“Consent Beyond the Groom: Negotiating Female Agency and the Institution of Marriage in Indian Literature and Culture”

Niharika N

“Consent Beyond the Groom: Negotiating Female Agency and the Institution of Marriage in Indian Literature and Culture”

Author(s)	Ms. Niharika N
Country	India
Abstract	This paper, titled “Consent Beyond the Groom: Negotiating Female Agency and the Institution of Marriage in Indian Literature and Culture,” explores a significant yet often overlooked dimension of marital consent in the Indian context: the difference between agreeing to a prospective groom and choosing marriage as an institution. In many families, a daughter may be consulted about whether she accepts a particular man, while the larger question of whether she wishes to marry at all, or whether she is ready to enter marriage at that point in her life, may remain unaddressed. The social perception that a woman should marry once she reaches a certain age further reinforces the idea of marriage as an expected stage of womanhood rather than an individual decision. Through selected Indian literary narratives, this paper examines how such expectations shape women’s choices, silence, identities, and negotiations with familial authority. The study is informed by feminist perspectives, particularly Simone de Beauvoir’s observation that “One is not born, but rather becomes, a woman,” which highlights the social processes through which gendered roles are constructed. It also engages with Deniz Kandiyoti’s concept of the “patriarchal bargain” to understand how women negotiate their agency within established structures of family and patriarchy. Further, the feminist understanding of marriage as a social institution rather than merely a private relationship provides a framework for questioning the assumption that a woman’s acceptance of a prospective husband automatically constitutes consent to marriage. By placing literary representations of women alongside the cultural expectations surrounding marriage in India, the paper argues that genuine consent must encompass more than the selection of a partner. It must include the freedom to decide whether to marry, when to marry, and whether marriage corresponds with an individual woman’s aspirations and sense of self. The paper therefore seeks to reposition female marital consent as an essential component of agency and to examine how Indian literature gives voice to, challenges, or complicates this negotiation between individual choice and social expectation.
Keywords	Female Agency; Marital Consent; Indian Literature; Patriarchy; Women’s Autonomy; Feminist Literary Studies; Familial Expectations; Gender and Culture.
Published In	Volume 8, Issue 5, September-October 2026
Published On	2026-09-16

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“Consent Beyond the Groom: Negotiating Female Agency and the Institution of Marriage in Indian Literature and Culture”

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