The Labour of Marriage: Care, Gender and Refusal in Jeo Baby’s The Great Indian Kitchen and Han Kang’s The Vegetarian Across Kerala and South Korea

Abstract

There are many social institutions that regulate labour. Of the various kinds of labour, ‘care labour’ is regulated especially by the institution of marriage. This makes it particularly gendered, with its effects tipping unfavourably against women. Many cultural texts have engaged with this aspect of marriage and offered searing critiques of the inherently unequal and oppressive nature of the institution. This article examines two diverse texts from very different cultures, the Malayalam-language film The Great Indian Kitchen by Jeo Baby and the Nobel Prize winner Han Kang’s celebrated South Korean novel, The Vegetarian. These texts are read as instances of the rage and despair that women from both places feel with regard to the ways in which the institution of marriage regulates care labour and the consequent erasure of women’s work, aspirations, sexuality and autonomy. This article reads the two texts in the context of women's articulation of resentment toward heterosexual institutions such as marriage in South Korea, as expressed through radical movements such as the 4B movement, and a nascent trend in Kerala, where young women are increasingly resisting or deferring marriage. In both texts, women's autonomy and agency are subjected to various forms of control and suppression, prompting responses that range from anger and defiance to what is perceived as 'madness'. The article situates these representations within the broader context of demographic shifts in both societies, where women are choosing to marry later or not marry at all, thereby influencing fertility rates and reshaping traditional social structures. This article focuses on the anxieties generated by, and the questioning of, the uncomplaining and incessant care labour expected within marriage.