When we say that marriage is a socially approved sexual and economic union, we mean that all societies have some way of marking the onset of a marriage, but the ways of doing so vary considerably. For reasons that we don’t fully understand, some cultures mark marriages by elaborate rites and celebrations; others mark marriages in much more informal ways. And most societies have economic transactions before, during, or even after the onset of the marriages.
Marking the Onset of Marriage
Many societies mark the beginning of a marriage with a ceremony. Others, such as the Taramiut Inuit of the Arctic, the Trobriand Islanders, and the Kwoma of New Guinea, use different social signals to indicate that a marriage has taken place.
Among the Taramiut Inuit, an engaged couple’s success at producing offspring marks the onset of marriage. The betrothal, or engagement, is considered extremely important and is arranged between the parents at or before the time their children reach puberty. Later, when the young man is ready, he moves in with his betrothed’s family for a trial period. If all goes well—that is, if the young woman gives birth to a baby within a year or so—the couple is considered married and the wife goes with her husband to his camp. If the couple does not conceive, the young man returns to his family without a wife.
In keeping with the general openness of their society’s attitudes toward sexual matters, a Trobriand couple advertises its desire to marry “by sleeping together regularly, by showing themselves together in public, and by remaining with each other for long periods at a time.” When a girl accepts a small gift from a boy, she demonstrates that her parents favor the match. Before long, she moves to the boy’s house, takes her meals there, and accompanies her husband all day. Then the word goes around that the two are married.
The Kwoma practice a trial marriage followed by a ceremony that makes the couple husband and wife. The girl lives for a while in the boy’s home. When the boy’s mother is satisfied with the match and knows that her son is too, she waits for a day when he is away from the house. Until that time, the girl has been cooking only for herself, and the boy’s food has been prepared by his womenfolk. Now the mother has ask the girl prepare his meal. The young man returns and begins to eat his soup. When the first bowl is nearly finished, his mother tells him that his betrothed cooked the meal, and his eating it means that he is now married. At this news, the boy customarily rushes out of the house, spits out the soup, and shouts, “Faugh! It tastes bad! It is cooked terribly!” A ceremony then makes the marriage official.
Just in the last three decades, “living together” has become more of an option in the United States and other Western countries. For most, living together is a prelude to marriage or kind of a trial marriage. For some, living together has become an alternative to marriage. Statistics in the United States suggest that by 1995 more than half of married women under the age of 45 had lived with a man without being married for at least some time period.
Among those societies that have ceremonies marking the onset of marriage, feasting is a common public expression of the unification of the two families by marriage. A feast opens and ends the ceremony among the Reindeer Tungus of Siberia, for example. A wedding date is set after protracted negotiations between the two families and their larger kin groups. Go-betweens assume most of the responsibility for the negotiating. The wedding day opens with the two kin groups, probably numbering as many as 150 people, pitching their lodges in separate areas and offering a great feast. After the groom’s gifts have been presented, the bride’s dowry is loaded onto reindeer and carried to the groom’s lodge. There, the climax of the ceremony takes place. The bride takes the wife’s place—that is, at the right side of the entrance of the lodge—and members of both families sit in a circle. The groom enters and follows the bride around the circle, greeting each guest, while the guests, in their turn, kiss the bride on the mouth and hands. Finally, the go-betweens spit three times on the bride’s hands, and the couple is formally husband and wife. More feasting and revelry bring the day to a close.
In many cultures, marriage includes ceremonial expressions of hostility between the couples’ families. Mock fights are staged or, in many societies, taunting and teasing take place. On occasion, such mock fights can have genuinely aggressive overtones, as among the Gusii of Kenya:
Five young clansmen of the groom come to take the bride and two immediately find the girl and post themselves at her side to prevent her escape, while the others receive the final permission of her parents. When it has been granted the bride holds onto the house posts and must be dragged outside by the young men. Finally she goes along with them, crying and with her hands on her head.
But the battle is not yet over. Mutual antagonism continues right onto the marriage bed, even up to and beyond coitus. The groom is determined to display his virility; the bride is equally determined to test it. “Brides,” Robert and Barbara LeVine remarked, “are said to take pride in the length of time they can hold off their mates.” Men can also win acclaim. If the bride is unable to walk the following day, the groom is considered a “real man.” Such expressions of hostility usually occur in societies in which the two sets of kin are actual or potential rivals or enemies. In many societies, it is common to marry women from “enemy” villages.
As the Gusii example suggests, marriage ceremonies often symbolize important elements of the culture. Whereas some ceremonies may symbolize hostility between the two families, others may promote harmony between the families.
On the Polynesian island of Rotuma, for example, a female clown is an important part of the ceremony. She is responsible for creating an enjoyable, joking atmosphere that facilitates interaction between the two sides.