From the Margins of Hindu Marriage Essays on Gender, Religion, and Culture [Paperback]

Providing a unique and intimate view of Hindu marriage, the essays in this collection explore points at which the margins of marriage are traversed or transgressed. Rather than focus on normative expectations within marriage, they examine times in which norms are tested or rejected. Using stories, songs, and narrated accounts, the essays treat such topics as widowhood, adultery, levirate, divorce, and suttee, as well as the subversion of marriage by devotion to deities and by alternative constructions of conjugal duty and marital experience.

A carefully selected collection of articles that challenges oversimplified accounts of the roles of Hindu women that are drawn from traditional texts alone, introducing us instead, to the lived experiences of real women whose mechanisms for coping are as complex as Indian society itself. --Judith G. Martin,University of Dayton

This is a rich volume.... Each essay is solid and very readable. --The Journal of Asian Studies

Paul B. Courtrightis Professor of Religion at Emory University.
Lindsey Harlanis Professor of Religion at Connecticut College.