is not so different from that of an English woman in the 1950s, in the era of ‘no wife of mine works,’ when virginity was at a premium, when to be a ‘spinster’ over the age of 25 was a humiliation, to be barren was a ‘tragedy,’ when contraception was largely unavailable; when a woman was defined as a person who had babies and to whom many professions were closed.
Theodore Dalrymple begs to differ.
It is difficult to say what is worse in this passage, the self-pity (“I too was a victim, and know what it is like to be oppressed”) or the complete lack of imagination as to what it is like to be locked in a house all day for years on end and not permitted to leave except under the closest supervision, or to be taken to Pakistan at the age of 15 to be forcibly married to a first cousin you have never seen before and who is deeply repellent to you, knowing that a refusal might well lead to beatings and even to death.
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