THE WEDDING DANCE

A Feminist Critique

“The Wedding Dance” is a narrative which notably presents women as subject to

patriarchy’s oppression. With Awiyao having to be separated from his wife and be married with
another, the story entered an atmosphere of pain and sorrow caused by love which was
immensely expressed by the wife Lumnay in the narrative. She suffered much in the need to be
separated from her husband and the lack of the ability to grant him a child, which was the main
reason for him to be wed with another woman.

The “unwritten law” described in the narrative implemented the need for a man to have a
child to bear a family of his own. More so must he have an heir to inherit his lands and continue
his name and this law is deemed inevitable in the time presented in the text. Such patriarchal law
depicts how our laws are bounded by inequality towards gender. Moreover, it explains how in the
women are oppressed and excluded in the formation of laws in the ages before modernity
allowed the participation of women in civil rights and governance. In the text, the revocation of
marriage is easily applied without the consideration of the wife, as long as she cannot bear a
child with her husband they are to be separated as the man must gain a child at every extent to
solidify a marriage. In this aspect, the inequality of rights disregards the bond of marriage and
hence extracts an idea of patriarchal dominance and female oppression.

The pain and suffering which the woman had to endure in the narrative was offered out of
love yet caused by disparity under an unwritten law. Culture and tradition once did not form
respect towards equal rights between both genders and has it only been so applied when
knowledge preceded the morality of reason in a world of patriarchs and when women started to
act against oppression. Even with the presence of respect inequality can still prevail through less
considerate systems in the society. Social systems create bias between the two genders with its
varied factors pertaining to distinction in levels of capability. Lumnay has depicted the days of a
women born in the past ages, containing of beauty and desirable traits yet lacking of the ability to
fight for ones right.

“She did not have courage to break into the wedding feast.” Even at a time the character
felt courage she did not live by with it. The love she had, she had to sacrifice, the pain she felt,
she endured, as it is by rule that she has no power to go against tradition. Culture and tradition
does not always present prosperity. Within its grasp are faults of inequality, which is why it does
not remain always firm through time and is changed by the tides of modernity. A woman can
love without being oppressed and a man can give love without measure and without the need to
heed an unequal patriarchal norm.