Tharindi Udalagama, Women’s Lives after Marriage in Rural Sri Lanka : An Ethnographic Account of the "Beautiful Mistake"

In this rich ethnography about family dynamics in Sri Lanka's dry zone, Tharindi Udalagama explores concepts of marital happiness and the ways women seek to achieve a "good enough" life within the constraints of their patriarchal rural village (5).The work reveals women's views on respectability, sexuality, marriage, domestic violence, householding, and motherhood.Udalagama's deep familiarity with Sri Lanka and her native fluency in Sinhala allow her to convey the voices of her interlocutors strongly and clearly.The book draws on fieldwork done in 2015-2016 for Udalagama's PhD dissertation.The researcher insightfully discusses her positionality as a "daughter of the village" (28) of Divulvaeva-her propriety-imposed behavioral expectations restricted her range of interactions in ethnographically complex ways.Divulvaeva village is located in the Mahaweli area, a large-scale irrigation development in the North Central Province.In chapter 1, Udalagama introduces traditional arranged marriages, authoritychallenging elopements, and a middle ground of companionate marriages in which sweethearts marry with the approval of both sets of parents.Women call elopements mistakes, but beautiful ones because they lead to having husbands, children, and houses.Extramarital affairs, domestic violence, abuse, and separations cause ruptures and discontinuities in marriages.Kinship forms the basis of community.The author presents the concept of baendima (18)-connections or bonds between people that spread out from the marriage relationship to encompass larger networks and organizations.Chapter 2 investigates local ideas of a righteous society and precolonial and colonial patterns of farmer interactions with land and water.Udalagama also discusses the strong military presence during Sri Lanka's twenty-six-year-long civil war and the area's rapid, politically motivated development after the war.Within the village, complex relationships govern the selling, buying, and leasing of land.In chapter 3, Udalagama explores Divulvaeva women's ideas about sexuality.The women of Divulvaeva feel that women's sexuality should be passive, and post-menopausal wives should be celibate.In contrast, interlocutors consider male sexuality a strong force; women should not say "no" to their husbands, especially if they want them to stay faithful.Married women consider sex as a wifely duty akin to cooking and taking care of the sick.Udalagama suggests that women form their expectations of love and romance as they watch teledramas, discuss the plots widely with their friends, and look for lovers