Page:The sexual life of savages in north-western Melanesia.djvu/185

Rh existence of a nakubukwabuya (unmarried girl), entering upon liaison after liaison, and living in bachelors' houses. One of the liaisons may lengthen out and develop into a new marriage. Then the new husband must present a valuable object (vaygu'a) to his predecessor, in recompense for the one given to the wife's family at the beginning of the first marriage. The new husband must also give another vaygu'a to his wife's relatives, and he then receives from them the first annual harvest gift — vilakuria — and the subsequent yearly tribute in yams. It seemed to me that a divorcée was much more independent of family interference in choosing her new husband than an ordinary unmarried girl. The initial gifts of food {pepe'i, etc.) are not given in the case of such a remarriage. There is, apparently, no social stigma on a girl or a man who has been married and divorced, although as a matter of amour propre no one wishes to own that he or she has been abandoned by the other.

It goes without saying that the children, in case of divorce, always follow their mother; and this is no doubt another reason why divorce is less popular with men than with women. During the interim, when their mother is living as a spinster, they remain in the household of her nearest married maternal relative.

When a man dies, his wife is not set free by the event. It may be said without paradox that, in a way, the strictest and heaviest shackles of marriage are laid on her after Rh