How society condemns us to chains of what is upright, moral and acceptable

By Barrack Muluka

Mary Kagure succumbed to a brutal domestic knife on last Wednesday morning.

The knife was ostensibly used against her by her estranged husband.

She had moved away from their marital home to live alone, after unending brutality from this man.

Mary reported her matter to the Kenya Police several times. But they simply laughed it off. This was a domestic matter, they said. They asked her to sort out the matter at home.

And so the matter was sorted out at home, with a brutal knife. Mary became one more statistic. Ironically, she died on a day that African First Ladies from the Great Lakes Region were assembled in Kampala Uganda, to address the issue of violence against women as a human rights matter.

The condition of the African woman reminds you of the opening words of Jean-Jacques Rousseau’s opening words in his seminal work, The Social Contract, with the exception that Rousseau had in mind man the biological being, and not the sociological person.

Writing in 1762, Rousseau said, "Man is born free and everywhere he is in chains." He should have said, "Woman is born free and everywhere she is in chains."

There is a sense in which Rousseau’s words tease us to believe that he would suggest that if we threw away the chains of civil society, we should be free. Scrutiny and understanding of Rousseau, however, suggests otherwise.

For, in fact, this treatise seeks to show us how to live in the chains of society without compromising our freedom. The African woman has been taught to live in chains. She has also been socially conditioned to compromise her God given freedom.

Is it possible, as Rousseau says, to live in the chains of society without compromising your freedom? This thought kills itself. Rousseau is actually telling us that if you unchain yourself from social fetters, you will be un-free.

Live therefore in these chains, but do not compromise your freedom. Ask for accountability from those who chain you. Such a status should seem impossible, I think. That is why the drift of the argument in The Social Contract eventually disappoints.

Let me note that the central argument in the contract is the justification of the State and the practice of human beings living together in civilised fashion, unlike say wild beasts.

Society has established norms, beliefs and practices that define proper behaviour. If you digress from the social order, you are to be punished. If the digression is criminal, for example, you should go to jail.

If it is benign, but still socially unacceptable, you should still be punished. Punishment could be as simple as people shunning you, or making you the centre of gossip.

Because you do not wish to be the centre of gossip, to be shunned or otherwise be a social pariah, you put up with things that make you suffer privately. You are a social conformist.

You live in social chains. You go to the place of worship because you do not wish to be a social outsider.

You get married because society says so. You endure an abusive marriage because society says it is respectable to be married. You pretend to be happy because society says it is good to be happily married.

Never mind that nobody knows about the unhappiness in your marriage.

Never mind that Leo Tolstoy told us in the tragic story of Anna Karenina (published over 1873 – 1878) that all happy families are happy in the same manner while each unhappy family is unhappy in its own way.

So if each unhappy family has its unique brand of unhappiness, how does society impose upon you the chains of tragic marriage? How do your relatives say to you, "Persevere. Hang in there. Do it for your children," and that kind of thing? Do they know what you go through?

Marriage and family life is easily the ultimate social chain. This might very well explain the extravaganza we go to when two people get married.

Society celebrates the chaining of two more individuals. We, therefore, use such terminology as "tying the knot." In Kiswahili, they talk of "the everlasting chains (pingu za maisha)."

Rousseau has discussed the origins of the family at some length in an earlier essay, A Discourse on the Origins and Foundations of Inequality among Men (1754).

The family is an artificial institution, "a creation of human will." The arguments about its justification and evolution are as interesting as they are long – evolving through a variety of stages.

Suffice is to say, however, that the family is the preeminent social prison. This is in spite of the fact that the philosopher is more concerned with the individual’s imprisonment to the State than he is to the individual’s imprisonment to other social institutions.

The complexities of Rousseau’s arguments aside, you want to appreciate the truth about society condemning individuals to chains of what is upright, moral and acceptable.

A woman of virtue is therefore one who stays in an abusive marriage. This is regardless that the beast she lives with batters her day in day out.

If she talks about it, we say she is a bad woman. She is worse still if she gets out of it.

That is why Mary had to die in a loveless marriage. She protected the unhappiness with a trademark-disarming smile. Society loves this.

I worked with Mary. She was loveable and loving. Few knew of the anguish behind her disarming visage. Once in a while, you saw her with a bruised face, a black eye.

She said some vague thing or the other about it. Then, one morning, she suffered the final fatal blow. The man believed to have killed her walked to the local police station to tell them what he had done.

"Did you kill her yourself?" they asked. "I did not send someone," he responded.

An unhappy and abusive marriage is the ultimate social prison. If you get out of it, regardless that you follow the laid down rules, they will use it against you, some day.

We have heard learned men refer to some women as "a bunch of divorcees." This is meant to intimidate other women and make them endure brutality. We must reexamine our so-called family values. Rest in peace, Mary – beloved daughter of God.

The writer is a publishing editor and media

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