WHY DO AUSTRALIANS MARRY?

Since chastity among the young of both sexes is not held of any account, and since the young girls, who are married to men four or five times their age, are always ready for an intrigue with a young bachelor, why does an Australian ever marry?  He does not marry for love, for, as this whole chapter proves, he is incapable of such a sentiment.  His appetites need not urge him to marry, since there are so many ways of appeasing them outside of matrimony.  He does not marry to enjoy a monopoly of a woman’s favors, since he is ready to share them with others.  Why then does he marry?  One reason may be that, as the men get older (they seldom marry before they are twenty-five or even thirty), they have less relish for the dangers connected with woman-stealing and intrigues.  A second reason is indicated in Hewitt’s explanation (Jour.  Anthr.  Inst., XX., 58), that it is an advantage to an Australian to have as many wives as possible, as they work and hunt for him, and “he also obtains great influence in the tribe by lending them his Piraurus occasionally, and receiving presents from the young men.”

The main reason, however, why an Australian marries is in order that he may have a drudge.  I have previously cited Eyre’s statement that the natives

“value a wife principally as a slave; in fact, when asked why they are anxious to obtain wives, their usual reply is, that they may get wood, water, and food for them, and carry whatever property they possess.”

H. Kempe (loc. cit., 55) says that

“if there are plenty of girls they are married as early as possible (at the age of eight to ten), as far as possible to one and the same man, for as it is the duty of the women to provide food, a man who has several wives can enjoy his leisure the more thoroughly.”

And Lindsay Cranford testifies (Jour.  Anthrop.  Inst., XXIV., 181) regarding the Victoria River natives that,

“after about thirty years of age a man is allowed to have as many women as he likes, and the older he gets the younger the girls are that he gets, probably to work and get food for him, for in their wild state the man is too proud to do anything except carry a woomera and spear.”

Under these circumstances it is needless to say that there is not a trace of romance connected with an Australian marriage.  After a man has secured his girl, she quietly submits and goes with him as his wife and drudge, to build his camp, gather firewood, fetch water, make nets, clear away grass, dig roots, fish for mussels, be his baggage mule on journeys, etc. (Brough Smyth, 84); and Eyre (II., 319) thus completes the picture.  There is, he says, no marriage ceremony: 

“In those cases where I have witnessed the giving away of a wife, the woman was simply ordered by the nearest male relative in whose disposal she was, to take up her ‘rocko,’ the bag in which a female carries the effects of her husband, and go to the man’s camp to whom she had been given.”

CURIOSITIES OF JEALOUSY