Abstract
This chapter analyzes the daily routines of 37 women—young adults, mature adults and old women—from 10 extended family households to identify the reasons that mature adulthood is considered the most satisfying phase in a woman’s life. There are systematic differences in these daily routines, all of which can be traced to the family roles women occupy. The analysis indicates that women feel most in control of their own lives, most influential over others and connected most meaningfully to other people and to divinity when they are senior wives or married husband’s mother—the two family roles that mature adulthood encompasses. Thus, mature adulthood provides temple town women the greatest opportunities to access and experience wellbeing. This chapter presents a very particular picture of domesticity, one that exemplifies the moral values of self-control, self-discipline, and doing one’s duty sincerely and steadfastly—values that these women believe best ensure success and satisfaction in life.
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Notes
- 1.
Of these seven households, the caste status of five of them appears to be quite clear: one belongs to the high-status Kshetrabasi subcaste, while the other four are members of the Mahasuaro subcaste, again a relatively high-status subcaste of Brahmans who are entrusted with the task of cooking for the deity. However, the caste status of two of these families is contested: they claim to be Brahmans (they wear the “sacred thread”), although other Brahmans contest their claim and classify them as Sudra sevakas.
- 2.
An anna is a coin that is no longer in circulation. In pre-independence India, there were 6 paisa (or pice) to an anna and 16 annas to a rupee.
- 3.
During these 4 days, women usually do not bathe, cook, or help in cooking; they do not oil or comb their hair; and they remain secluded, usually eating alone.
- 4.
Geertz (1973: 40), when discussing variability in people’s “orientation to reality,” describes Hindus as “obsessively ritualism”: perhaps, the fidelity with which Odia women perform these daily ablutions demonstrates such obsessiveness!
- 5.
Madan’s (1987: 36) speaks in a similar vein when talking of the domestic life of the Kashmiri Pandits he has studied.
- 6.
In the temple town, most Odia Hindu men and children eat the main meal of the day consisting of rice before going to work or attending school. Since a usual working day begins around 10:00/10:30 in the morning, this means that men and children eat this meal around 9:00/9:30. Unmarried daughters, who no longer attend school, are the next to eat, soon after the menfolk and the children have left home, around 10 in the morning.
- 7.
Lajya, glossed as modesty, deference, and reticence, is a moral and civilizing emotion that Odia Hindu women are usually exhorted to cultivate (see Menon and Shweder 1994).
- 8.
She is referring to her husband’s mother.
- 9.
As a junior wife, these people would be her husband’s younger brothers, his younger sisters, his elder brothers’ wives and his mother.
- 10.
She uses the English word “free.”
- 11.
Interestingly enough, Jyotsna is the junior wife in household # 5 in Table 6.2 who gives herself a wellbeing score of 16 annas. Given what she says above and given that when she gave me the score, she spoke loud enough for anyone within earshot to hear her, I felt that her score was more a statement of defiance against the senior wives in her household who behave cruelly toward her rather than an accurate reflection of her sense of wellbeing. I, therefore, disregard it while calculating the average wellbeing score for junior wives. I discuss her score in more detail in Chap. 7.
- 12.
In the temple town, as in other parts of Hindu India, it is considered unlucky to say “I am going” (mu jauchi) because it implies one may never return; so, usually, one takes leave by saying “I will be returning” (mu asibi).
- 13.
Not all women have sons, but traditionally, people in the temple town have sought a way out by adopting a relative’s son, preferably one’s own daughter’s second or third son. The child is adopted formally into his maternal grandfather’s lineage and all ritual ties to his biological father are severed. In the present sample, Rani, the senior wife quoted earlier, and her husband have done just that.
- 14.
According to these older women, menopause does not affect a woman’s physical health adversely. Severe pains in the lower back, heavy, frequent, and irregular bleeding, hot flushes, irritability, and mood swings are symptoms that these women appear to be unfamiliar with, at least as the regular, to-be-expected aspects of menopause. When asked explicitly about the occurrence of these symptoms, they say that such problems happen only when menopause occurs earlier than it should. They say that women experience menopause around the time when the eldest son marries; if a woman should have menopause before this, then according to conventional wisdom, she will suffer pain in the lower back, pain in the legs and arms, and heavy, frequent bleeding. However, these women were first bewildered and then amused when I suggested that hot flushes, irritability, and mood swings are also features of this time in a woman’s life. Apparently, they have not heard of such symptoms.
- 15.
Satyabhama, however, says that she has only 2 annas of wellbeing. In Table 6.1, she is the married husband’s mother in household # 4 who gives herself this low score. But knowing the circumstances of her household and realizing that this low score was a way of expressing her anger and dissatisfaction with her son’s wife, I disregarded her score when calculating the average wellbeing score for married husbands’ mothers.
- 16.
A dish made of semolina.
- 17.
“Nirmaliya” is a solution made of water and desiccated “prasad” from the Lingaraj temple.
- 18.
This notion of having a loved one tell the dying person to give up her hold on life, “to go,” is, according to Madan (1987: 125n) a “widely prevalent” one among Hindus.
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Menon, U. (2013). Managing the Household: Achieving Control, Being Productive, Distributing Resources. In: Women, Wellbeing, and the Ethics of Domesticity in an Odia Hindu Temple Town. Springer, India. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-81-322-0885-3_6
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