak menghormati ayahku, sebab bagiku hidup adalah menari dan menari pertama-tama adalah tubuh. Seperti Tuhan baru meniupkan nafas pada hari keempat puluh setelah sel telur dan sperma menjadi gumpalan dalam rahim, maka ruh berhutang kepada tubuh.”[2]

Here, we can see women as people construction. As the famous Simone de Beauvoir quoted, “One is not born rather becoming, a woman.”, so at the same time, women is a society construction and a becoming process which has no final point. My paper will discuss about ethical problem which woman faced about marriage and its relation with what it means to be a good women, a good daughter, and a good sister.

A Good Woman: a Doll in the house?

            A good women is a good sister, a good daughter, and later on, a good mother. A good mother could only achieved if you’re a good daughter and a good sister who will had her marriage when the age has ripe enough to gave birth – and be a good mother. So, if you want society calls you as a good women, you should get married when the right time has come. But often the time has never come, and sudden you become a bad woman. Or perhaps the time has come, but you choose another way to be a good person.

I remember about a movie, entitled, Yentl. The movie was talked about a Jewish women whom eager to had education in the University but unfortunately the university only receive man as it student. So, Yentl – the women, pretended and disguised herself as a man. The story goes deeper as Yently in love with her bestfriend – her roommate in boarding house, and it almost change her idea that women should not gain happiness with togetherness with man. As the end of the movie, Yentl conduct journey to her future – no longer disguise herself as a man and get a better study in other place, and marriage certainly not her final goal. From the movie I can get conclusion, that women in the whole world is the same. They seek love, compassion, freedom, they want to be heard, they cry, but at the same time they can be cruel and harsh and just like men did they angry and be rational on things, and it doesn’t seem surprise why we should look over the difference of man by gender rather than sex.

Yentl is a type of women who is not a doll in the house. She eager to find and react as man rather passive like most women did. As the British Feminist, Janet Radcliffe Richards, says:

“Most women still dream about beauty, dress, weddings, dashing lovers, domesticity, and babies … but if feminists seem (as they do) to want to eliminate nearly of all these things – beauty, sex conventions, families and all – for most people that simply means the removal of everything in life which is worth living for.”[3]

Social construction: A good woman is a married woman. Is that true?

Children know that witches had no husband and children, and they are bad women. But it was so cruel if we consider unmarried women as a witch. Beauvoir criticizes the family as an unacceptable arrangement since, for women, marriage, and childbearing are essentially incompatible with their subjectivity and freedom. Moreover she says:

“The tragedy of marriage is not that it fails to assure woman the promised happiness … but that it mutilates her; it dooms her to repetition and routine … At twenty or thereabouts mistress of a home, bound permanently to a man, a child in her arms, she stands with her life virtually finished forever.”[4]

It seems for Beauvoir, the tragedy goes deeper than marriage. Moreover, we can find many writings about how marriage consider as death by women. For example, writings from Aida Vyasa in her novel,

Taman

Sunyi Sekala:

“Sesuatu yang kubawa dalam saku kehidupanku adalah gambaran nyata sebuah kematian dalam hidup; bahwa wanita akan menjalani siklus kematian selama tiga kali dalam hidupnya. Satu: saat ia terlahir sebagai perempuan; dua: saat ia mengalami menstruasi pertama; tiga: saat ia menikah.”[5]

Under traditional arrangements, most women did not merely want marriage; they needed it. It was by far a woman’s most socially legitimated option for economic survival. In her introduction in her book, The Second Sex, Beauvoir stated that women nowadays is now trying to grasp again their freedom, but no matter they step into life, they will ended it up in a marriage – confessing man’s domination. Furthermore, Beauvoir says that marriage is a traditional which society gifted for women. It’s true that many women married, ever married, plan to have married and suffer because of never to have married. Single women always see as rebel and frustration women.

