Analysis Of Dadi's Family

A traditional extended family living in Northern India can become acquainted through the viewing of Dadi’s family. Dadi, meaning grandmother in Hindu, lets us explore her family up close and personal as we follow the trials and tribulations the family encounters through a daily basis. The family deals with the span of three generations and their conflicting interpretations of the ideal family life. Dadi lets us look at the family as a whole, but the film opens our eyes particularly on the women and the problems they face. The film inspects the women’s battle to secure their status in their family through dealing with a patriarchal mentality. The women also are seen attempting to exert their power, and through it all we are familiarized to

There is no day off being a woman in a household, either being a sister, daughter, daughter in law, or mother in law there is always a task assigned to you. In Dadi’s family, Dadi describes being a woman as being an inferior caste. Being a woman includes being submissive and being able to work hard in a household for the family. Dadi sheds light on her experience when she was once a new daughter in-law. Women were to cover their face from father in laws and brother in laws as to show respect to the men. Dadi also expresses that as a new bride there were no rights for women, except though the men. Although times has changed from Dadi being a new bride, times has not fully changed completely as when Darshini and Sita became daughter in laws. The preparation of new brides shows a patriarchal mentality. The film expresses that women are taken away from their families and are married into a family of strangers as they join the male’s family. The brides are obligated to leave their homes and their past life all behind to live in their groom’s home. The women are forced to adapt to the male’s lifestyle and to subside the life they were living as individual women. Women’s main

Dadi speaks on the importance of the mother in law, the mother in law was to be respected in any way possible when you were a new daughter in law. If the mother in law was not respected the husband would teach the wife a lesson for not respecting his mother. Now, daughter in laws exert their power towards not only their mother in law but also their husband. In early era, daughter in laws used to fear their mother in laws as they were not to speak up for themselves on how they were treated, as Dadi explains. As times has changed we see a difference on how Dadi speaks on her experiences to what we see now with the interaction with the daughter in laws and her family in law. We see Darshini as someone who speaks up towards her mother in law. Darshini feels the amount of work they have to do is all because of Dadi. Dadi is also seen talking poorly on her daughter in law Sita, and Darshini is quick to put Dadi in her place and tell her to stop and get back to work. The use of speaking back to one’s mother in law is one huge difference on how women were timid and how times have changed, daughter in laws have become more out spoken and confident to talk back. Dadi expresses that no one listens to the mother in law now. If the same energy was used in Dadi’s era, the women would quickly be beaten for being disrespectful. Dadi let us know that