Page:Margaret Mead - Coming of age in Samoa; a psychological study of primitive youth for western civilisation.pdf/199

 of vindictive detraction and growling about a rival. There are no standards of good form which prescribe an insincere acceptance of defeat, no insistence on reticence and sportsmanship. So a great deal of slight irritation can be immediately dissipated. Friendships are of so casual and shifting a nature that they give rise to neither jealousy nor conflict. Resentment is expressed by subdued grumblings and any strong resentment results in the angry one's leaving the household or sometimes the village.

In the girl's religious life the attitude of the missionaries was the decisive one. The missionaries require chastity for church membership and discouraged church membership before marriage, except for the young people in the missionary boarding schools who could be continually supervised. This passive acceptance by the religious authorities themselves of pre-marital irregularities went a long way towards minimising the girls' sense of guilt. Continence became not a passport to heaven but a passport to the missionary schools which in turn were regarded as a social rather than a religious adventure. The girl who indulged in sex experiments was expelled from the local pastor's school, but it was notable that almost every older girl in the community, including the most notorious sex offenders, had been at one time resident in the pastors' households. The general result of the stricter supervision provided by these schools seemed to be to postpone the first sex experience two or three years. The seven girls