The practice of adopting the husband’s surname began in ninth century England when lawmakers began contemplating the legal aspects of families and marriage. A wife was considered to have integrated into her husband’s family and thus began the custom of taking up his name. In India, the practice has a cultural connotation where marriage is itself an act of giving away a daughter to the groom’s family. Hence, the change of surname. In fact, there are certain Indian communities which give daughters-in law a new name as an act of welcoming them into the family.
When Priyanka Chopra Jonas adopted her husband’s surname, her feminist stance was widely questioned. It seemed a typical expression of patriarchal custom. On the Barstool Sports’ Chicks in the Office podcast, she explained her decision.
“I was never forced into it, it’s just something I wanted to do because that’s how I grew up. Hopefully, in another 50 years, it’ll be guys taking our names too, or just not changing our names, and that’ll be normalized.”
The actor justifies her decision on account of honouring her family’s tradition. It sounds quite discouraging because ‘tradition’ in our country is merely sugar-coated patriarchy. Our tradition is an agent of perpetuating male chauvinism through socialisation and active conditioning.
Internalised patriarchy is so profound that sometimes even a decision seemingly made independent of pressure might have occurred due to subconscious coercion. We convince ourselves of free will when in truth we are unconsciously succumbing to patriarchal principles. So when a woman decides to change her surname or give up her career after marriage for the sake of keeping up tradition, the decision is not truly democratically made. It is an expression of internalised patriarchy. If not, why then do we find only women debating whether or not to take up a surname? Why is there talk of only women giving up their career after marriage? Has it become an inconceivable idea for a man to take a career break instead of his wife?
With reference to an observation made by Coontz, Ravi Desai writes that the foundation of marriage ‘is still rooted in patriarchy, an oppressive ideal that no amount of feminist correction by its participants can fix.’ Women having ‘a choice’ in matters such as changing surnames is progress only on the surface level. It might seem empowering to have a choice. While it does matter, it is not enough. When the very institution of marriage is unfeminist and patriarchal, such choices remain only romanticised distractions.