58 SOCIAL SCIENTIST affirmation of tradition, or the advocacy of cultural modernization as inevitable and therefore acceptable. Does this acceptance and perpetuation of modernist values constitute a survival strategy and a mode of getting ahead? The other thematic strand in the narratives of magazine fiction participates in a specific discourse on femininity, drawing on, and simultaneously constructing, the ideologies of domesticity^ familialism and romantic love. Throughout, women are variously stereotyped as indecisive, emotional, spineless, maternal, dependent, caring, self-sacrificing, adulterous, jealous, scheming, constantly needing male protection (surveillance) and so on. Stemming from the intersections of these contradictory characterizations, the sphere of the domestic is itself rife with uncertainty: on the one hand, the domestic is equated with marriage and a promise of male protection, conferring security and respectability, besides legitimizing childbearing. On the other hand, the exclusive privacy of the women's sphere is itself seen as dangerous, where women become agents of adulterous relations, thereby transgressing monogamous ideals which are seen as the foundation of the social order. Juxtaposing these two readings, it could be shown how, by posing questions of morality independent of marital status, the discourse is mounting an attack against its own earlier construction of domesticity as a desirable virtue. Yet another onslaught on the construction of 'romantic love' may be seen in the perception of marriage as a predominantly economic proposition, determined by the 'market indicators* of wealth and social class. More striking is the brushing aside of all veils, revealing marriages contracted'and sustained solely for purposes of security and identity. Marriage is no longer seen by the woman as a romantic dream, constituted by love, but as a bitter reality necessitating constant 'submission', 'adjustment* or 'compromise*. However, in spite of undermining the genre of romantic narratives which hold up the promise of marital bliss, this undercurrent seemingly argues for the continuance of coercive marriage bonds. However, an explicit and strategic reasoning—that status, economic security, honour and legitimacy are routed through the male—underlies the decision to continue living with the husband, in spite of oppression. It is at such discursive junctures that we realize that discourses of family/marriage/sexuality are reproduced not so much due to false consciousness, or by the dissembling effects of ideology, but through the active (and strategic) consent of individuals. The terrain of disputations we have traversed is suggestive of the implication of magazine fiction in fixing the parameters of popular discourse within which social issues are raised and resolved. By situating narratives within cultures, we can also investigate the manner in which cultural meaning is proposed and adjudicated within its boundaries. To analyse the attempt by magazine fiction to think and deal with specific cultural experiences, we must seek the cultural