Page:Margaret Mead - Coming of age in Samoa; a psychological study of primitive youth for western civilisation.pdf/109

 the social life between villages. This ceremonial undercutting of the older women's authority might seriously jeopardise the discipline of the household, if it were not for two considerations. The first is the tenuousness of the girls' organisation, the fact that within the village their chief raison d'être is to dance attendance upon the older women, who have definite industrial tasks to perform for the village; the second is the emphasis upon the idea of service as the chief duty of the taupo. The village princess is also the village servant. It is she who waits upon strangers, spreads their beds and makes their kava, dances when they wish it, and rises from her sleep to serve either the visitors or her own chicf. And she is compelled to serve the social needs of the women as well as the men. Do they decide to borrow thatch in another village, they dress their taupo in her best and take her along to decorate. the malaga. Her marriage is a village matter, planned and carried through by the talking chiefs and their wives who are her counsellors and chaperons. So that the rank of the taupo is really a further daily inroad upon her freedom as an individual, while the incessant chaperonage to which she is subjected and the way in which she is married without regard to her own wishes are a complete denial of her personality. And similarly, the slighter prestige of her untitled sisters, whose chief group activity is waiting upon their elders, has even less real significance in the daily life of the village.

With the exception of the taupo, the assumption of