            Rosemary Putnam Tong stated that according to Beauvoir, when young women realize her body, realize her difference with boys, they started to realize their duty in motherhood in relation with marriage, reproduction, pregnancy, gave birth, breastmilk, and nurturing. Beauvoir believe that marriage can destroy love which lied between man and women. Marriage is a slavery and full of routine. Marriage offers calmness and security, but it also robbed it.

            In marriage, women become wife and perhaps also a mother. Both of these roles, according to Beauvoir are limiting the women’s movement. But some women did find freedom in it. For example, this morning, my old friend send me message:

“Kapan undangan pernikahannya datang? Dah sembilan tahun kalian jalan kenapa tidak nikah-nikah? Khan sudah tunangan? Emang belum pingin direpoti anak ya? Asyik loh pagi-pagi ada yang hadir dengan tawa dan senyum minta dipeluk. Lucu …”[6]

Not all of women feel that marriage cut off their freedom, but sometime they find it within marriage. Or perhaps they did not find freedom in it, but they enjoy it after all. Furthermore, we can find in other women’s writing about how marriage can be a little death. Here for example:

“Saat ia menikah, adalah saat wanita mati ketiga kalinya sebelum ia mungkin merasakan kehidupan … mati adalah ketidakberfungsian diri, ataukah saat orgasme, saat melahirkan, saat menyusui, saat mengasuh anak, melihat anaknya tumbuh dewasa … bahwa pernikahan bisa jadi kematian dan kehidupan, itu tergantung dari mana kita melihat.”[7]

Feminist with her feminity

It is very interesting to viewed Beauvoir or even Aida Vyasa’s writing through the work of Foucault. In his History of Sexuality: An Introduction, Foucault presents sex as a form of discourse. He also asserts that sex pervades all aspects of a person’s life. Because sex in his opinion is discourse, the connection between writing and sex becomes concrete.

It is this capacity for sex to color all aspects of a person’s life, as well as the intimate relationship shared by sex and writings, that makes gender influences inescapable in a person’s written work. Gender, in a sense, creates a sort of community of people and therefore it is “a vital element of identity that a writer, reader, or critic must at the very least acknowledge.” Self-knowledge is what most feminists believe has been denied women for centuries, through labels such as wife and mother. These deny female sexual appetite and force women into subservient, nurturing roles that deny them personalities.

Another exotic female writer is Anaïs Nin, which became an inspiration to all women desiring to be accepted in a male dominated society because, although she was censored, society did not make her an outcast. Nin was married, experienced in matters of sexual intercourse (as her diaries attest), and never lost her femininity after she realized that she had denied it and regained possession of it. She is now often viewed as feminist with femininity. It is very interesting because Aida Vyasa also mention about how Anais Nin inspired her much and obviously we can see from couple word of Vyasa that Nin has influenced her femininity also.[8]

In her novel, Aida Vyasa wrote about how women ‘died’ when they have first menstruation. Here we can see how religion and culture put women in the position of dirty things when they had menstruation.

“As in much of Western religious thought, Hinduism contains the idea that female body becomes polluted during menstruation and childbirth.”[9]

Moreover, Raine sees this as a politics of control. Especially in Hinduism, “Men use their power to write religious text to inscribe the bodies of women as dangerous, requiring surveillance”. As you can see nowadays this discrimination still happen, otherwise, the ‘red’ color of blood in TV commercial will not change into ‘blue’ which identified as a ‘clean’ or hygienic color. Menstruation, as the world has constructed it as a dirty element or fluid which comes from women’s body. In Islam, in the sacred text, women are not allowed to touch Al-Quran and not allowed to held prayer or Shalat or reciting Qur’an (mengaji).[10] No wonder feminist felt that this is a disgrace for woman. But somehow, some women proud with their femininity. They proud with their experience in menstruation, they proud with their body, skin, their weakness against fat, etc. They love to be women who loves dresses, jewelry, beauty lotion and soap’s collection. This actions are against what the feminist acts about what a women should be that they should not bother themselves to beautify the body so they will have plenty of time to do something else. Again, this is an optional. And some women enjoy with their femininity.

