|
|
Male servants and the failure of patriarchy in Kolkata (Calcutta)
| This paper considers questions of patriarchy, masculinity, and male servants in Kolkata’s (Calcutta’s) evolving culture of servitude. Through the narratives of both men and women servants, we analyze what can be termed the “failure of patriarchy” viewed through the framework of patriarchal ideologies and hierarchies as enacted in both employer and servant households. When women servants narrate their lives, it is inevitably the failure of patriarchs – fathers, husbands, and brothers – to perform their prescribed familial and social functions and duties that has led to their unfortunate circumstances. Thus women servants end up taking on “patriarchal” responsibilities of supporting their households. When they envision what they would wish for their children, especially daughters, it is almost always a functioning, idealized patriarchal family where good husbands cherish and provide for their wives and children. Simultaneously, and no less strikingly, men servants express with resignation their own as well as their fathers’, and often their sons’, inability to properly make a living – be it from the land in the natal village, or in Kolkata’s (Calcutta’s) offices and factories. Indeed, male servants think of themselves as failed patriarchs, dependent on stigmatized work to make a living, and feel doubly diminished. Above all, they bitterly regret that their wives must work, and fear that their children will follow in their footsteps and become servants in turn. Finally, we examine how some male servants have reconfigured the patriarchy of servants through a reevaluation of the terms of work, status, and dependency.
|
|
