Page:Margaret Mead - Coming of age in Samoa; a psychological study of primitive youth for western civilisation.pdf/233

 even though he is deaf and cannot always hear his questions, can still tell him many things."

The women's lives pursue a more even tenor. The wives of chiefs and talking chiefs have to give some time to the mastery of ceremonial. The old women who become midwives or doctors pursue their professions but seldom and in a furtive, private fashion. The menopause is marked by some slight temperamental instability, irritability, finickiness about food, a tendency to sudden whims and inexplicable fancics. Once past the menopause and relieved of child-bearing, a woman turns her attention again to the heavy work of the plantations. The hardest work of the village is done by women between forty-five and fifty-five. Then, as age approaches, she settles down to performing the skilled tasks in the household, to weaving and tapa making.

Where a man is disqualified from active work by rheumatism, elephantiasis, or general feebleness, his rôle as a teacher is diminished. He can teach the aspirant young fisherman the lore of fishing but not the technique. The old woman on the other hand is mistress of housebound crafts and to her must go the girl who is ambitious to become a skilled weaver. Another can gather the herbs which she needs for her medicines, while she keeps the secret of compounding them. The ceremonial burning of the candle-nut to obtain black dye is in the hands of very old women. And also these