The Gift of a Virgin: Women, Marriage and Ritual in a Bengali Society (Oxford India Paperbacks)

Fruzzetti, Lina

ISBN 10: 0195632443 / ISBN 13: 9780195632446

Published by OUP India, 1993

About this Item

Most items will be dispatched the same or the next working day. A copy that has been read but remains in clean condition. All of the pages are intact and the cover is intact and the spine may show signs of wear. The book may have minor markings which are not specifically mentioned.

Seller Inventory # rev1964246933

Bibliographic Details

• Title: The Gift of a Virgin: Women, Marriage and Ritual in a Bengali Society (Oxford India Paperbacks)
• Publisher: OUP India
• Publication Date: 1993
• Language: English
• ISBN 10: 0195632443
• ISBN 13: 9780195632446
• Binding: Soft cover
• Edition: 2nd Edition
• Condition: Good
• Weight: 249.5 grams

About this title

Synopsis

This intimate study vividly portrays the activities and rituals of life in Vishnupur, a large town in West Bengal. Fruzzetti shows how rituals are crucial to a better understanding of women's daily lives, and to Indian society as a whole. She explores the public lives of these Bengali women, as well as their private lives. The work demonstrates how rituals define their private world--customs, habits, and actions restricted to the conduct by women as opposed to the public rituals and festivals over which men preside. Though their two worlds are separate, Bengali women are neither isolated from or inferior to men. In this second impression, Fruzzetti has added a new introduction in which she questions how has a social system that traditionally held women in such high esteem allow such aberrations as bride burning, exorbitant dowry demands, and other forms of harassment, and the reactions of the women's movements in India.