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Funeral Rites Of Widows Essay

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“Funeral Rites”: A Study of Widow as Subaltern
Preeti Sharma
Dept. of English, University of Jammu preetisharmaju@gmail.com Abstract:Widows are more than victims and have pronoun problems. Widows are among the poorest and the most vulnerable segment of the society as their status in the society, family and community at large is that of destitution, marginalisation and oppression. The term ‘subaltern’ means someone who is low in rank in a social, political or other hierarchy. The term is associated with the ostracised section of the society particularly used for the weaker section of the society i.e. women. The position of female as subaltern is miserable. Patriarchy is the prime obstacle to women’s advancement and development. Among women, widows are the doubly oppressed as they become the prey of patriarchy as well as of religion. Widows are forced to live in a socially ostracized, economically dependent life. The paper attempts to discuss the position of widows as subaltern in the society.
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None of the relatives will touch her to take her ornament off her body. That task is assigned to three women from the barber caste. Their number varies from three to six. No sooner does the husband breathe his last than those female fiends literally jump all over her and violently tear all the ornaments from her nose, ears, etc. In that rush, the delicate bones of the nose and ears are sometimes broken. Sometimes, while plucking the ornaments from her hair, tufts of hair also plucked off. If she is wearing any gold or silver ornaments, these cruel women never have the patience to take them off one by one: they pin her hands down on the ground and try to break the bangles with a large stone. Why this callous women torture even a six-or seven-year-old girl, who doesn’t even know what a husband means when she becomes a widow.

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