ABSTRACT
This chapter focuses on six case studies of matrimonial breakdown. It mainly focuses the collection of the divorce-stories. Those five stories are presented in a dialectic alternation of voices, in which personal accounts, extracts of dialogues, descriptions of legal procedures, interpretations and analysis, all concur to the narrative. Voicing women's choices on the ground of collaboration necessitated establishing a relationship not only based on mutual trust but on mutual agreement. This involved a respect for the views of informants beyond the usual ethical concerns dealing with privacy because we had to agree on the terms of the informant's own involvement in the research. Some of the scholarship focusing on women's oral tradition has interpreted bawdiness as a reaction to the tensions caused by the asymmetrical ranking of bride-takers and bride-givers in hypergamic marriages, or by the gender imbalance of power. Their analyses suggest the function of venting without threatening the perpetuation of the hierarchical model of Hindu society.
