Page:The sexual life of savages in north-western Melanesia.djvu/179

Rh, but not without success. Polygamy in the Trobriands was never a cruel and inhuman institution. In this chapter we have discussed marriage in its domestic aspect, and in the aspect of the economic and legal obligations which it imposes on the wife's family with regard to the household. Finally we have discussed the effect on public and political life which it exerts through the fact of the chief's polygamy. In the next chapter we shall see what light is thrown on marriage in the Trobriands by the modes of its dissolution through divorce and death. Rh