Page:The sexual life of savages in north-western Melanesia.djvu/241

Rh

The interesting duality between matrilineal and patriarchal influences, represented by the mother's brother and the father respectively, is one of the leitmotifs of the first act of Trobriand tribal life. Here we have come to the very core of the problem: for we see within this social scheme, with its rigid brother-sister taboo and its ignorance of physical fatherhood, two natural spheres of influence to be exercised over a woman by a man (see ch. i, secs, i and 2): the one, that of sex, from which the brother is absolutely debarred and where the husband's influence is paramount; the other, that in which the natural interests of blood relationship can be safeguarded properly only by one who is of the same blood. This is the sphere of the woman's brother.

By the brother's inability to control or to approach, even as a distant spectator, the principal theme in a woman's life—her sex—a wide breach is left in the system of matriliny. Through this breach the husband enters into the closed circle of family and household, and once there makes himself thoroughly at home. To his children he becomes bound by the strongest ties of personal attachment, over his wife he assumes exclusive sexual rights, and shares with her the greater part of domestic and economic concerns.

On the apparently unpropitious soil of strict matriliny, with its denial of any paternal bond through procreation Rh