by Michele Stopera Freyhauf
originally published on the Feminism and Religion Project
Well-Behaved Women Seldom Make History is a book authored by Laurel Thatcher Ulrich. This has become a... more
Well-Behaved Women Seldom Make History is a book authored by Laurel Thatcher Ulrich. This has become a well-known phrase used by most feminists to imply a meaning of disobedience or stance against the patriarchal structure of society. Often in error, the credit of the invention of this phrase is attributed Eleanor Roosevelt and Marilyn Monroe. Their image, and especially the image of Monroe, will often appear with the slogan on merchandise as a means of marketing and raising revenue. Ironically, reinvention or reuse is prevalent in history when it comes to tradition or ritual for the same reason – monetary gain. This practice is common and the benefit of reinventing or reinterpreting an old tradition is an automatic connection to the past giving continuity, which, according to Eric Hobsbaum, instills strong “binding social practice,” (p. 10) including loyalty and duty in the members of the group. This is especially effective in manipulating the poor and uneducated who usually display strict obedience and blind acceptance of tradition. The Bengali reinvented tradition of satî is an example of this.
Gayatri Chakravorty Spivak looks at the ritual of satî in her essay “Can the Subaltern Speak?” Examining the historiography of this tradition through post-colonial deconstruction, Spivak reveals that the ritual of satî in Bengali tradition as an invented tradition rooted in hegemony. Externally, this tradition is a façade, presented to the outside world as an ancient tradition of ritual p
urity and means of cultural preservation. Internally, it is anything but pure; it is a means of power and control over the subaltern widow, which through self-immolation on her husband’s funeral pyre, results in the forfeiture of inherited property she is entitled to upon her husband’s death.
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