Isolated Voices in Jhumpa Lahiri’s Interpreter of Maladies

People living all over the world belong to different religions, follow different cultures and speak different languages. If people of one nation go to another nation for their livelihood or education, they have to adapt themselves to the changing situations and places lest they should experience untold sufferings. Life throws all a lot of challenges, both simple and complicated, and it is up to all to rise and perform, take decisions that can be sometimes satisfying, and sometimes disturbing, and walk through it as if none were affected by it. It is not an easy thing to do. It is never easy to answer his heart as the questions surface and resurfaces time and again. Life is not a bed of roses to live easily. Lahiri is an Indian by birth but she has America as her permanent dwelling place. Hence, she has faced a lot of problems as an immigrant which she tries to show in her work. Hers are perfectly placed words lining themselves into elegant sentences whose subject matter: family, mothers and daughters, assimilation, alcoholism, children, marital love and touch us all.

Amor coniugalis e matrimonio canonico

The innovation introduced by Vatican Council II about the research on marriage led great changes in the 1983 edition of the Canon Law of the Catholic Church. The former 1917 Canon Law the purpose and the essence of marriage lacked well-defined boundaries; indeed, the two concepts were often confused. Marriage was only viewed as a contract with a purpose. The personalistic vision developed by the Vatican Council introduced a new conception of the essence of marriage. Marital love became the centre of married life while the path of the spouses in married life is seen as a spiritual and factual growth in love. In full compliance with the conciliar teaching, the post synodal Apostolic Exhortation Amoris Laetitia of Pope Francis confers to “elementum amoris” a historical connotation, a present and a future in the growth of family and matrimonial life. Marriage becomes fulfilment of God’s plan for man.

Marital Partners' Traits, Psychological Processes in Marriage, and Marriage Characteristics as Predictors of Love in Marriage

This study was conducted to determine the predictors of marital love. Sternberg's Triangular Theory of Love (1986) is used as a starting point. Accordingly, a theoretical model that consists of four groups of level 1 predictor variables and a group of level 2 variables is used. The dependent variables in the model include the three dimensions of love: Passion, Intimacy, and Commitment. The research was conducted among 884 married couples from different parts of Croatia. The results show that married women are less passionate and that marriage partners' passion in marriage is greater at the beginning of the marriage without children and when there is a mutual physical attraction between partners. Married women report less intimacy while greater marital intimacy was present in marriages where there is greater partner support. Unlike passion, the experience of intimacy does not vary at different marital stages. Women show less commitment and partners' commitment to marriage is greater when there is greater emotional stability of both partners, greater mutual physical attraction, and partner support. At the end of the paper, limitations on making firmer conclusions based only on the present study are emphasized.

Marriage and Reproductive Choice

This chapter discusses marriage and reproductive choice issues. The chapter argues that feminists have seen marriage and reproduction as playing a crucial role in women's oppression and thus a central topic of justice. The chapter starts by defining and setting out the historical development of the philosophy of marriage, which shapes today's debates. The chapter argues that many of the ethical positions on marriage can be understood as divided on the question of whether marriage should be defined contractually by the spouses or by its institutional purpose. The debate further divides on whether that purpose necessarily includes procreation or may be limited to the marital love relationship. The chapter closes by discussing reproduction choice, specifically abortion and commercial surrogacy.

Evolution of Catholic Marriage Morality in the Twentieth Century from a Baby-Making Contract to a Love-Making Covenant Part I: Code of Cannon Law to Vatican II

Sexual ethics in the West has been evolving, in practice and in theory, over the last century. The official Catholic Church teaching was challenged by many Christian churches and by the changing culture of the West. The Vatican insisted that no change could be made in its timeless truths. Nevertheless, each challenge required ever more sophisticated and convoluted arguments. The impetus for change came through the Western shift from seeing sexual activity as a procreative act toward viewing it as a way for husbands and wives (and gradually also any consenting adult) to express and deepen love. The Second Vatican Council accepted this new view, but subsequently the official teaching became more strict, insisting that both procreation and marital love-making must be present. The teaching of Pope Paul VI prohibiting contraception was the proverbial straw that broke the camel’s back for many Catholics. They abandoned the official teaching, recognizing that it was the new personalist view itself that complicated the meaning of marriage. Subsequently, the Canon Law tried reestablish the validity of loveless sex in marriage–the dominant view through the centuries. That move was rejected.

