“allows of the breaking through of the hard and fast rule which for the most part obtains, and according to which the woman belongs to the man to whom she has been betrothed, probably before her birth.”

Yet these cases are rare exceptions, for, as the authors inform us, “the woman naturally runs some risk, as, if caught in the act of eloping, she would be severely punished, if not put to death;” and again:  these cases are not of frequent occurrence, for they depend on the woman’s consent, and she knows that if caught she will in all probability be killed, or at least very roughly handled.  Hence she is “not very easily charmed away from her original possessor.”  Moreover, even these adulterous elopements seldom lead to anything more than a temporary liaison, as we have seen, and it would be comic to speak of a “liberty of choice” in cases where such a choice can be exercised only at the risk of being killed on the spot.

OTHER OBSTACLES TO LOVE

Looking back over the ground traversed in this chapter, we see that Cupid is thwarted in Australia not only by the natural stupidity, coarseness, and sensuality of the natives, but by a number of artificial obstacles which seem to have been devised with almost diabolical ingenuity for the express purpose of stifling the germs of love.  The selfish, systematic, and deliberate suppression of free choice is only one of these obstacles.  There are two others almost equally fatal to love—­the habit of marrying young girls to men old enough to be their fathers or grandfathers, and the complicated marriage taboos.  We have already seen that as a rule the old men appropriate the young girls, the younger men not being allowed to marry till they are twenty-five or thirty, and even then being compelled to take an old man’s cast-off wife of thirty-five or forty summers, “It is usual,” says Curr (I., 110),

“to see old men with mere girls as wives, and men in the prime of life married to widows....  Women have very frequently two husbands during their life-time, the first older and the second younger than themselves....  There are always many bachelors in every tribe."[176]

Not to speak of love, this arrangement makes it difficult even for animal passion to manifest itself except in an adulterous or illegitimate manner.

“At present,” we learn from Spencer and Gillen (104, 558),

“by far the most common method of getting a wife is by means of an arrangement made between brothers or fathers of the respective men and women whereby a particular woman is assigned to a particular man.”

This most usual method of getting a wife is also the most extraordinary.  Suppose one man has a son, another a daughter, generally both of tender age.  Now it would be bad enough to betroth these two without their consent and before they are old enough to have any real choice.  But the Australian way is infinitely worse.  It is arranged that the girl in the case shall be, by and by, not the boy’s wife, but his mother-in-law; that is, the boy is to wed her daughter.  In other words, he must wait not only till she is old enough to marry but till her daughter is old enough to marry!  And this is “by far the most common method”!