Male Servants and the Failure of Patriarchy in Kolkata (Calcutta)

Abstract

This article considers questions of patriarchy, masculinity, and male servants in Kolkata’s culture of servitude. Through narratives of men servants and women servants, the ‘‘failure of patriarchy’’ is analyzed, set against hegemonic patriarchal ideologies and hierarchies. Contextualization for these narratives was provided by extensive ethnographic fieldwork in Kolkata, including a survey of 500 middle-class households. When women servants narrate their lives, it is inevitably the failure of patriarchs—fathers, husbands, and brothers—to perform their prescribed familial and social functions and duties that has led to their unfortunate circumstances. Thus, women servants end up taking on ‘‘patriarchal’’ responsibilities of supporting their households. Simultaneously, men servants express with resignation their own as well as their fathers’, and often their sons’, inability to properly make a living. Indeed, male servants think of themselves as failed patriarchs, dependent on stigmatized work to make a living, and feel doubly diminished. Finally, we examine how some male servants have reconfigured the patriarchy of servants through a reevaluation of the terms of work, status, and dependency.