29th January 2026
Medium Link: https://medium.com/@sushynik/manners-customs-and-the-belt-7a11b0f9f934
Course Relevance
This caselet is designed for the following of BBA/ BCOM/BCA:
Literature and Cultural Studies
Examines narratives of domestic trauma, gendered silence, and patriarchal inheritance across cultures and texts.
● Gender Studies / Women’s Studies
Analyzes how violence against women is normalized, spiritualized, and transmitted across generations.
● Psychology and Trauma Studies
Explores intergenerational trauma, learned behavior, emotional suppression, and identity erosion.
● Sociology and Family Studies
Investigates how family structures, customs, and social conditioning sustain abusive power dynamics.
● Film Studies and Comparative Storytelling
Compares cinematic representation with literary texts to understand toxic love and domination.
Academic Concepts
This caselet draws on established theories in gender studies, trauma theory, and cultural criticism:
● Intergenerational Trauma (Danieli, 1998)
Violence witnessed in childhood becomes normalized behavior in adulthood.
● Patriarchal Conditioning (Sylvia Walby, 1990)
Male dominance is institutionalized through family, culture, and tradition.
● Trauma and Silence (Caruth, 1996)
Silence functions not as healing, but as repression that perpetuates harm.
● Toxic Masculinity (Connell, 1995)
Aggression, control, and emotional illiteracy are framed as masculine virtues.
● Gendered Moralization of Suffering
Female endurance is elevated as virtue, while male dominance is excused as authority.
Background
Once upon a time, four sons grew up in the same house, watching the same mother endure the same violence.
They witnessed her being beaten, silenced, and emotionally erased by their father.
Yet, they did not grow into the same men.
Two sons interpreted their mother’s suffering as a warning. They rejected fear as a form of love and chose empathy over entitlement. For them, masculinity meant restraint, care, and emotional responsibility. They understood that love does not require terror to survive.
The other two sons absorbed a different lesson. They idolized their father’s dominance and romanticized their mother’s silence as virtue. To them, a “good woman” was quiet, invisible, and endlessly enduring. They grew up expecting submission without offering partnership—neither emotional support, financial responsibility, nor shared domestic labor.
This divergence becomes the foundation of the caselet.
Situation
This inherited mindset of dominance and glorified female suffering is powerfully reflected in the Telugu film The Girlfriend.
In a pivotal scene, the heroine visits the hero’s house and encounters his mother—a woman who behaves like a ghost in her own home. She neither raises her head nor speaks. Confused, the heroine asks if the woman is mute.
The hero’s response reveals the normalization of domestic violence:
He explains that his mother’s silence is “manners” and “custom.
She belongs in the kitchen and avoids eye contact.
When his father is in a bad mood, she disappears—otherwise “only the belt would speak.”
The hero then delivers a chilling line:
“Women of that generation were entirely different. We can build temples for them.”
Violence is reframed as virtue. Silence is sanctified.
Key Interventions
The Glorification of Silence
By elevating a victim of domestic violence to divine status, society effectively silences her. A “goddess” cannot complain. A “virtuous woman” cannot demand dignity.
The “temple” the hero speaks of is not reverence—it is a mausoleum for his mother’s erased identity.
The Girlfriend as the Next Inheritance
Throughout the film, the hero repeatedly tells the heroine:
“I see my mother in you.”
What he truly means is: I expect your silence to resemble hers.
The heroine ultimately chooses to walk away. But the unresolved question remains:
What about the mother?
Comparative Case Studies: Toxic Love in World Literature
● The Yellow Wallpaper – Charlotte Perkins Gilman
A “loving” husband confines his wife under medical authority, driving her into psychological collapse. Protection becomes imprisonment.
● Their Eyes Were Watching God – Zora Neale Hurston
Jody Starks silences Janie to inflate his own masculinity, believing her invisibility validates his power.
● The Awakening – Kate Chopin
Edna Pontellier suffocates in a socially respectable marriage that erases her autonomy.
● A Doll’s House – Henrik Ibsen
Nora is cherished only as a possession, not as a thinking human being.
Like the hero in The Girlfriend, these men equate female silence with male success.
Societal Collusion and Gendered Conditioning
From childhood, women are taught:
· “Adjust.”
· “Don’t break the family.”
· “Others have it worse.”
Silence becomes currency. Endurance becomes moral capital.
But what do women receive in return?
· Not love, but absence of conflict.
· Not respect, but absence of blows.
· Not peace, but erasure.
The “ideal woman” is rewarded with more work and more silence.
Climax: Standing vs. Disappearing
Silence does not fix injustice; it normalizes it.
When a woman stands up for herself, she is labeled:
· Difficult
· Disrespectful
· Unable to “handle” her home
Yet standing up is not rebellion—it is survival.
She may not receive applause. She may receive backlash. But she does not disappear.
Epilogue: Lessons Learned
· Silence is not virtue; it is enforced compliance.
· Toxic love disguises domination as protection.
· Patriarchal homes reproduce patriarchal sons.
· Violence glorified as tradition continues unchallenged.
· A woman’s worth is not measured by endurance, but by freedom.
Until we stop building “temples” for women’s silence, we will continue raising sons who see belts as scepters and daughters who mistake kitchens for kingdoms.
True virtue lies not in the absence of a voice,
but in the courage to use it.
Teaching Note
Learning Objectives
After engaging with this caselet, students will be able to:
· Analyze domestic violence as cultural inheritance.
· Examine silence as a trauma response and social tool.
· Compare cinematic and literary portrayals of toxic love.
· Critically question the glorification of female suffering.
· Apply gender theory to real-world familial structures.
Key Discussion Questions
1. How does silence function as power in patriarchal homes?
2. Why is women’s suffering often spiritualized or moralized?
3. Can love exist without equality?
4. How do families transmit violence without physical force?
5. Is endurance ever a virtue—or only a survival tactic?
