Dowry Quotes

“If you think that educating your girl is enough for her to tackle the boundaries of tradition, then you are wrong. You have to ensure that not only you empower her with education, but also make her strong enough to resist the evils of societal pressure under which she often buckles. Her life and honour are far more important than "What will people say?" A little emotional support from the parents can make the life of a daughter abused by her in-laws beautiful.”
― Neelam Saxena Chandra

“Well, wife,' he says to me, a chill in his voice. 'It seems you have kept at least one secret from your dowry.”
― Holly Black, The Wicked King

“The purpose behind your aggravating persistence eludes me, sirrah. What is it exactly that you wish to know? Lord Lucien is a fine, noble gentleman – ”

“Who loves you to the point of distraction and cannot bear to think of a prolonged separation.”

“A noble gentleman,” she reiterated furiously, “who – ”

“Who wants something you have, and is willing to sacrifice his much prized freedom to get it.”

She flushed hotly. “There may have been some consideration given to the dowry, but – ”

“My lady,” the rogue laughed outright. “You are far too modest. With what you bring into the marriage you will turn Lincoln into his small, private domain. A kingdom, if you will, with a dragon on the throne and a nest of serpents writhing at his feet, eager to do his bidding.”
― Marsha Canham, Through a Dark Mist

“The tears gathered and stood without overflowing the red sockets.

Ah! if I were rich still, if I had kept my money, if I had not given all to them, they would be with me now; they would fawn on me and cover my cheeks with their kisses! I should be living in a great mansion; I should have grand apartments and servants and a fire in my room; and they would be about me all in tears, and their husbands and their children. I should have had all that; now--I have nothing. Money brings everything to you; even your daughters. My money. Oh! where is my money? If I had plenty of money to leave behind me, they would nurse me and tend me; I should hear their voices, I should see their faces. Ah, God! who knows? They both of them have hearts of stone. I loved them too much; it was not likely that they should love me. A father ought always to be rich; he ought to keep his children well in hand, like unruly horses. I have gone down on my knees to them. Wretches! this is the crowning act that brings the last ten years to a proper close. If you but knew how much they made of me just after they were married. (Oh! this is cruel torture!) I had just given them each eight hundred thousand francs; they were bound to be civil to me after that, and their husbands too were civil. I used to go to their houses: it was 'My kind father' here, 'My dear father' there. There was always a place for me at their tables. I used to dine with their husbands now and then, and they were very respectful to me. I was still worth something, they thought. How should they know? I had not said anything about my affairs. It is worth while to be civil to a man who has given his daughters eight hundred thousand francs apiece; and they showed me every attention then--but it was all for my money. Grand people are not great. I found that out by experience! I went to the theatre with them in their carriage; I might stay as long as I cared to stay at their evening parties. In fact, they acknowledged me their father; publicly they owned that they were my daughters. But I was always a shrewd one, you see, and nothing was lost upon me. Everything went straight to the mark and pierced my heart. I saw quite well that it was all sham and pretence, but there is no help for such things as these. I felt less at my ease at their dinner-table than I did downstairs here. I had nothing to say for myself. So these grand folks would ask in my son-in-law's ear, 'Who may that gentleman be?'-- 'The father-in-law with the money bags; he is very rich.'--'The devil, he is!' they would say, and look again at me with the respect due to my money. Well, if I was in the way sometimes, I paid dearly for my mistakes. And besides, who is perfect? (My head is one sore!) Dear Monsieur Eugene, I am suffering so now, that a man might die of the pain; but it is nothing to be compared with the pain I endured when Anastasie made me feel, for the first time, that I had said something stupid. She looked at me, and that glance of hers opened all my veins. I used to want to know everything, to be learned; and one thing I did learn thoroughly --I knew that I was not wanted here on earth.”
― Honoré de Balzac, Père Goriot

“We wait too long for dowries, for the sweat of strangers, to remember our own perfume.”
― K. Eltinaé, The Moral Judgement of Butterflies

“Avant-guerre, elle les avait démasqués de loin, les petits ambitieux qui la trouvaient banale vue de face, mais très jolie vue de dot. Elle avait une manière aussi efficace que discrète de les éconduire.”
― Pierre Lemaitre

“Alimony is a dowry for men!”
― Nitya Prakash

“People accept the dowry system, by aborting a female child and by rising a male child”
― Sir P.S. Jagadeesh Kumar

“An impotent beggar believes in begging for money and a potent beggar believes in begging for dowry”
― Sir P.S. Jagadeesh Kumar

“Dowry is lifetime gang rape against women and dowry is lifetime prostitution against men”
― Sir P.S. Jagadeesh Kumar

“Start marrying a woman for love and stop divorcing a woman for money”
― Sir P.S. Jagadeesh Kumar

“People are very good mathematicians in adding the nonliving love and dividing the living love”
― Sir P.S. Jagadeesh Kumar

“In fact, in the Bible, the dowry price was used as a sign to show a spouse’s dedication to his wife, not the devaluation of his wife. For example, Jacob paid a dowry price by working for Laban in order to marry Rachel, but he did not do this with any thoughts of exercising property rights over his wife; he was incentivised by his love, as seen in Genesis 29:18: “Jacob was in love with Rachel and said, ‘I’ll work for you seven years in return for your younger daughter.”
― Lucy Carter, Feminism and Biblical Hermeneutics

“In the commercialized world, marriage is monetized, the marital relationship is commoditized, and the abominable practice of dowry is institutionalized.”
― Shalu Nigam

