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"!