User:Cpetryshyn/Andal

History of Feminism Wikipedia page: Andal, a female Tamil saint, lived around the 7th or 8th century. She is well known for writing Tiruppavai. Andal has inspired women's groups such as Goda Mandali. Her divine marriage to Vishnu is viewed by some as a feminist act, as it allowed her to avoid the regular duties of being a wife and gain autonomy.

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Intro:

Andal is an important female figure for women in South India and has inspired women's group such as Goda Mandali.

Poetry:

Women used poetry as a tool in Hindu society as a way to claim a form of agency.

Goda Mandali:

Through poetry of saints (such as Andal) women are thought to be able to connect with the Lord directly and those words are thought to encapsulate their personal emotions

The group would gather weekly to learn songs and would sing at events such as festivals where they would raise money for shrines.

Marriage to Vishnu
Contemporary interpretations view her act of marrying Vishnu as feminist. Divine marriages and virginity allowed women's' subjectivity as she is able to choose her husband, and given an "aristocratic freedom". It is said that by devoting herself to God and rejecting marrying a human, she avoided the regular duties involved with being a wife that would inhibit her freedom. Feminist interpretations see Andal's pursuit of marrying Vishnu as rejecting the patriarchal institution of marriage. Virgins with divine marriages were often able to practice educational freedom through reading and/or writing such as Andal did.

Quoted from Feminism and world religions by Arvind Sharma, Katherine K. Young: "What Andal and other women poets did by living the way they did was to negotiate a space within a marriage-dominated society and made at least some sections of society make room for them".

Andal fulfilled the expectation of becoming a wife by marrying God, but since her husband was divine, she gained her autonomy. This act is referred to as virginal feminism by numerous scholars in patristic theology. Virginity is viewed as giving women the option to avoid childbearing, "male domination" and live a new life of devotion to God.