GENERAL ELECTIVE-ENGLISH ASSIGNMENT

Mira Manchanda-200556

How do the poets deal with the gendered construction of identities in

‘Marriages are Made’ and ‘Highway Stripper’?

We are surrounded by gender lore from the time we are very small. It is ever-present in
conversation, humor, and conflict, and it is called upon to explain everything from driving
styles to food preferences. Gender is embedded so thoroughly in our institutions, our actions,
our beliefs, and our desires, that it appears to us to be completely natural. The world swarms
with constructed ideas about gender – and these ideas are so commonplace that we take it for
granted that they are true, accepting common adage as scientific fact. A very common example
of this today is the allocation of a certain color to a certain gender; pink for females, blue for
males. This idea is propagated by gender reveal parties that use these colors to declare the
gender of the baby. Similarly, the poems ‘Marriages are made’ and ‘Highway stripper’ portray
preconceived notions of behavior, social standing, decision making based on your gender.

The poem ‘Marriages are Made’ by Eunice De Souza elucidates on the same. The poem begins
with her telling the reader that her sister is about to get married. Normally, we as readers
would expect a joyful and emotional account of the important occasion. But it becomes
increasingly clear from the next few lines, especially ‘the formalities have been completed’
that this is more of a transaction than beautiful matrimony. The bride’s family goes through a
rigorous process of selection; there is a checklist of conditions, and they must check every box
to make sure their daughter is eligible and worthy of marriage.
The imposition of these conditions such as the lack of a history of TB in the family, squints,

cavities, and worms, and certain requirements such as the perfect skin color, waist size, and
family wealth reduce Elena, the bride, to a childbearing machine and caretaker of the groom’s
family.
“In order for a woman to get married, she has to go through a series of tests and examinations.
The woman described in the poem is treated as an investment; like a piece of new land. Her
health is checked, and even her father’s financial stability is an important asset in whether or
not the bride is ‘fit’ for her suitor. Also, Elena, the bride is referred to in a manner that
furthermore shows how she is not seen as important.”
It is interesting to note that the conditions of this merger are extremely skewed. The male
isn’t expected to adhere to any conditions, neither is every aspect of him scrutinized. This
shows that we live in a patriarchal society and that women are the ones that have to adapt and
adjust accordingly.

All the verses of the poem ‘Highway Stripper’ except the last two ones, are easy to
comprehend, where Ramanujan speaks about how he was once traveling on the highway
behind a Mustang, when suddenly he saw lots of pieces of female clothing being thrown out of
the window one by one. There is profound stress on the female sexual factor in terms of
imagery, with use of words like slip, bra and panties. He uses terms like a white shoe fit to be a
fetish, a fluttery slip, faded pink, ordinary used and off whitish bra, bright red panties and so.
The use of these suggest that the person wearing these clothes is obviously not very financially
well off and so is wearing old clothes, and that the person has a gaudy dress sense. These two
factors associated with a female make a direct implication as a metaphor for a prostitute or a
stripper. In striking contrast here are terms like dusty, blue, Mustang, speeding that are
implicit symbols of masculinity. These two elements of a woman’s sexuality and a man’s vigor
are juxtaposed to create two very different erotic scenes, which blend in together and are yet in
complete contrast to one another.

Ramanjuan makes us question our conditioning. He wants us to question our perception of

others and that of our own selves. He shows a stark contrast between feminine and masculine
ideas of gender by using various examples like the ‘battered blue mustang’ which is almost
synonymous to masculinity and ‘with a football radio on’ again a symbol of masculinity. He
shows feminine ideas of gender while describing the hooker’s attire. With these conventionally
opposite ideas of gender, the poem proceeds to somehow merge the two ideas with the image
of the man, alone in the car, with no trace of a woman around. We, the readers, are left
perplexed with questions. The Highway Stripper is a perfect example of questioning gendered
constructs; ones that we carry around with ourselves.
https://web.stanford.edu/~eckert/PDF/Chap1.pdf

(WARD'S WORLD WIKI, South Asian Poetry, Eunice De Souza.)

https://ddceutkal.ac.in/Syllabus/MA_English/Paper_20.pdf