Page:The sexual life of savages in north-western Melanesia.djvu/116

Rh requires a more minute consideration than we have yet given it, especially as it is one of those general, seemingly obvious questions which do not challenge attention. Yet, if in a closer sociological study we try to place it in its proper perspective, and to bring it into harmony with other features of native life, a real problem at once becomes evident. To us marriage appears as the final expression of love and the desire for union; but in this case we have to ask ourselves why, in a society where marriage adds nothing to sexual freedom, and, indeed, takes a great deal away from it, where two lovers can possess each other as long as they like without legal obligation, they still wish to be bound in marriage. And this is a question to which the answer is by no means obvious.

That there is a clear and spontaneous desire for marriage, and that there is a customary pressure towards it, are two separate facts about which there can be not the slightest doubt. For the first there are the unambiguous statements of individuals — that they married because they liked the idea of a life-long bond to that particular person — and for the second, the expression of public opinion, that certain people are well suited to each other and should therefore marry.

I came across a number of cases in which I could observe this desire for marriage developing over a prolonged period. When I came to Omarakana, I found several couples engaged to be married. The second youngest brother of Namwana Guya'u, Kalogusa (pl. 22), had been previously engaged to Dabugera, a girl of the highest rank, his father's sister's daughter's daughter (i.e. Rh