The Struggles Married Women Face In Society – An Outlook Based On The Film The Great Indian Kitchen

Meenakshi Remesh, Symbiosis Law School, Hyderabad

ABSTRACT

From the time a baby girl is born, society makes it seem like her wedding is the most monumental moment awaited in her life. Her sole purpose is to have a happy married life wherein she is expected to produce children and take care of her husband. Although women and men take part for marriages to occur, the responsibility of the household always lands on the women. The patriarchal society is such that women are expected to be confined to the four walls of their homes where they need to forget their dreams and aspirations in pursuit of becoming the “ideal housewife.”. The Great Indian Kitchen is one such Malayalam film that everybody can relate to, and it brilliantly portrays the struggles a woman faces in her married life. It connects with the audience in such a way that even somebody in favour of patriarchy might find such norms disturbing and wrong. This paper attempts to highlight how society has contrasting standards and norms for women and men while they are married. The main objective of this paper will be to emphasize the need to do away with such norms, customs, and traditions that designate some spaces and roles particularly, for women, and the rest particularly, for men, and really let individuals of both genders have a choice to decide for themselves.

Keywords: Women, Married Life, Sexism, Gender Roles, Patriarchy, Oppression