| Sir James George Frazer (1854–1941). The Golden
Bough. 1922. |
§ 4. Reasons for
the Seclusion of Girls at Puberty |
| |
| THE MOTIVE for the
restraints so commonly imposed on girls at puberty is the deeply
engrained dread which primitive man universally entertains of
menstruous blood. He fears it at all times but especially on its
first appearance; hence the restrictions under which women lie at
their first menstruation are usually more stringent than those which
they have to observe at any subsequent recurrence of the mysterious
flow. Some evidence of the fear and of the customs based on it has
been cited in an earlier part of this work; but as the terror, for
it is nothing less, which the phenomenon periodically strikes into
the mind of the savage has deeply influenced his life and
institutions, it may be well to illustrate the subject with some
further examples. |
1 |
| Thus in the Encounter Bay tribe of South Australia
there is, or used to be, a “superstition which obliges a woman to
separate herself from the camp at the time of her monthly illness,
when if a young man or boy should approach, she calls out, and he
immediately makes a circuit to avoid her. If she is neglectful upon
this point, she exposes herself to scolding, and sometimes to severe
beating by her husband or nearest relation, because the boys are
told from their infancy, that if they see the blood they will early
become grey-headed, and their strength will fail prematurely.” The
Dieri of Central Australia believe that if women at these times were
to eat fish or bathe in a river, the fish would all die and the
water would dry up. The Arunta of the same region forbid menstruous
women to gather the irriakura bulbs, which form a staple
article of diet for both men and women. They think that were a woman
to break this rule, the supply of bulbs would fail. |
2 |
| In some Australian tribes the seclusion of
menstruous women was even more rigid, and was enforced by severer
penalties than a scolding or a beating. Thus “there is a regulation
relating to camps in the Wakelbura tribe which forbids the women
coming into the encampment by the same path as the men. Any
violation of this rule would in a large camp be punished with death.
The reason for this is the dread with which they regard the
menstrual period of women. During such a time, a woman is kept
entirely away from the camp, half a mile at
least. A woman in such a condition has boughs of some tree of her
totem tied round her loins, and is constantly watched and guarded,
for it is thought that should any male be so unfortunate as to see a
woman in such a condition, he would die. If such a woman were to let
herself be seen by a man, she would probably be put to death. When
the woman has recovered, she is painted red and white, her head
covered with feathers, and returns to the camp.” |
3 |
| In Muralug, one of the Torres Straits Islands, a
menstruous woman may not eat anything that lives in the sea, else
the natives believe that the fisheries would fail. In Galela, to the
west of New Guinea, women at their monthly periods may not enter a
tobacco-field, or the plants would be attacked by disease. The
Minangkabauers of Sumatra are persuaded that if a woman in her
unclean state were to go near a rice-field, the crop would be
spoiled. |
4 |
| The Bushmen of South Africa think that, by a glance
of a girl’s eye at the time when she ought to be kept in strict
retirement, men become fixed in whatever positions they happen to
occupy, with whatever they were holding in their hands, and are
changed into trees that talk. Cattle-rearing tribes of South Africa
hold that their cattle would die if the milk were drunk by a
menstruous woman; and they fear the same disaster if a drop of her
blood were to fall on the ground and the oxen were to pass over it.
To prevent such a calamity women in general, not menstruous women
only, are forbidden to enter the cattle enclosure; and more than
that, they may not use the ordinary paths in entering the village or
in passing from one hut to another. They are obliged to make
circuitous tracks at the back of the huts in order to avoid the
ground in the middle of the village where the cattle stand or lie
down. These women’s tracks may be seen at every Caffre village.
Among the Baganda, in like manner, no menstruous woman might drink
milk or come into contact with any milk-vessel; and she might not
touch anything that belonged to her husband, nor sit on his mat, nor
cook his food. If she touched anything of his at such a time it was
deemed equivalent to wishing him dead or to actually working magic
for his destruction. Were she to handle any article of his, he would
surely fall ill; were she to touch his weapons, he would certainly
be killed in the next battle. Further, the Baganda would not suffer
a menstruous woman to visit a well; if she did so, they feared that
the water would dry up, and that she herself would fall sick and
die, unless she confessed her fault and the medicine-man made
atonement for her. Among the Akikuyu of British East Africa, if a
new hut is built in a village and the wife chances to menstruate in
it on the day she lights the first fire there, the hut must be
broken down and demolished the very next day. The woman may on no
account sleep a second night in it; there is a curse both on her and
on it. |
5 |
| According to the Talmud, if a woman at the beginning
of her period passes between two men, she thereby kills one of them.
Peasants of the Lebanon think that
menstruous women are the cause or many misfortunes; their shadow
causes flowers to wither and trees to perish, it even arrests the
movements of serpents; if one of them mounts a horse, the animal
might die or at least be disabled for a long time. |
6 |
| The Guayquiries of the Orinoco believe that when a
woman has her courses, everything upon which she steps will die, and
that if a man treads on the place where she has passed, his legs
will immediately swell up. Among the Bri-bri Indians of Costa Rica a
married woman at her periods uses for plates only banana leaves,
which, when she has done with them, she throws away in a sequestered
spot; for should a cow find and eat them, the animal would waste
away and perish. Also she drinks only out of a special vessel,
because any person who should afterwards drink out of the same
vessel would infallibly pine away and die. |
7 |
| Among most tribes of North American Indians the
custom was that women in their courses retired from the camp or the
village and lived during the time of their uncleanness in special
huts or shelters which were appropriated to their use. There they
dwelt apart, eating and sleeping by themselves, warming themselves
at their own fires, and strictly abstaining from all communications
with men, who shunned them just as if they were stricken with the
plague. |
8 |
| Thus, to take examples, the Creek and kindred
Indians of the United States compelled women at menstruation to live
in separate huts at some distance from the village. There the women
had to stay, at the risk of being surprised and cut off by enemies.
