Since the publication of Sherry B. Ortner and Harriet Whitehead's groundbreaking volume Sexual Meanings: The Cultural Construction of Gender and Sexuality (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1981), anthropologists have recognized that in important ways, sexuality, like gender, is socially constructed. Nonetheless, few ethnographies have focused on the productive role of culture in the construction and enactment of desire. Megan Jennaway takes up just this theme in her ethnography of women and sexuality in northern Bali. In pursuit of this aim, she employs an innovative narrative device, interspersing the voices of three fictive sisters, composites of individuals she came to know during her research, into her ethnographic account. Her rationale for creating these fictionalized characters is her desire to protect the identities of her informants in dealing with a topic that most Balinese regard as sensitive or even taboo. She also uses these characters—quite effectively, I believe—to evoke the lived experiences of Balinese women, and to allow for a more intimate understanding of women's choices, constraints, and emotions.
The author argues against Gregory Bateson and Margaret Mead's depiction of Balinese social life as emotionally flat and without climax. Desire, she insists, “looms large” in women's lives, and much of young women's energy is devoted to finding ways to fulfill those desires (p. 21). In the northern Balinese village of Punyanwangi (a pseudonym), women's desire is “harnessed to production” (p. 43). Both men and women pay lip service to a hegemonic discourse of gender equity. Nonetheless, women typically work a triple day. When not laboring in the fields or in petty trade, they are busy with child care and domestic tasks. Moreover, the ritual requirements of Balinese Hinduism pervade the domestic sphere and fall most heavily on women's shoulders.
The creation of an unequal division of domestic labors is accomplished through, among other things, the institution of marriage. For women, there are few alternatives to marrying. The options that exist are socially unthinkable—dispossession, vagrancy, exile, remaining at home with the natal family (p. 60). Given these options, women's sexual and emotional desires come to focus on the search for a marriage partner. For the same reasons, women evaluate their marital possibilities in terms of future stability—will the marriage last, will it be monogamous, or will it become polygynous?
Jennaway is not the first to note the close connection between polygyny and divorce. If Balinese men are unhappy with their current wife, they can simply take another; they have little incentive to divorce. It is women more often than men who resort to divorce in the face of an intolerable marriage. However, if women in northern Bali choose to pursue this option, they face the grim prospect of the loss of material support as well as the possible loss of their children, who belong to their father's lineage. Equally unappealing, women who choose to divorce place themselves in the unenviable position of “divorcée,” a status that entails a compromised reputation and limited prospects for remarriage. Thus, whereas women actively resist polygyny, which they see as a betrayal of the primary marital tie, their options are severely limited if their husband pursues a second wife.
The expansion of the tourism industry in Bali since the 1970s has not improved but rather has exacerbated these inequalities in the marital field. Young Balinese women have little or no access to tourism's personal and economic opportunities. Inasmuch as women figure at all in the tourism industry, they are depicted as distant objects of aesthetic appreciation, certainly not as active sexual agents. By contrast, Balinese men who act as tour guides in resort areas make clear that they are readily available to foreign women who are interested in romantic partnerships. Western women pay guides for their escort services and may provide them with other material benefits, including, in some instances, even travel abroad. Of course, there are many more aspiring male guides than there are Western women looking for love. Male guides thus hedge their bets by keeping a Balinese girlfriend or a wife back in the village. This pattern injects a further tension and inequality into the Balinese marriage market.
Tensions such as these also have an impact on Balinese courtship. Jennaway observes that, “only ‘good girls’ are likely to attract a mate” (p. 150). Appearances, however, are more important than actual behaviors. A young woman is expected to dress modestly and to keep any interest in or actual liaisons with a potential sexual partner secret. A man might pressure a woman into sexual intercourse in order to test her love and fertility. A woman might give in to her partner's demands in the hope of winning him as a husband. However, should a woman become pregnant, her partner may claim that he is not the father of the child and reject her as “damaged goods.” Having lost her reputation, she may subsequently have to accept the compromised position of becoming the second wife to a man who is already married.
The denial of desire and the requirement of social secrecy eventually take their toll on many women. At its extreme, Jennaway shows, the tensions to which it gives rise are expressed in female hysteria. The discussion of hysteria weaves its way through Jennaway's account and is vividly illustrated by the personal stories told by Jennaway's composite characters. Taking culture-bound forms known as babainan and sakit bingung, which are linked to sorcery and love magic, women's hysteria gives voice to the depths of female desire and frustration. Jennaway observes that women who suffer from such illnesses typically do so before marriage, when tensions surrounding courtship are at their height. Reproductive failure, infidelity, and the threat of polygyny are also common catalysts. Interestingly, women who express their frustrations through hysteria are not reproached by their families but become the focus of solicitous attention. One would hope that these episodes might in some way alleviate women's sociosexual subordination. However, Jennaway argues to the contrary, that in releasing the tensions engendered by social and psychological conflict, the status quo is only maintained.
Richly textured and emotionally evocative, Jennaway's “embodied ethnography” makes a compelling case for the linkages between women's speech, sexuality, and relative powerlessness. The book is a valuable and vivid analysis of Balinese emotional life and gender roles. This important study will be of interest to a wide and varied audience of scholars in women's studies, psychology, anthropology, and Southeast Asian studies.
