Hostname: page-component-76fb5796d-vvkck Total loading time: 0 Render date: 2024-04-29T02:56:17.682Z Has data issue: false hasContentIssue false
  • English
  • Français

A Note on ‘Woman Marriage’ in Dahomey

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  21 August 2012

Melville J. Herskovits
Get access Rights & Permissions [Opens in a new window]

Extract

Reports of the occurrence of ‘woman marriage’ in parts of Africa as far distant from one another as northern and southern Nigeria, the Anglo-Egyptian Sudan, and the Union of South Africa indicate the possibility that there may be other instances of this institution that have gone unrecorded. The purpose of this paper is therefore to call attention to this striking phase of social organization by describing the form which ‘woman marriage’ takes in Dahomey, presenting data collected in the field in 1931. In doing this, attention will be paid to such aspects of the social setting in which this kind of marriage is lodged as may be needed to allow it best to be understood, while some of the attitudes which arise from it will also be indicated.

Type
Research Article
Information
Africa , Volume 10 , Issue 3 , July 1937 , pp. 335 - 341
Copyright
Copyright © International African Institute 1937

Access options

Get access to the full version of this content by using one of the access options below. (Log in options will check for institutional or personal access. Content may require purchase if you do not have access.)

References

page 335 note 1 Meek, C. K., The Northern Tribes of Nigeria, vol. i, pp. 209–10.Google Scholar

page 336 note 1 Talbot, P. A., Tribes of the Niger Delta, pp. 195–6. Talbot records the same phenomenon more briefly in The Peoples of Southern Nigeria, vol. iii, pp. 431, 439, and 441. Among the Ibo, apparently, the institution sometimes degenerates into a form of prostitution, since Talbot says that, ‘Occasionally, however, it is simply a method of investment, and the “wife” is hired out to various men on payment, while any children belong to the female “husband”.’Google Scholar

page 336 note 2 C. G., and Seligman, B. Z., Pagan Tribes of the Nilotic Sudan, pp. 164–5Google Scholar; Meek, , op. cit., pp. 209–10, also remarks the presence of this custom among the Dinka in connection with the passage from his book just quoted.Google Scholar

page 336 note 3 Op. cit., p. 221.

page 337 note 1 Stayt, Hugh A., The Bavenda, pp. 143–4; p. 170.Google Scholar

page 337 note 2 A brief summary of Dahomean social organization and marriage-types which will provide a somewhat fuller statement of the background of the marriage form under discussion than can be given in this paper is to be found in Herskovits, M. J., ‘Some Aspects of Dahomean Ethnology’, Africa, vol. v (1932), pp. 272–81.Google Scholar

page 338 note 1 Herissé, A. Le, L'Ancien Royaume du Dahomey, pp. 210–11, names this form of marriage, but in his discussion confuses it with another type of the xadudó category named avonúsi, ‘woman-with-cloth’, in which a princess gives a young female retainer to a man to be his wife.Google Scholar

page 338 note 2 Herissé, Le, loc. cit., asserts that this form of marriage, though popular in earlier times, is disappearing under European control. This statement is somewhat to be doubted.Google Scholar

page 338 note 3 Though it is possible that the girl may be given to the actual husband of the woman who has ‘married’ her, no instances of this were recorded.

page 339 note 1 The words of Le Herissé in introducing his exposition of this marriage form also puts the matter with great clarity: ‘On conduit “une chèvre à un bouc”; qui sera le propriétaire des petits de la chèvre? Sans mil doute, le propriétaire de la chèvre. II en est ainsi des enfants nés sous ce régime. Us deviennent la propriété du maître de la mère, ou plus exactement, ils tombent sous la même puissance que leur mère.’

page 339 note 2 This is strikingly shown, for example, in the material comprising a paper entitled ‘Population Statistics in the Kingdom of Dahomey’, Human Biology, vol. iv (1932), pp. 252–61, where another portion of the 1931 field-data is analysed.Google Scholar