“Fanon examined how colonialism is internalized by the colonized and inculcates an inferiority complex through the mechanism of racism. In the same way, the tyrannical mechanism of patriarchy oppresses women not only physically or mentally but also colonizes their minds and shatters their souls through constant emotional, economic, and mental violence. This internalization of inferiority by women themselves in a male-dominated society forcibly compels them to stay in a repressive and a violent marriage. In such precarious situations, with no available critical internal or external support from the wider family network or the state, and no hope left, a woman’s self-esteem collapses, and her humanness is crushed to the extent that she ceases to be a self-motivated person. The calculative presumptions of patriarchy control and overwhelmingly dominate and subjugate women while normalizing and trivializing their brutal torture and murder in the garb of transferring wealth to the daughters in connection with marriage.”
― Shalu Nigam

“The discriminatory practice of coercive dowry demands and dowry violence not only persists with impunity despite legal reforms, but it is belligerently expanding in terms of magnitude, the severity of violence, and outreach.”
― Shalu Nigam

“The culture of senseless violence with impunity is growing because, ironically, though the practice of dowry is illegal on paper, socially and culturally, it is accepted, endorsed, and celebrated with zeal. The religion promotes the evil practice of dowry. The patriarchal culture encourages it, and the market benefits from it. The lives of young women are simply of no significant value. Women are considered as `perishable’, and `disposable’ commodities without dignity or agency by the state, the market, and their families.”
― Shalu Nigam

“Butler described some lives as `ungrievable’ which cannot be mourned for because they never lived and remained uncounted. Perhaps, women who are dying due to dowry violence in homes are such ungrievable, uncounted lives – the lives that no one wants to protect, no one wants to mourn, and no one wants to remember.”
― Shalu Nigam

“Centuries ago, when Karl Marx wrote exhaustively about the callous exploitation of workers by the capitalist class, he may not have imagined how in South Asia, women as brides would be treated as commodities, pitilessly exploited, and violently murdered in their own homes by their abusive husbands for extorting wealth. As the ruthless oppression of the toiling masses could not be prevented by laws or policies, the merciless torture and murder of women could not be regulated despite establishing a legal mechanism in place. Over the decades, predatory capitalism has irrevocably acquired an altered form, and the free-market approach has devised a new mechanism of manipulation. Similarly, the viciousness of the neoliberal forces, clubbed with patriarchy, feudalism, conservatism, rampant materialism, and excessive consumption propelled by extensive consumerism, is aggravating the desire among men and their families to accumulate quick wealth using marriage as a tool to extract resources from women and their families. The bourgeoisie-proletariat categorization, in the situation of dowry practice, is expanded to include the classification of savagely privileged men versus women – rich or poor, and in urban or rural areas. Women from all backgrounds dreadfully suffer for the material gains of men and their families in a harsh and hostile environment fuelled by the neoliberal, Brahmanical capitalist patriarchy.”
― Shalu Nigam

“When Gary Becker, an American economist, in his celebrated `Treatise of Family’ imagined a household as a primary site of production of goods and sustenance in the form of child care, meals, and shelter, besides a range of commodities such as health, happiness, self-esteem, security, sexual pleasure, and so on, he disregarded the fact that a family is also a site of reproducing inequalities and sustaining patriarchal values. Becker proposed the theory of a rational `economic man’ who makes choices based on his self-interest, but he has not contemplated the dire situations of exploitation, blackmail, and extortion within marriages in South Asian patriarchal, hierarchical societies where self-interest would turn into insatiable greediness to create an antagonistic situation where an `economic man’, driven by irrational voracity, ends up torturing and murdering `his wife’, and destroying his own family when his arbitrary demands remain unfulfilled”
― Shalu Nigam

“The world over, children are being nurtured and raised with dreams and aspirations to secure gold medals and accolades in every field, be it sports, studies, arts, creativity, innovations, ideas, and thinking, most parents in India began saving for their daughter’s marriage since the birth of the girl child. Marriage, is perhaps, seen as the ultimate destiny for a woman and is prioritized over her career, her abilities, her aspirations, and her dreams. Collecting and preserving gold, or expensive items for the dowry is preferred over investing the money in education, a career, or making her self-dependent.”
― Shalu Nigam

“What is negated is the rhetoric regarding obsession for gold as the dowry is that the parents have a choice to express their care and love for their daughter in a different form where they invest the resources in her education and training to help her acquire skills, nurture her talents, develop her aptitude, build her capacities, and make her independent from the very beginning of her life, so that in case of any emergency, she may face challenges to survive and flourish in any circumstances. Preparing her to get gold medals and accolades in any skill, may be prioritized rather than giving gold at the time of marriage.”
― Shalu Nigam

“When Karl Marx elaborated upon the savage exploitation of workers by the capitalists, he described that due to extensive mechanization and division of labour, the work of the proletarians lost its exclusive character and became dull and monotonous increasing the repulsiveness of work while decreasing the wages. However, in the case of dowry extortion, the women are oppressed in multiple ways. The authoritative Brahminic ideology that propagates the dowry, forcibly extorts wealth from a woman and her family, mercilessly exploits her labour, and simultaneously deprives of her any wages or any monetary compensation for her extensive contribution behind the veil of labour of love and the rhetoric of sacrifices for the sake of family.”
― Shalu Nigam

“The discourse around the practice of dowry intertwined the individual rights of women within the paradox of patrilocality, a woman’s traditional position and role with her natal and matrimonial family, and the privileged position of men within the institution of marriage. Women are being considered as the `valiant keepers of the tradition’ of marriage, how violent it is, rather than as humans or citizens endowed with political rights. The discourse also ignored the tensions between women as individuals, as citizens, and women as daughters, wives, and daughters-in-law. Upholding patriarchy and not women’s emancipation remains the goal of such socio-legal debate.”
― Shalu Nigam