Читать книгу Sex and Repression in Savage Society - Bronislaw 1884-1942 Malinowski - Страница 9

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We have now reached the period when the child is already weaned, when it is learning to walk and begins to speak. Yet biologically it is but slowly gaining its independence from the mother’s body. It clings to her with undiminished, passionate desire for her presence, for the touch of her body and the tender clasp of her arms.

This is the natural, biological tendency, but in our society, at one stage or another, the child’s desires are crossed and thwarted. Let us first realize that the period upon which we now enter is introduced by the process of weaning. By this the blissful harmony of infantile life is broken, or at least modified. Among the higher classes, weaning is so prepared, graduated and adjusted that it usually passes without any shock. But among women of the lower classes, in our society, weaning is often a painful wrench for the mother and certainly for the child. Later on, other obstacles tend to obtrude upon the intimacy of the mother with the child, in whom at that stage a notable change is taking place. He becomes independent in his movements, can feed himself, express some of his feelings and ideas, and begins to understand and to observe. In the higher classes, the nursery arrangements separate the mother from the child in a gradual manner. This dispenses with any shock, but it leaves a gap in the child’s life, a yearning and an unsatisfied need. In the lower classes, where the child shares the parents’ bed, it becomes at a certain time a source of embarrassment and an encumbrance, and suffers a rude and more brutal repulsion.

How does savage motherhood on the coral islands of New Guinea compare at this stage with ours? First of all, weaning takes place much later in life, at a time when the child is already independent, can run about, eat practically everything and follow other interests. It takes place, that is, at a moment when the child neither wants nor needs the mother’s breast any more, so that the first wrench is eliminated.

‘Matriarchate,’ the rule of the mother, does not in any way entail a stern, terrible mother-virago. The Trobriand mother carries her children, fondles them, and plays with them at this stage quite as lovingly as at the earlier period, and custom as well as morals expects it from her. The child is bound to her, also, according to law, custom and usage, by a closer tie than is her husband, whose rights are subservient to those of the offspring. The psychology of the intimate marital relations has therefore a different character, and the repulsion of the child from the mother by the father is certainly not a typical occurrence, if it ever occurs at all. Another difference between the Melanesian and the typical European mother is that the former is much more indulgent. Since there is little training of the child, and hardly any moral education; since what there is begins later and is done by other people, there is scarcely room for severity. This absence of maternal discipline precludes on the one hand such aberrations of severity as are sometimes found among us; on the other hand, however, it lessens the feeling of interest on the part of the child, the desire to please the mother, and to win her approval. This desire, it must be remembered, is one of the strong links of filial attachment among us, and one which holds great possibilities for the establishment of a permanent relation in later life.

Turning now to the paternal relation we see that, in our society, irrespective of nationality or social class, the father still enjoys the patriarchal status.^[1] He is the head of the family and the relevant link in the lineage, and he is also the economic provider. As an absolute ruler of the family, he is liable to become a tyrant, in which case frictions of all sorts arise between him and his wife and children. The details of these depend greatly on the social milieu. In the wealthy classes of Western civilization, the child is well separated from his father by all sorts of nursery arrangements. Although constantly with the nurse, the child is usually attended to and controlled by the mother, who, in such cases, almost invariably takes the dominant place in the child’s affections. The father, on the other hand, is seldom brought within the child’s horizon, and then only as an onlooker and stranger, before whom the children have to behave themselves, show off and perform. He is the source of authority, the origin of punishment, and therefore becomes a bogey. Usually the result is a mixture; he is the perfect being for whose benefit everything has to be done; and, at the same time, he is the ‘ogre’ whom the child has to fear and for whose comfort, as the child soon realizes, the household is arranged. The loving and sympathetic father will easily assume the former rôle of a demi-god. The pompous, wooden, or tactless one will soon earn the suspicion and even hate of the nursery. In relation to the father, the mother becomes an intermediary who is sometimes ready to denounce the child to the higher authority, but who at the same time can intercede against punishment.

