The Committee and the Cowboy By Elizabeth Tharakan
His voice rose in such a high register that it “‘Die-vorced?’ cracked on the question mark. He even pronounced the
word as though it was a form of death.” In Arundhati Roy’s The God of Small Things, the marriage and quick divorce of Ammu has devastating consequences, reflecting the social and cultural stigma of divorce in India. Indian matchmaking is a different model of entering and exiting a marriage than the American process of courtship. In honor of Valentine’s Day, we will analyze the comparative processes of entry into and negotiation within marriage.
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Marriage involves all sorts of negotiations, from whether to have children, to how much to spend on groceries, to where to live. In arranged marriage, which one could call the “committee” model, groups make decisions on the spouse’s identity and the terms of the marriage, which yields a 5% divorce rate. When the committee negotiates the terms of a marriage before the couple is married, the couple has a framework for what to expect in the marriage and is less likely to exit the marriage upon future conflicts, using the example of negotiation demonstrated by the committee to work through future disagreements. In the
