Page:The sexual life of savages in north-western Melanesia.djvu/150

Rh occasions they usually separate, the wife joining a group of other women, the husband going with the men. You will never surprise an exchange of tender looks, loving smiles, or amorous banter between a husband and wife in the Trobriands.

To quote a terse statement of the case made by one of my informants: "A man who puts his arm round his wife on the baku (central place of the village, i.e. in public); a man who lies down beside his wife on his yam-house platform — he is a fool. If we take hold of our wife by the hand — we act as fools. If a husband and wife catch each other's lice on the baku — that is correct" (see pl. 25), With the possible exception of the last point, it will be conceded that married couples in the Trobriands push their etiquette to a point which would seem unnaturally exaggerated and burdensome to us.

This punctilio, as we know, does not preclude good-humoured familiarity in other respects. Husband and wife may talk and exchange banter in public as long as any allusion to sex is rigidly excluded. Generally speaking, husband and wife remain on excellent terms, and show a marked liking for each other's company. In Omarakana, Oburaku, Sinaketa, and in the many other places where I became intimately acquainted with the domestic life of the people, I found the majority of couples united by unwavering sexual attachment or by real congeniality of temperament. Kalogusa and his wife, to take an instance from among friends already mentioned, I found as good comrades after two years of marriage as in the days of courtship. And Kuwo'igu, the wife of Rh