The picture is different, though the results are not dissimilar, in the one-room and one-bed households of the poor peasantry of Central and Eastern Europe, or of the lower working classes. The father is brought into closer contact with the child, which in rare circumstances allows of a greater affection, but usually gives rise to much more acute and chronic friction. When a father returns home tired from work, or drunk from the inn, he naturally vents his ill-temper on the family, and bullies mother and children. There is no village, no poor quarter in a modern town, where cases could not be found of sheer, patriarchal cruelty. From my own memory, I could quote numerous cases where peasant fathers would, on returning home drunk, beat the children for sheer pleasure, or drag them out of bed and send them into the cold night.

Even at best, when the working father returns home, the children have to keep quiet, stop rowdy games and repress spontaneous, childish outbursts of joy and sorrow. The father is a supreme source of punishment in poor households also, while the mother acts as intercessor, and often shares in the treatment meted out to the children. In the poorer households, moreover, the economic rôle of provider and the social power of the father are more quickly and definitely recognized, and act in the same direction as his personal influence.

The rôle of the Melanesian father at this stage is very different from that of the European patriarch. I have briefly sketched in Chapter IV his very different social position as husband and father, and the part he plays in the household. He is not the head of the family, he does not transmit his lineage to his children, nor is he the main provider of food. This entirely changes his legal rights and his personal attitude to his wife. A Trobriand man will seldom quarrel with his wife, hardly ever attempt to brutalize her, and he will never be able to exercise a permanent tyranny. Even sexual co-habitation is not regarded by native law and usage as the wife’s duty and the husband’s privilege, as is the case in our society. The Trobriand natives take the view, dictated by tradition, that the husband is indebted to his wife for sexual services, that he has to deserve them and pay for them. One of the ways, the chief way, in fact, of acquitting himself of this duty is by performing services for her children and showing affection to them. There are many native sayings which embody in a sort of loose folk-lore these principles. In the child’s infancy the husband has been the nurse, tender and loving; later on in early childhood he plays with it, carries it, and teaches it such amusing sports and occupations as take its fancy.

Thus the legal, moral and customary tradition of the tribe and all the forces of organization combine to give the man, in his conjugal and paternal rôle, an entirely different attitude from that of a patriarch. And though it has to be defined in an abstract manner, this is by no means a mere legal principle, detached from life. It expresses itself in every detail of daily existence, permeates all the relations within the family, and dominates the sentiments found there. The children never see their mother subjugated or brutalized or in abject dependence upon her husband, not even when she is a commoner married to a chief. They never feel his heavy hand on themselves; he is not their kinsman, nor their owner, nor their benefactor. He has no rights or prerogatives. Yet he feels, as does every normal father all over the world, a strong affection for them; and this, together with his traditional duties, makes him try to win their love, and thus to retain his influence over them.

Comparing European with Melanesian paternity, it is important to keep in mind the biological facts as well as the sociological. Biologically there is undoubtedly in the average man a tendency towards affectionate and tender feelings for his children. But this tendency seems not to be strong enough to outweigh the many hardships which children entail on a parent. When, therefore, society steps in and in one case declares that the father is the absolute master, and that the children should be there for his benefit, pleasure and glory, this social influence tilts the balance against a happy equilibrium of natural affection and natural impatience of the nuisance. When, on the other hand, a matrilineal society grants the father no privileges and no right to his children’s affections, then he must earn them, and when again, in the same uncivilized society, there are fewer strains on his nerves and his ambitions and his economic responsibilities, he is freer to give himself up to his paternal instincts. Thus in our society the adjustment between biological and social forces, which was satisfactory in earliest childhood, begins to show a lack of harmony later on. In the Melanesian society, the harmonious relations persist.

Father-right, we have seen, is to a great extent a source of family conflict, in that it grants to the father social claims and prerogatives not commensurate with his biological propensities, nor with the personal affection which he can feel for and arouse in his children.

[1]

Here again I should like to make an exception with regard to the modern American and British family. The father is in process of losing his patriarchal position. As conditions are in flux, however, it is not safe to take them into consideration here. Psycho-analysis cannot hope, I think, to preserve its “Oedipus complex” for future generations, who will only know a weak and henpecked father. For him the children will feel indulgent pity rather than hatred and fear!