The essay involves an analysis of the constricted role of woman in Indian society and public affairs as part of an ongoing process of civilizational change. This demands an identification of the structure of individual and cultural defences which have traditionally given meaning to the role of women in Indian society. The author identifies the classic instance in the psychological defence of woman turning against self by identifying with the aggressive male, drawing attention to the way in which certain social institutions have made woman herself a participant in her self-repudiation and intra-aggression. To ignore this accept of womanhood in India is to abridge the Indian awareness of some of the latent justifications of oppression in this society

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Child Marriage and its impact of the child bride's life through personal accounts.
Suppressed sexuality and closed households facilitating extra-marital relations which, even when found were suppressed within the family to prevent "public" denouncement of the family name.
the widow's plight.
Victorian puritan ethos among the Brahmos and the western-educated. Suppression of sexuality as "vulgar",a stand point incommensurate with certain devotional modes and practises prevalent even in Hinduism which ar steeped in sexual discourses.
The lure of "romance" in the post-Hindu College reformist era. Liberalism and introduction to western notions of companionship through literature. The lure mostly unrequitted, yet call for "women's education" rises in which underlies the desire for an "educated companion".

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The article compares legal perspectives and norms between Britain and India to establish that the distinction drawn by English lawyers between "custom" and "usage" does not exist in India. There being in England no such thing as a " personal law," in the sense in which that expression is used in India, English rules as to the necessary proof and characteristics of customs and usages, cannot usefully be applied. As a result the confusion manifested in the English law on the subject, becomes worse confounded when sought to be applied in Indian Courts. "Usage" and "custom" being synonymous terms as applied to the personal law of a Hindu or Mohammedan, their identity should be judicially recognized, and appropriate rules framed for their enforcement, without regard to the distinctions and refinements of English Law.

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