The Varanasi WidowsThe practices of Varanasi widows regarding the death of their husbands have always been very extreme in South Asia. A hundred years ago, it was common to practice Sati, or widow's burning, where the widow threw herself onto her husband's funeral pyre. Society dictated to her that she could not live without him and so this practice was enforced by many complex societal rules. Sati was banned in the 1920s and has since slowly evolved into the practice that exists today. With Sati, the problem is that the individual suffers from an extreme lack of individual identity, or as Durkheim puts it, altruism, and therefore literally cannot exist without her husband or marriage. The current problem widows face is both similar and different; widows are rejected after the death of their husbands and are therefore forced into extreme selfishness where they know their identity, but this identity does not fit into a pre-existing societal structure. While the laws that prohibit Sati are certainly more equitable, this extreme shift from Durkheim's idea of ​​altruism to his conception of selfishness is extremely damaging. Say no to plagiarism. Get a tailor-made essay on “Why Violent Video Games Should Not Be Banned”? Get the original essay The root of this strong altruism comes from a dependence on men within the family unit. In this sense, the gender dichotomy parallels Marx's class structure. Women function as the proletariat of the household. They do all the physical labor, like cleaning and cooking, and society and patriarchy dictate that they do these things. Without this domestic work, they would lose their “job” and their place in society, which would lead them to struggles against selfishness, or even selfish suicide. This coincides with Marx's and Wright's theories of why the lower class is so dependent on wages; however, in this microcosmic society, wages can be both literal provision from men and sexual or familial love. The mode of production consists of the woman's ability to reproduce and care for, both physically and emotionally, the men in her life. Thus, this proletarian class made up of women, deemed unimportant when their husbands die and their sons marry, no longer has a purpose for its mode of production. When women are the “workers,” their “products” are men, and when men leave, women are alienated from both their work and their products. These two aspects combine to distance these women from their “organic nature” and their “species life”. Marx suggests that because the individual is so dependent on this alienating wage system, he becomes disconnected from his organic, individual self and replaces it with an inorganic self. This determines the “life of the species,” that is, how our inorganic self interacts with others to create an inorganic culture. Widows allow themselves to be consumed by this inorganic nature, which is incredibly easy to do when their mode of production is so intrinsically linked to strong, positive emotions. So when these women lose their husbands, they actually lose everything, not just their family, but also their role in society. Their entire microcosmic society ceases to exist. This creates an intense selfishness that society reinforces by viewing these widows as objects and thus allowing them to be dehumanized and exploited. The combination of these elements makes the widow's pilgrimage to Varanasi a necessity. In Varanasi, there is the promise of a community of individuals facing similar situations. When the company.