The Lives of Women in Plutarch’s Lives

Plutarch’s works often serve as a starting point for feminist criticism – the writer is called both a feminist who surpassed his times and a spokesperson for the traditional patriarchal society who sees women as passive and inferior to men. Others are certain that Plutarch hates women and atributes all possible character flaws to them. According to some, Plutarch despises educated women, yet others, contrarily, state that he enjoyed the company of educated women no less than that of educated men. Such a vast range of different expert opinions may be due to Plutarch’s vast literary legacy as well as the peculiarity of his way of thinking and his “generic sensibility”: the tendency to change his approach in consideration of different generic demands. Nevertheless, it is impossible to disagree that Plutarch did write the lives of men, and not of women. However, in the remaining Lives of famous Greeks and Romans, we meet plenty of women whose acts and moral principles may serve as examples not only for women, but also for men. The aim of this article is to demonstrate that Plutarch, despite of sometimes relying on stereotypes, regards women according to the same ethical principles as he applies to men. Plutarch depicts women not as passive and submissive, but as autonomous and mature characters who are active not only in their private world, but in the political world too. They overstep the traditional social boundaries of the stereotype “feminine matrix.” He accentuates two of women’s social roles that, according to his judgement, are of the greatest importance: motherhood and partnership. In Plutarch’s narrative, women are associated with love – the selfless motherly love, or marital love based on the community of thoughts and feelings. Plutarch draws attention not to the physical beauty of women, which is traditionally related to feminine sexuality in masculine psychology, but to the integrity of their characters. Love between a husband and wife, based not only on eros, but on devotion and friendship, is the primary representation of erotic love in his Lives.

Encyclical Letter Humanae Vitae in the Course of Time

The content of Humanae Vitae (1968) caused an ongoing debate all over the world. It has also stirred up factual crisis of moral theology. The crisis has caused subjectivity of morality and this has caused further crisis. The most serious feature of the crisis seems to be an effort to accept moral pluralism inside the Catholic Church. The renewal of moral theology the Second Vatican Council talked about has been left blocked. A couple of years after the Second Vatican Council, but before publishing Humanae Vitae, warning of St. Paul VI calls for continuity with moral tradition as a criterion for the autonomy of Catholic moral theology. In spite of much opposition of some bishops, theologians, and laypeople, the teaching of the encyclical letter has priceless value. The truth about marital love and value of life is in its center. It is proclaimed in an overview of the teaching of the Catholic Church from Humanae Vitae to Evangelium Vitae. In its nature, family is invited to fullness of love and, at the same time, it is the heart of civilization of love. Unfortunately, current family has found itself between the two civilizations—civilization of love on the one hand and civilization of death and uncontrolled pleasure on the other. The teaching of the encyclical Humanae Vitae is a constant guide when protecting true marital love and family in the course of time.

Personal Narratives

By choosing two dissimilar genres in the form of Kailashbashini Debi’s diary Janaika Grihabadhur Diary and Saradasundari Debi’s dictated autobiography Atmakatha, the chapter shows how the unmediated (diary) and the highly mediated (autobiography) are still ‘relational’ outputs. These fulsomely reveal fragmented subjectivities, dismembered recollections, slippages, and gaps that are as much a product of their interactions with ‘men’ as they are of their own creation. While Saradasundari surpassed the ideological constriction of Hindu wifehood and sculpted a defiant identity only after the death of her husband, Kailashbashini invented herself through marital love and the ensuing freedom, position, and authority that empowered her to speak. Embedded in the history of nineteenth-century Bengal, these personal narratives are candid enough to critically appraise the times, critique social relations, assess the efficacy of social reforms, and appeal for sociocultural changes. Though their life witnessed ‘big events’ and ‘illustrious men’, these are made insignificant in both personal narratives. The chapter provides vignettes of women’s experiences—negotiations, resistances, rebellions—and a range of emotions—resentment, anger, joy, sadness, rage, melancholy and resignation—which weave a masterpiece of history of emotions in colonial India.