Page:The sexual life of savages in north-western Melanesia.djvu/200

Rh feelings of the survivors run their natural course independently of the mimic and official display of grief. The existence of an individual reality of thought, sentiment, and impulse, unfolding itself side by side with the conventional sentiment and idea contained in and imposed by a traditional pattern, is one of the most important subjects of social psychology—a subject on which we need more material from ethnological investigation, carried on with a good deal of detail and based upon personal knowledge of the savages observed.

In the Trobriands, the genuine sorrow of the widow and children is blurred, overlaid, and made almost unrecognizable by the histrionic display of grief. But their real feelings can be gauged by observing their behaviour at other times, especially under critical conditions. I have seen more than one case of a husband sitting night after night at his sick wife's bedside. I have seen his hopes surge and ebb, and unmistakable, even deep, despair set in as the apparent chances of survival waned. Differences are clearly distinguishable in the sorrow of widows and widowers, some merely conforming to custom, others genuinely grieving. To'uluwa, the chief, though a rather selfish and shallow character, could not speak about the death of Kadamwasila, his favourite wife, without visible and real emotion. Toyodala, the nicest man I knew in Oburaku (see pl. 33), was for weeks anxiously watching his wife's illness, and hoping for her recovery. When she died, he behaved at first like a madman, and then, during his mourning confinement, in which I often visited him, he wept so bitterly that his Rh