Page:The sexual life of savages in north-western Melanesia.djvu/72

Rh The sanctity of the chief's person is particularly localized in his head, which is surrounded by a halo of strict taboos. More especially sacred are the forehead and the occiput with the neck. Only equals in rank, the wives and a few particularly privileged persons, are allowed to touch these parts, for purposes of cleaning, shaving, ornamentation, and delousing. This sanctity of the head extends to the female members of the noble sub-clans, and if a noblewoman marries a commoner, her brow, her occiput, her neck and shoulders, should not — in theory at least — be touched by the husband even during the most intimate phases of conjugal life.

Thus in myth, in the observation of taboo, and in the ceremonial of bending, the woman enjoys exactly the same privileges of rank as the man; but she never exercises the actual power associated with it. No woman is ever the head of any sub-clan, and thus she cannot be a chieftainess. What would happen should there be no male members in a given generation I cannot say, for there are no actual cases of this on record; but the interim regency of a woman seems by no means incompatible with the ideas of the Trobrianders. But, as we shall see later on (ch. v, sec. 4), the privilege of polygamy is the foundation of a chief's or headman's power, and women, of course, have no such similar privilege of polyandry.

Many other social functions of rank are directly exercised by men alone, the women participating only in the social prestige. Thus ownership of canoes, for instance, as vested in the headman — though all the villagers enjoy definite rights in them — but his kinswomen only have Rh