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12 of 14 people found the following review helpful:
3.0 out of 5 stars
Divakaruni seems all too eager to bash her own culture, September 19, 2003
Marriage is a highly complicated issue, especially in this day and age where the nuclear family is constantly engaged in a tug of war with a culture that is increasingly antagonistic towards anything marked by tradition. With a divorce rate exceeding the 50 percent mark, the issue of what a truly successful marriage entails is something that has become a consummate obsession in our pop culture. With all the successes afforded the west, the one area it has been found wanting, if not dismally failing in is in the area of matrimony. Yet given the pathetic state of marital life in this country, one would assume that Americans would be open to seeing how other systems of matrimony work, particularly from countries where the dissolution of marriage is seldom heard of. Unfortunately, the arrogance of the western mind obviates even this logical assumption. The western mind seems hell bent on marginalizing any notion that was founded earlier than the 20th century or not on western shores. It is unfortunate that the author of "Arranged Marriages", Chitra Banerjee Divakaruni, seems to have also been seduced by this western predilection to vilify anything foreign to western soil. Granted Ms. Divakaruni does enumerate many problems that do indeed plague Indian marriages, and that need to be addressed, such as patriarchic exclusivity, fixation with status, misogyny, and abusiveness. However, it should be noted that western marriages are hardly free from these maladies. With all the emphasis in this country on protracted dating periods, courtship, and "getting to know the person" all these ills, that Ms. Divakaruni takes great pains to illustrate in her short stories, exist in this country as well. However, what Divakaruni does little of is accentuate the many laudable attributes of arranged marriages such as its stability, familial support, elevation of motherhood, its temperance of superficial desires in the mate selection process, and its surprising inclusiveness. She tries hard to give the appearance of being evenhanded in her short stories by sometimes showing the drawbacks of the western system of cohabitation before marriage and misery that so called "love marriages" eventually endure when it is found that it takes much more than sexual attraction that is mistaken for love and a few shallow compatible traits to make a marriage work. Yet these seem to be after thoughts on her part purely contrived to give the outward look of objectivity in her storytelling, when anyone, even those who do not read her stories incisively, can see that her biases lie clearly in opposition to the arranged marriage system as a whole. Far from just confining her critique to the various intricacies of the arranged marriage system, she seeks, in many subtle ways, to debase those mother's and fathers, sons and daughters, and aunts and uncles who abide by such as system. Fathers are either seen as detached or tyrannical. Mothers are seen as meddlesome, materialistic and overbearing. Sons who take on the role of husband are seen as deplorably pathetic; so subservient to the parent's wishes, even when those wishes are misguided, that he seeks to fulfill them at the expense of his wife's happiness. Daughters who become wives in such a system are seen as duplicitous or weak. Aunts and uncles are portrayed as cronies to mothers and fathers, when they are not present, in order sustain this seemingly oppressive system.
"Arranged Marriage" is not merely a scathing evaluation of the arranged marriage system as it exists in India, and among Indian immigrants here, it is a disparagement of Indians period. The word Indian or South Asian (lets include our Bangladesh, Sri Lankan, and Pakistani counterparts as well) almost becomes synonymous with chauvinism, narrow mindedness, frailty, and bigotry. Good examples of this type negativity are seen in short stories such as "The Bats", " The Ultrasound", and the " The Maidservant" (note these may not be the exact titles of the short stories. I do not have the book in front of me and I read it 6 months ago, so I am merely going on my shabby recollection of it). I understand that a fundamental element in all storytelling is that antagonism must exist in order for there to be a story. Yet that negative element in the story must serve as a vehicle to propel the story to illuminate some redemptive purpose. That does not necessitate that the story have a rosy conclusion, as some may conclude, thus limiting the creative range available to the author for plot development. However, to merely have a story commence with negativity, have every element of it entrenched in negativity, and then conclude in negativity makes the art of storytelling a tool to promote cynicism. If I wanted to know that life just plain sucks I don't need stories for that, I can just turn on the news. One positive thing I have to say about Divakaruni's book is that for all its lack of positive characterizations of South Asian culture, she does a good job of showing the diversity within the culture itself, showing all the economic strata that South Asians occupy and how such problems listed above plague all whether they are affluent or destitute. It's that one saving grace that allows me to afford it a three star rating.
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by Chitra Banerjee Divakaruni
by Chitra Banerjee Divakaruni
by Chitra Banerjee Divakaruni
by Chitra Banerjee Divakaruni
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