This book depicts one South Indian village during the fifty-year period when women's education became a possibilityand then a reality. Despite illiteracy, religious ritual marking them as inferior, and pre-pubertal marriages, the daughters and granddaughters of the silent, passive women of the 1960s have morphed into assertive, self-confident millennial women. Helen E. Ullrich considers the following questions: can education alter the perception of women as inferior and forever childlike? What happens when women refuse the mantle of socialized passivity? Throughout The Women of Totagadde , Helen Ullrich pushes us to consider how women's lives and society at large have been altered through education.

Presents the rich and complex realities of the lives of generations of women in a single village Illustrates the ways in which the acceptance of women's education has preserved close familial and kinship ties while allowing a move from a caste to class structure Represents decades of intensive ethnographic fieldwork

Autorentext
Helen E. Ullrich, M.D., Ph.D., has published in anthropological, linguistic, and psychiatric journals. She has been a distinguished Fellow of the American Psychiatric Association since 2000. Currently she is Clinical Assistant Professor of Psychiatry and Behavioral Sciences at Tulane University Medical Center, USA.

Inhalt

1. The Silent Generation: 1964.- 2. Breaking the Silence: 1978.- 3. Discovering a Voice: 1992.- 4. Individual Voices: 1993-2011.- 5. Education: From illiteracy to College and Profession.- 6. Marriage: From woman as Object to Decision-maker.- 7. Ritual Etiquette: From controlling to complementing life.- 8. Widow: From invisible to valued member of society.- 9. Conclusion: Transition in Totagadde from 1964 to 2011.