When we were originally assigned this project I immediately gravitated to the ritual of marriage. Not only because it’s something that I haven’t experienced yet or something I’ve always thought about (both very true), but because it is a ritual that is so public, so commented, so controversial, criticized, popular, expected that exploring it through this project could definitely shed some light on a new aspect to me. Through this project I hoped to understand something new about the world and hoped to challenge my personal assumptions about marriage as an institution and social expectation. I was certainly not disappointed.

I grew up surrounded by marriage and definitely did not lack for different representations of it. My parents have been married for 20 years; my grandmother married young, married for love, widowed, and never remarried; my aunt remarried and is currently raising a blended family; my uncle never married; my other great grandmother had an arranged marriage. However, these representations of marriage were all built around a Hispanic tradition and one that definitely has an expectation of marriage for women. Cuban women, as a result of lack of education (yes, lack of education!), lack of sustainable labor, and scarcity of social mobility, are left with few choices of what to do with their life, which pressures them indirectly to focus on getting married and forming a family. My mom says everyone gets married young in Cuba because there’s “Nothing to do”. My particular case differs because I had the privilege to have been raised and educated in the United States and, as such, I’ve had a dearth of options I wouldn’t have had otherwise. This is also why, at 20 years old, I’m not married nor expect to any time soon.

However, my education and being raised in a “marriage focused” culture (both Cuban and to a different extent the United States consumerism/wedding obsession) have offered me quite a lot to think about in terms of marriage. Before this project, I already had a general idea about what roles religion had in marriage and how different societies understood the concept of marriage. One of the most important things I learned about marriage during my time at Dartmouth and in Anthropology classes was the diversity of marriages that exist in the world and the amount of arbitrary yet super essential rules that surround the institution marriage. Through Anthro classes I had the opportunity to learn about communities such as the Gebusi that follow a very strict form of matrilineal marriage surrounded by rules and rituals

Through this project my understanding of marriage has increased insurmountably, specially, because my understanding and knowledge of marriage only being a social compromise and institution was challenged with the biological component. At first glance, I thought there was no biological component to marriage other than reproduction and sexual maturity but conversations with my partners and research on the subject widened my view. I discovered that marriage is not only a consequence of just sexual maturity (because we don’t get married the minute we reach it…anymore) and doesn’t just function, as a vessel to reproduction but is much more biologically complex. For example, marriage is not only altered by physiology but can also physiologically alter a person. Marriage can cause beneficial effects most significantly an increased in life span but, in times of marital stress, can have detrimental effects such as increased heart rates and blood pressure. Something that really resonated with me, in the biological sense,

I feel the portions that impacted me the most about this project were the personal interviews I conducted and the simple survey we decided to undertake on the “definition of marriage” for people in our social circles. The interview that I could say impacted me in the greatest way was Jorge and Leyner. Jorge and Leyner are a couple that are friends of mine, Jorge comes from the same neighborhood I grew up in in Cuba. I looked forward to speaking to them and listening to their answers because up until that point we had a hetero-normative data collection. I expected their answers to be a bit different than the other couples/people we had a previously interviewed or gather answers from. What surprised me was how their relationship and marriage was very much similar to the other couples yet the amount of value and meaning they poured into their marriage was in a different realm than the others, in my opinion. As a result of the difficulties they had to face, marriage was the ultimate commitment and an achievement of love, of hope, and of freedom that I don’t think I found anywhere else. It made me reflect on my own expectations of marriage, on my own preconceptions of why one got married, of why I would want to get married, and of the amount of love that can surpass a million hurdles. It made me reflect on my privilege—on how I could get married right now to my boyfriend if I wanted to and no one would say anything. On how people could get married, divorced, remarried in a couple of days and, still, no one would say anything. Interviewing them made me see the potential value a project like this could have, not only on me, but also on the people who could potentially see it. I feel it could challenge stereotypes and show the importance of marriage as not just a vessel to reproduction but as a ritual that, in its essence, seeks the validation of a union between people, family, and ideas in the face of society. To me their interview and experience illuminates the importance of marriage as a rite of passage that contains the three stages because of the amount of value that’s placed on each of the three phases of passage that van Gennep identified.

Asking the questions of “What does marriage mean to you?” was the most entertaining part of this project and yet it managed to still be illuminating in a broad and personal way. As was said in the particular page of the mini-interviews, we decided to ask this question because we noticed that the question was so complicated and multifaceted that it needed complexity, it needed a multitude of opinions. The answers we garnered expressed the diversity of opinions and experiences yet it showed significant crossovers of opinion and bases—even across people from different generations, societies, and relationship statuses. Some answers focused on family, others on being best friends, and yet others on taxes. I think the diversity of opinions from extra romantic to extra cynical helped me see the value of a project like ours. To show other people the biological and cultural complexity of an institution like marriage that is taken for granted by many and not really examined through different lenses. Marriage is usually thought of as a personal opinion yet through our research I have noticed that it’s more affected by biology and cultural surroundings than by personal emotions. I hope that through demonstrating different logic, rationalizations, and opinions on marriage as well as showing the academic opinions and research behind the institution we are able to challenge preconceptions, change points of view, or say something new about the topic.

My own preconceptions have been challenged. I have gained a new appreciation for what marriage means in my personal life, what I want it to mean and how I want to value it. I think I came in with definitely a romantic view of marriage and while reading the many responses I was faced with the cynicism that more “utilitarian” views of marriage could have. It definitely made me doubt my opinions of marriage, would I ever want to do this, if it was something I wanted to do or just something that was expected of me. But through the in-depth interviews conducted and going through the process of analyzing the critical with the praising opinions, I reformed my opinion on marriage. Now, I feel like I have a greater appreciation for the concept and institution and have not finished with as cynical an opinion as I expected to have.

I can say this project was a process and a rite of passage in itself going from the preparation for this project to reforming a new point of view. Working as a group and learning from each other’s opinions and social circles definitely added new perspectives to the information collected. Overall, I feel the project was successful in what it set out to do. It managed to identify different aspects of marriage and expose the linkages and controversies the topic intrinsically possesses.