Women's Role in Marriage

Some of the most important patterns of action in any society are those which involve choosing a wife or husband.
In the text which follows, several girls in India speak about their views of marriage and raise questions about the American patterns. Read the text and answer the question that follow :

Night was falling at the close of a hot day. A cool, refreshing breeze playfully blew the girls' hair and set their gay saris fluttering. They were all teen-agers. They had been invited along by our host because we had expressed a desire to know what Indian young people thought about love and marriage. The girls, ten of them, were sitting on the floor in a wide circle. Being awkward westerners who couldn't sit comfortable on folded legs, we had been provided with low stools.
We gave as good an account as we could of how our young people are free to meet each other and have dates, how a boy and a girl will fall in love, and how, after a period of going steady, they may become engaged and then get married. We knew that young people in the East live a very then get married. We knew that young people in the East live a very restricted life, and have their marriages arranged for them by their parents. So we felt a little relieved that they had chosen to question us about our delightful romantic traditions. We didn't want to make them too envious, but we naturally were glad to demonstrate our superiority in this matter of finding a male.
When we had finished, there was a silence. Thinking that they had been impressed, we decided to start a discussion.
"Wouldn't you like to be free to choose your own marriage partners, like the young people do in the west ?"
"Oh, no!" several voices replied in chorus.
Surprised, we searched their faces.
"Why not"
"For one thing." said one of them. "Doesn't it put the girl in a very humiliation position?"
"Humiliation ? In what way?"
"Well, doesn't it mean that she has to try to look pretty, and call attention to herself, and attract a boy, to be sure she'll get married?"
“Well, perhaps so.”
“And if she doesn’t want to do that, or if she feels it’s undignified, wouldn’t that mean she might not get a husband?”
“Yes, that’s possible.”
“So a girl who is shy and doesn’t push herself forward might not be able to get married. Does that happen?”
“Sometimes it does.”
“Well surely that’s humiliating. It makes getting married a sort of competition in which the girls are fighting each other for the boys. And it encourages a girl to pretend she’s better than she really is. She can’t relax and be herself. She has to make a good impression to get him to marry her,” Before we could think of an answer to this unexpected line of argument, another girl broke in.
“In our system, you see,” she explained, ”We girls don’t have to worry at all. We know we’ll get married. When we are old enough, our parents will find a suitable boy, And everything will be arranged. We don’t have to go into competition with each other.”
“Besides,” said a third girl,” how would we be able to judge the character of a boy we met and got friendly with? We are young and inexperienced. Our parents are older and wiser, and they aren't as easily make a mistake if I had to find him for myself.”
Another girl had her hand stretched out eagerly.
“But does the girl really have any choice in the West ?” She said. “From what I've read, it seems that the boy does all the choosing. All the girl can do is to say yes or no. She can't go up to a boy and say ‘I like you. Will you marry me?’ can she?”
We admitted that this was not usually done.
“So,” she went on eagerly, ‘when you talk about men and women being equal in the West, it isn't true. When our parents are looking for a husband for us, they don't have to wait until some boy takes it into his head to ask for us. They just find out what families are looking for wives for their sons and see whether one of the boys would be suitable. Then if his family agrees that it would be a good match, they arrange it together.”