Women: What Religion Said

            I, my self, is a woman. What makes me a woman? Social construction? Or is it natural arrangement? I believe we experience both of the situations. When we born as a woman, and our parent introduce us with dolls, pink and pastels color for cloth and our room, it means we are the baby girl. And when we grew, we will grow as little girl, and still with dolls and lovely dresses. But it is fine to have toys such cars and guns or even yo-yo to played with. Or perhaps until we become teenages we still in love with dolls, and perhaps adore marriage and nurturing baby when we grew as an adult – as a woman.

No the question is: if woman had an idea to become ‘mother’ rather than doctor or philosopher, is that silly thing? Feminists – not all of them, but some will say that there is no freedom when we have marriage as our goal to find freedom. At least Beauvoir said so. And what religion said? Many books and writing discuss about women and religion, and I will not explain more about it. In Hinduism, in the Svetasvatara Upanishad (circa fourth century B.C.E) the divine is consciously identified with women (stri) and unmarried girls (kumari) as well as with men and boys.

You are a woman; you are a man; you are a boy or also a girl

As an old man, you totter along with a walking-stick.

As you are born, you turn your face in all directions.

You are the dark blue bird, the oceans.

You love as one without a beginning of your pervasiveness

You are from all beings are born.

Women should be understood to have value and significance in Hinduism, even as do men, because of their being, not because of their instrumental role in society wives and mothers. Women, too, are atman Brahman. [11]

The religion of Hindu, Judaism, Christianity and Islam are most problematic compare the others. For example, in Hinduism, menstruation taboo, marriage at young age, the sati, and also about the role of women in sacred text have become major problems. Though shruti support gender justice, but still the Brahman heritage full of misogynic and andocentric problems. Raines also sees problems in Christianity related with women. Judaism and Christianity have, until recently, provided an ideology which is promale and antifeminist.

In Judaism, there are some similar problems according to the author, such as the lives of women and the obligations to live one’s, and women are not allowed to read and study Torah/Talmud. Both Judaism and Islam, law and life under the law is not a matter of choice but of identity. One of the Ten Commandments, for example, forbids coveting the wife of a neighbor in the same sense that his other property should not be the object of envy.

The Christian Gospels do soften this harsh attitude toward women, portraying a Jesus who treated women and men as equals. But after it, God appears as patriarch, king, judge, and lord of hosts.[12] While in Islam, hijab has become major problem in “Women and Religion” subject. Other matters such as zihar[13], patriarchy, menstruation taboo, and teaching on wife beating are additions. So far, I found that Raines forget to mention about women share’s in heritance (which is only half men), about talaq (divorce), and the headship of family.

Raine put conclusion in his book, that “for women there is no freedom, no self-directing of their lives, no submission that is their own submission, if they do not have control with their sexuality and reproduction.”[14] Somehow I feel that faith and feminism have a deep relationship and both are responses to the deep human yearning for connection and for peace on earth, and that they both have a vision of universal human equity.

the Fin

A good woman is not a doll in the house. They have option for the obligation they faced. Marriage is optional. So, it is fine for women to conduct married and have children and become a house-wife. And also it is fine for women not to married and remain single. Religion involves in making decision for women in marriage, but still women has big role in deciding whether she want to get married or not.

Bibliography

Vyasa, Aida.

Taman

Sunyi Sekala.

Surakarta

. Tiga Serangkai, 2006.

Schonfeld, Eugen and Stjepan G. Mestrivic, “With the Justice and Mercy: Instrumental-Masculine and Expressive-Feminine Elements in Religion, Journal for the Scientific Study of Religion (30: 363-80, 1991).

Richards, Janet Radcliffe. The Sceptical Feminist.

Middlesex

,

England

, Penguin Books, 1980.

Raines, John C. The Justice Men Owe Women: Positive Resources from World Religions. Fortress Press,

Minneapolis

, 2001.

De Beauvoir, Simone. The Second Sex, tr. H.M Parshley.

New York

: Random House, 1952.