“A marriage without fidelity is a house without a foundation”: Black Brazilian women's demands for respect in marriage

Abstract

AbstractEthnographic studies of romantic love and companionate marriage in Latin America and the Caribbean focus on why and how intimate ideologies are changing, the effects of these changes for couples and communities, and the complexities surrounding the practical and symbolic meanings of money and love. Here, I discuss how in a community in which the romantic love and companionate marriage ideals seemed unattainable due to the prevalence of infidelity, Black women emphasized the locally salient value of respect in their discourses surrounding marriage. I explore how women's and men's competing views on respect represented shifts in women's agency, household authority, and the marital bargain. I argue that the perspectives of working‐class Black Brazilian women reveal how the value of respect is central to the dignity and self‐respect of minoritized and marginalized women and why, for these women, the disrespect of infidelity was the impetus for divorce.