It was thought “a most horrid and dangerous pollution” to go near
the women at such times; and the danger extended to enemies who, if
they slew the women, had to cleanse themselves from the pollution by
means of certain sacred herbs and roots. The Stseelis Indians of
British Columbia imagined that if a menstruous woman were to step
over a bundle of arrows, the arrows would thereby be rendered
useless and might even cause the death of their owner; and similarly
that if she passed in front of a hunter who carried a gun, the
weapon would never shoot straight again. Among the Chippeways and
other Indians of the Hudson Bay Territory, menstruous women are
excluded from the camp, and take up their abode in huts of branches.
They wear long hoods, which effectually conceal the head and breast.
They may not touch the household furniture nor any objects used by
men; for their touch “is supposed to defile them, so that their
subsequent use would be followed by certain mischief or misfortune,”
such as disease or death. They must drink out of a swan’s bone. They
may not walk on the common paths nor cross the tracks of animals.
They “are never permitted to walk on the ice of rivers or lakes, or
near the part where the men are hunting beaver, or where a
fishing-net is set, for fear of averting their success. They are
also prohibited at those times from partaking of the head of any
animal, and even from walking in or crossing the track where the
head of a deer, moose, beaver, and many other animals have lately been carried, either on a
sledge or on the back. To be guilty of a violation of this custom is
considered as of the greatest importance; because they firmly
believe that it would be a means of preventing the hunter from
having an equal success in his future excursions.” So the Lapps
forbid women at menstruation to walk on that part of the shore where
the fishers are in the habit of setting out their fish; and the
Esquimaux of Bering Strait believe that if hunters were to come near
women in their courses they would catch no game. For a like reason
the Carrier Indians will not suffer a menstruous woman to cross the
tracks of animals; if need be, she is carried over them. They think
that if she waded in a stream or a lake, the fish would die. |
9 |
| Amongst the civilised nations of Europe the
superstitions which cluster round this mysterious aspect of woman’s
nature are not less extravagant than those which prevail among
savages. In the oldest existing cyclopaedia—the Natural
History of Pliny—the list of dangers apprehended from
menstruation is longer than any furnished by mere barbarians.
According to Pliny, the touch of a menstruous woman turned wine to
vinegar, blighted crops, killed seedlings, blasted gardens, brought
down the fruit from trees, dimmed mirrors, blunted razors, rusted
iron and brass (especially at the waning of the moon), killed bees,
or at least drove them from their hives, caused mares to miscarry,
and so forth. Similarly, in various parts of Europe, it is still
believed that if a woman in her courses enters a brewery the beer
will turn sour; if she touches beer, wine, vinegar, or milk, it will
go bad; if she makes jam, it will not keep; if she mounts a mare, it
will miscarry; if she touches buds, they will wither; if she climbs
a cherry tree, it will die. In Brunswick people think that if a
menstruous woman assists at the killing of a pig, the pork will
putrefy. In the Greek island of Calymnos a woman at such times may
not go to the well to draw water, nor cross a running stream, nor
enter the sea. Her presence in a boat is said to raise storms. |
10 |
| Thus the object of secluding women at menstruation
is to neutralise the dangerous influences which are supposed to
emanate from them at such times. That the danger is believed to be
especially great at the first menstruation appears from the unusual
precautions taken to isolate girls at this crisis. Two of these
precautions have been illustrated above, namely, the rules that the
girls may not touch the ground nor see the sun. The general effect
of these rules is to keep her suspended, so to say, between heaven
and earth. Whether enveloped in her hammock and slung up to the
roof, as in South America, or raised above the ground in a dark and
narrow cage, as in New Ireland, she may be considered to be out of
the way of doing mischief, since, being shut off both from the earth
and from the sun, she can poison neither of these great sources of
life by her deadly contagion. In short, she is rendered harmless by
being, in electrical language, insulated. But the precautions thus
taken to isolate or insulate the girl are dictated by a regard for
her own safety as well as for the safety of others. For it is
thought that she herself would suffer if
she were to neglect the prescribed regimen. Thus Zulu girls, as we
have seen, believe that they would shrivel to skeletons if the sun
were to shine on them at puberty, and the Macusis imagine that, if a
young woman were to transgress the rules, she would suffer from
sores on various parts of her body. In short, the girl is viewed as
charged with a powerful force which, if not kept within bounds, may
prove destructive both to herself and to all with whom she comes in
contact. To repress this force within the limits necessary for the
safety of all concerned is the object of the taboos in question. |
11 |
| The same explanation applies to the observance of
the same rules by divine kings and priests. The uncleanness, as it
is called, of girls at puberty and the sanctity of holy men do not,
to the primitive mind, differ materially from each other. They are
only different manifestations of the same mysterious energy which,
like energy in general, is in itself neither good nor bad, but
becomes beneficent or maleficent according to its application.
Accordingly, if, like girls at puberty, divine personages may
neither touch the ground nor see the sun, the reason is, on the one
hand, a fear lest their divinity might, at contact with earth or
heaven, discharge itself with fatal violence on either; and, on the
other hand, an apprehension that the divine being, thus drained of
his ethereal virtue, might thereby be incapacitated for the future
performance of those magical functions, upon the proper discharge of
which the safety of the people and even of the world is believed to
hang. Thus the rules in question fall under the head of the taboos
which we examined in an earlier part of this book; they are intended
to preserve the life of the divine person and with it the life of
his subjects and worshippers. Nowhere, it is thought, can his
precious yet dangerous life be at once so safe and so harmless as
when it is neither in heaven nor in earth, but, as far as possible,
suspended between the two. |
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