Critical Analysis Of Too Young To Wed By Cynthia Gorney

In her article” Too Young to Wed,” Cynthia Gorney (2011) shares her experience through Rajasthan, India during Akha Teej, a festival where illegal, secret wedding practices occur with young girls. These experiences were overwhelming and marketable to the writer. “Snatch up the girl, punch out the nearby, and run. Just make it stop” she said during the ceremony while not being able to speak up and rescue the young girls. Forced early marriage thrives to this day in many regions of the world arranged by parents for their own children, often in defiance of national laws, and understood by whole communities as an appropriate way for a young woman to grow up when the alternatives, especially if they carry a risk of her losing her virginity to someone besides her husband, are …show more content…
In India the girls will typically be attached to boys four or five years older; in Yemen, Afghanistan, and other countries with high early marriage rates, the husbands may be young men or middle-aged widowers or abductors who rape first and claim their victims as wives afterward, as is the practice in certain regions of Ethiopia. Since these practices are against the law, India’s weddings are only conducted late at night, as a result only the guests are aware of it. Out of many cases, in particular the writer talks about three young brides named Radha, a 15 year old, Gora 13, and Rajani 5. Which in their situation, they were given away by their grandfather, a farmer. She stated how the young girls are given a bath by other village women to prepare them for their sacred vows. As a tradition of their culture, they have the gauna, an Indian ceremony that marks the physical transfer of a bride from her childhood family to her husband. It takes place after puberty. As for Rajani, she still had more time to live with her grandparent before reaching the stage of puberty even after getting married to her ten year old husband without her