Page:The sexual life of savages in north-western Melanesia.djvu/118

Rh To'uluwa just mentioned, who by that time had divorced her first husband. He knew that he would never be able to marry her, for her rank was too high for him, and he was genuinely unhappy on this account.

Such instances show clearly that young people want to marry, even when they already possess each other sexually, and that the state of marriage has real charm for them. But before I could entirely understand all the reasons and motives for this desire, I had to grasp the complexities and deeper aspects of the institution, and its relation to other elements in the social system.

The first thing to be realized is that the Trobriander has no full status in social life until he is married. As we saw in the table of age designations, the current term for a man in the prime of life is tovavaygile (married man). A bachelor has no household of his own, and is debarred from many privileges. There are, in fact, no unmarried men of mature age, except idiots, incurable invalids, old widowers and albinos. Several men were widowed during my stay in the Islands, and others were deserted by their wives. The former remarried almost as soon as their mourning was over, the latter as soon as their attempts at reconciliation had proved fruitless.

The same applies to women. Provided she is at all sexually tolerable, a widow or divorcee will not have long to wait. Once released from mourning, a widow again becomes marriageable. She may sometimes delay a little, in order to enjoy the sexual freedom of her unmarried state, but such conduct will ultimately draw on her the censure of public opinion, and a growing reputation Rh