To what extent are Guleri and Veronica victims of their cultures?

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To what extent are Guleri and Veronica victims of their cultures?

‘Veronica’ is a short story about how cultural differences in the narrator’s home affect the lives of the people. The story is told through the eyes of Okeke, he tells us how his life is different to Veronica’s in this village and how they grow up. In the beginning, Okeke explains how Veronica’s family life was unfortunate: ‘Her family had been even poorer than mine, which was saying something in those days. Her father was a brute and her mother was weak.’ The quote explains how Veronica was poor and her family were unmanageable. However, their culture has forced Veronica into looking after the family all the time because she is a girl: ‘since she was the eldest child a lot of the responsibility for bringing up the other children had fallen on her.’

However, ‘A stench of kerosene’ is another story which Guleri marries Manak and moves into Manak’s home, however Manak’s mother forces him to stick with traditional values and have a baby with her or she will offer him a new wife. From the beginning their culture has taught that the wife must go to live with the husband after marriage and become a housewife whilst the husband works, ‘Guleri’s parents lived in Chamba.’ Unfortunately, for her it was compulsory to move, she often did not like the village life, ‘Whenever Guleri was home which she would take her husband, Manak, and go up to this point.’ If she had the choice, she would not move to the village. Guleri has always had a hard life in the village after marrying, because she has to look after Manak and his family at home: ‘She went about her daily chores – fed the cattle – cooked food for her per parents in law,’ Guleri is someone who is told what to do and follows all the commands. This makes her vulnerable to this culture and as a result, she becomes a victim.

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Similarly, Veronica is not treated well by her family, ‘I would lie awake listening to her screams,’ however, being the oldest child who is a girl in this culture means that you must look after the family and always be in their defence; Veronica says, ‘Don’t talk like that, they are my family and is enough.’ It may be because of her hard life at home that she has become a fatalist, who believes that her life is pre planned and whatever happens is supposed to happen to her, ‘I snapped a twig and threw it into the water, it ...

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