19.1 Define marriage in anthropological terms.
Marriage is customary in nearly every known society. The fact that it exists nearly everywhere does not mean marriage takes the same form or is recognized in similar ways. Marriage is a socially approved sexual and economic union, usually between a woman and a man. It is presumed, by both the couple and others, to be more or less permanent, and it subsumes reciprocal rights and obligations between the two spouses and between spouses and their future children.3
Marriage is a socially approved sexual union in that the couple’s sexual relationship is implicitly understood and legitimated. A woman might say, “I want you to meet my husband,” but she could not say, “I want you to meet my lover” without embarrassment in most societies. Although the union may one day end in divorce, couples in all societies enter into marriage expecting a long-term commitment. Implicit too in marriage are reciprocal rights and obligations regarding property, finances, and childrearing. As George Peter Murdock noted, “Sexual relations can occur without economic cooperation, and there can be a division of labor between men and women without sex. But marriage unites the economic and the sexual.”4
As we will see, societies have had a variety of marriage practices. Customs marking the onset of the union—the nuptials or wedding ceremony—may have been elaborate and lasted for several days or have hardly existed. A Ho-Chunk (or Winnebago) bride, for example, experienced no formal wedding ceremony. If the marriage was arranged by the couple’s parents, as was customary, the families would exchange presents when the engagement was made, and then the groom would move in with the bride’s family, where he might stay for two years as a dutiful son-in-law before returning to his own home with his wife. If the couple eloped, the marriage might be even less ceremonious. One man, Crashing Thunder, recalled eloping with a young woman at his grandfather’s instructions:
I told her of my intention and asked her to go home with me. . . . After a while she came back all dressed up and ready. She had on a waist covered with silver buckles and a beautifully colored hair ornament and she wore many strings of beads around her neck, and bracelets around her wrists. Her fingers were covered with rings and she wore a pair of ornamental leggings. She wore a wide-flap ornamented moccasin and in each ear she had about half a dozen ear holes and they were full of small silver pieces made into ear ornaments. She was painted also. She had painted her cheeks red and the parting of her hair red.
Crashing Thunder takes his resplendent bride home on horseback but stops along the way for a singing engagement with his band. Because they have eloped “and that is the custom,” he has his bride hide under “a small oak bush” for the night. It rains all night, and she is “soaked through and through” when Crashing Thunder returns the next day to retrieve her. When they arrive at his grandfather’s house, the bride takes off her finery and gives it to her in-laws, who give her “other clothing to wear.” And that is that.5