The simplest form of purchase is to give a woman in exchange.  “The Australian male almost invariably obtains his wife or wives either as the survivor of a married elder brother or in exchange for his sisters, or, later in life, for his daughters."[142] A wife is also often sold on credit, but kept at home until the price is paid.  On the island of Serang a youth belongs to the family of the girl, living according to her customs and religion until the bride-price is paid.  He then takes both wife and children to his tribe.  But in case he is very poor, he never pays the price, and remains perpetually in the tribe of his wife.[143] Among the Kwakiutl Indians of British Columbia the maternal has only barely given way to the paternal system, and the form of marriage reflects both systems.  The suitor sends a messenger with blankets, and the number sent is doubled within three months, making in all about one hundred and fifty.  These are to be returned later.  He is then allowed to live with the girl in her father’s house.  Three months later the husband gives perhaps a hundred blankets more for permission to take his wife home.[144] Among the Makassar and Beginese stems of Indionesia the purchase of a wife involves only a partial relinquishment of the claim of the maternal house on the girl; the purchase price is paid by instalments and all belongs to the mother’s kindred in case full payment is not made.  A compromise between the two systems is made on the Molucca Islands, where children born before the bride-price is paid belong to the mother’s side, after that to the father’s.[145]

So long as a wife remained in her group, she could rely upon her kindred for protection against ill-usage from her husband, but she forfeited this advantage when she passed to his group.  An Arabian girl replies to her father, when a chief seeks her in marriage:  “No!  I am not fair of face, and I have infirmities of temper, and I am not his bint’amm (tribeswoman), so that he should respect my consanguinity with him, nor does he dwell in thy country, so that he should have regard for thee; I fear then that he may not care for me and may divorce me, and so I shall be in an evil case."[146] The Hassanyeh Arabs of the White Nile region in Egypt afford a curious example of the conflict of male and female interests in connection with marriage, in which the female passes by contract for only a portion of her time under the authority of the male: 

When the parents of the man and woman meet to settle the price of the woman, the price depends on how many days in the week the marriage tie is to be strictly observed.  The woman’s mother first of all proposes that, taking everything into consideration, with a due regard for the feelings of the family, she could not think of binding her daughter to a due observance of that chastity which matrimony is expected to command for more than two days in the week.  After a great deal of apparently angry discussion, and the promise