We define obligation as duty, but perhaps that is just a filler word for grief. A grief that requires us to keep moving, to keep surviving, long after it has passed- one that carves out space between your ribcage and your lungs and settles nicely enough to never let you forget it exists. Obligation, from a historical perspective, has always weighed on the shoulders of people- especially women. Both socially and politically, the obligations weighed well beyond just chores and bled into everything- from managing the household to how they held their spoon at dinner. Within this context, obligation has often been seen as the antithesis to freedom- but it is most often a form of complicity. Obligation is a pretty word to hide behind when you say you had no choice- but did you?
The woman who stays doesn’t always do it for love. Sometimes she stays because stopping would mean admitting that everything she sacrificed was chosen, not imposed- that all her time and energy was simply for naught. And that’s a knowledge no one survives.
There is a delicate line to walk with this topic. Historically speaking, the repercussions for opposition to supposed obligation have never been kind, much less so to women.
However, was every act an act of obligation? Oftentimes we treat women in historical books as victims of circumstance- in another age, she would not perform the duty of obligation so willingly. The romance of constraint, it fits nicely into the damsel in distress box we see in fairy tales. It is a story as old as time, but also one we often tell ourselves because it is easier to swallow than acknowledging a woman may have chosen her constraint. Which coincides with the issue of female infantilization in fiction: to wipe a woman of all repercussions from her choices and deem it circumstantial obligation is to compare her to a child- for only children fit within that box.
So how do we balance a woman’s suffering- history has never been a kind place for a woman, that is a truth- without absolving her of the choices that perpetuated it? The simple answer is to humanize them; you cannot throw a stone without hitting someone whos decision led to their suffering, whos actions were explained away through obligation without accountability. We can tell ourselves that lie, but it becomes so crucial to tell your readers the truth so that maybe they can see accountability.
But this is not a concept learned overnight. Obligation usually comes as inheritance, passed from generation to generation until it simply becomes traditional. Mother teaches daughter the obligations that were once taught to her: serve, perform, wait- across all ages and all time, obligation is passed down. We have seen this pattern 1000 years ago and see it still today- which is where it becomes so much harder to examine in fiction than simple oppression.
She could choose to break free- to live without ever performing the obligations passed onto her, but what of all the time she spent building the life behind walls of obligations? How much will she lose if she chooses otherwise? This is where complicity comes into play. The only way to break a cycle is to make a change, and many women are familiar with their oppression, and familiarity is a comfortable partner- one who never challenges you to grow. So they don’t. Obligation no longer carries the same meaning, and grief over the could have been sets up camp within her. Grief for a life unlived and only dreamt, grief disguised as the virtue of service, grief over what she may lose by defying expected obligations. The choice to stay, the choice to remain, the choice to oblige. Like mother, like daughter, through the generations- each one devolving the idea further away from freedom or true obligation, for that matter, and more so into chains that they hold the keys to.
If a beggar were to end in a cell, given food and water each day, and his chains eventually came loose, I believe he might fasten them again himself. Not because the cell was never a prison, but because captivity had taught him that survival existed only within it. The most enduring cage is one that no longer requires a jailer. Obligation offers its own gifts in exchange for loyalty: food, peace, and security. The system of obligation is designed to offer gifts in exchange for their loyalty, however. Food, peace, and security. No one will heckle her in the streets, or mock her in the churches, or scorn her at every turn of the road. Historically, that could be the difference between life and death. For total freedom- would you willingly surrender your security? I doubt many people would; forgoing safety in exchange for a freedom you may not even be able to fully enjoy is a risky trade.
But what happens when it all crashes? When the recipient of her obligations perishes, and there is no safety there for her either, what will she do? When familiarity is no longer a choice, and they live their days in service to no one, I wonder if they mourn the time spent devoted, if they mourn the choices made previously?
Grief comes at the death of self too- the death of all you thought and held. The death of performance.
But no such death will come to the woman who perpetuates her own cage. Obligation from social and poitical forces is easy to speculate on, they are consistent across most women. However, the obligation from oneself is much more intricate. She becomes the keeper of the rules that once confined her- not as a villain, but as a survivor. Look at women who take to the stage to preach about the beauty of feminine devotion. Who sing praises of waiting on their husbands and children and martyr themselves for the household- when it is the same household that would burn her if given the chance. These are also the women who defy what they preach; instead, their obligation becomes one of an enforcer- to impose the same constrictions they gave themselves onto others. Perhaps there is a death of self to be studied here as well, a death that occurs when they choose to don the habit of a jailer instead of that of a woman.
She suffers from her own grief, one that is hard to understand if you are not the person suffering. But can grief excuse becoming the oppressor? Can it excuse the worth they steal from other women as they shackle the others with the chains they forged?
It makes them no better than any man who has done the same.
Refusing obligation, though, more often than not means losing everything it provided. Safety, certainty, the pillar of all past decisions. It strips a woman bare and destitute, but free- especially for historical women. Women who had very few options. How do we walk that fine line of showing a woman perpetuating her own cage without turning her into a cautionary tale- how do we show her independence within obligation? As with people, we allow her to remain herself; morally ambiguous, complicit, and heartbreakingly human. We allow her room to grieve what could have been and the reality of devotion; we allow her to grieve her past and future; we allow her to experience the grief of loss and eventually the loss of grief.
Even as modern women, we are no different. There are costs associated with renouncing the expectations and obligations laid before us; ones that most of us are hesitant to forgo and surrender. But for every steel bar that lines our cage, we must be willing to sit with ourselves and ask: how did I perhaps help to forge this steel?
