Wives and whores: Prospects for a feminist theory of redistribution

Abstract

During the last thirty-three years of my married life, bereft of any recognition from the biological father and from the father-in-law, I could not understand throughout the whole of my life where do I belong, where is my home. Till date, I cry pretending that the tears were caused by smoke. Now if our Mayor considers the case of innumerable housewives like me, by conferring upon us the status of ‘worker’, then we shall be highly obliged. I am a housewife. I have pleased/entertained all the members and relatives of my in-laws, through domestic labour, for the last thirty-three years. I have tried to raise my children as good citizens. That apart, I had to do bonecrushing work day in and day out, while trying to divine the psychological conditions and needs of almost everyone. Even then there were no escape from numerous humiliations and insults. Parents told me that after marriage the house of the in-laws became my own home. Yet my husband-deity tells me on any slim pretext, ‘I shall throw you out of the house’ (Do mothers sometimes resort to female feticide because they swallow so much insult?) When the body revolts after the toils of a long working day from dawn to night, one has to endure the caresses of the husband, like a corpse enduring the beaks and claws of a swooping vulture.