Chapter 7
Summary
In chapter 7, Mead explains how relationships work between the sexes. Mead explains that there are two types of sex relations besides marriage that are recognized by the community. The first is love affairs between unmarried people and the second is adultery, something that does not always imply a broken marriage in the Samoan culture.
In young lover affairs the boy calls upon the help of a soa, a friend who acts as ambassador between the boy and girl. Mead discusses the difficulty the boy has in choosing a soa and how getting a woman ambassador, a soafafine, is thought to be even better than a soa but a woman ambassador is more difficult to come by. Mead also discusses the moetotolo, the sleep crawler.
Mead explains how virginity is thought to add to a girl’s attractiveness and compares a normal girl’s sexual relationships to a taupo’s sexual relationships. Mead concludes by discussing divorce and mentioning how a woman’s rank can never exceed her husband’s rank.
Discussion
Some of the things mentioned in this chapter were very surprising to me: like how adultery is not entirely frowned upon and how simple it is to divorce. It is interesting how very different there culture is from ours.
I also found the idea of elopement in the culture to be strange. I can’t see why a girl would risk elopement when “nine times out of ten” the guy’s only motive is vanity and display, but for the girl it can lead to her getting beating by her family.
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