Page:Margaret Mead - Coming of age in Samoa; a psychological study of primitive youth for western civilisation.pdf/178

 handicrafts and her brain was full of new designs and unusual applications of material. She knew several potent medical remedies and had many patients. Married at fifteen, while still a virgin, her marital life, which had begun with the cruel public defloration ceremony, had been her only sex experience. She adored her husband, whose poverty was due to his having come from another island and not to laziness or inability. Lalala made her choices in life with a full recognition of the facts of her existence. There was too much for her to do. She had no younger sisters to bear the brunt of baby-tending for her. There were no youths to help her husband in the plantations. Well and good, she would not wrestle with the inevitable. And so Lalala's house was badly kept. Her children were dirty and bedraggled. But her easy good nature did not fail her as she tried to weave a fine mat on some blazing afternoon, while the baby played with the brittle easily broken pandanus strands, and doubled her work. But all of this reacted upon Fitu, lanky, ill-favoured exceutive little creature that she was. Fitu combined a passionate devotion to her mother with an obsessive solicitude for her younger brothers and sisters. Towards Ula alone her attitude was mixed. Ula, fifteen months younger, was pretty, lithe, flexible and indolent. While Fitu was often teased by her mother and rebuked by her companions for being like a boy, Ula was excessively feminine. She worked as hard as any other