Description: In Perpetual Mourning, Martha Alter Chen examines both the ideals and the reality of widowhood in rural India, particularly in Hindu communities. She argues that the ideology of widowhood in India is part of a larger ideology of gender that is designed to control women through the institutions of marriage, kinship, and caste in such a way that they uphold, rather than threaten, the social order. Without the restraining influence of a husband, widows represent the greatest threat to the social order, and therefore need to be controlled most rigidly.

Chen first describes how widowhood is constructed, idealized, and represented in orthodox Hindu tradition, devoting individual chapters to the three classic options for Hindu widows -- suttee, or ritual immolation; chaste, ascetic life alone; and remarriage. The author focuses on the ideology underlying these three options as well as the actual practice during several broad historical eras, including the classical age of Hindu texts, the British colonial period, and India immediately following independence. An in-depth exploration of the lives of widows in contemporary rural India follows, informed by personal interviews.

Drawing from theory and methodology of anthropology, economics, and sociology, Perpetual Mourning offers new insights into the ways kinship, marriage, and caste interact to structure the lives of widows, and in the process, illuminates our understanding of the construction of gender in India.

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