53 Roxana Marinescu IDENTITY AND MARRIAGE IN THE POSTCOLONIAL BRITISH NOVEL Abstract: This paper aims to explore the issue of marriage as it is visible in some British novels by South-Asian authors, such as Salman Rushdie, Hari Kunzru, Monica Ali, Meera Syal, and others. Marriage is discussed from a postmodern postcolonial perspective, with gender, ethnicity, social group, class, caste and religion as clear markers of the characters’ identity. The male and female characters live their individual yet social lives in a space of imperial/postimperial British influence, with power relations clearly circumscribed to the hegemonic relationship, labelled by Gramsci ‘domination by consent’. Marriage, be it arranged or a love-match, within the same ethnic, religious or social group or not, is a central element around which the male and female characters revolve. I am analysing three types of marriage - the immigrants’ marriage, the ‘Asians in Asia’ and the hybrid, culturally mixed one - exploring the way the characters view themselves and others in relation with the Asian or British societies’ social and cultural rules. For the first or second- generation Asians in Britain, the marital union is placed in a multicultural context, giving new dimensions to their otherwise traditional customs, as opposed to the one of the second category, marriage on the Asian subcontinent being a rather traditionalistic affair, with families conspiring to find ‘the best match’ for their offspring. If trying to detach themselves from this tradition, the characters are punished with unhappy, even tragic experiences. A special case is offered by the hybrid, culturally mixed marriages, also doomed ones, but bringing along additional evidence in support of a reversed Orientalism, in which the ‘mystic Occident’, full of sexual promise, is also an opportunity of twisti ng the Imperial past experience; as one of the characters puts it, by possessing the English roses, the Asians “stared defiantly into the eye of the Empire and all its self-regard”. The ways in which the topic of marriage is dealt with in the British postcolonial novel written by authors of South-Asian origin, such as Salman Rushdie, Hari Kunzru, Monica Ali, Meera Syal, and others. The attitude to marriage is circumscribed to a multicultural context, and the analysis of the characters’ identity takes into consideration elements such as gender, ethnicity, race, religion, class, caste and social group. I shall start by exploring the gender identity of these novels’ characters, by discussing gender as a process, in motion and in development. Gender is about characteristics of femininity and masculinity (or rather different types of femininities and masculinities) seen in relationship with each other, including cross-gender or hybrid aspects of identity. It is important to take into account the new relationships of power within the feminist movement(s) in the postcolonial context, with the “Third World” women claiming their right to a different kind of experience and to new voices. As concerns the theories of masculinity, cultural representations of men and masculinity, with traditional characteristics such as power, strength, action, control, male bonding, work, competition, are re-valued in the contemporary epoch, with the emphasis laid more on emotions, intimacy, the ornamentation of the body and of the self. Robert Bly’s standpoint (discussed in Iron John: A Book About Men) is that nowadays men need to get back in touch with their masculine side, rather than their feminine one, as was proclaimed in the previous decades; is this a valid notion in the postcolonial British novels? At the same time, an idea that needs to be emphasised is that gender should be discussed in relationship with other markers of identity, such as ‘race’, class or social group, sex, etc., as it does not exist as a separate and independent entity (cf. Ania Loomba Colonialism/Postcolonialism). The superiority of the white races as a colonial concept is a straightforward instrument of power and it clearly signifies the racially identified working classes. ‘Caste’ is a concept that became familiar in Britain due to the colonial experiences,