Keywords
Marriage, Family, Colonial Modernity, Postcolonial Feminism, Gender, Identity, Patriarchy.
Abstract
Shyam Selvadurai's Cinnamon Gardens (1998) interrogates the relationship between private life and public ideology by presenting marriage and family as institutions through which colonial society organizes power, gender, and identity. Set in Colombo during 1927–1928, the novel depicts a historical moment in which British colonial modernity intersects with indigenous traditions, producing tensions between individual aspirations and communal expectations. This paper argues that Selvadurai relocates the politics of colonialism from governmental institutions to the domestic sphere, where marriage, kinship, and family honour become mechanisms for regulating women's autonomy, masculine identity, and social mobility. Rather than treating marriage as a romantic union, the novel exposes it as a cultural practice that preserves class privilege, ethnic respectability, and patriarchal authority. Through a close reading of Annalukshmi's educational aspirations and Balendran Navaratnam's concealed sexuality, this study demonstrates that personal relationships function as sites where competing ideas of tradition, modernity, and selfhood are negotiated. The article further contends that Selvadurai neither idealizes tradition nor celebrates colonial modernity; instead, he reveals the contradictions embedded within both systems. By foregrounding the everyday negotiations of domestic life, Cinnamon Gardens offers a subtle yet powerful critique of colonial social structures and redefines the family as a contested space in which resistance emerges through education, ethical choice, and emotional honesty. The novel ultimately suggests that lasting social transformation begins not in political institutions alone but within the intimate relationships that shape individual identity.
