Dahomean Marriage: A Revaluation

Laura Bohannan

doi:10.2307/1156403

Dahomean Marriage: A Revaluation

Published online by Cambridge University Press: 21 August 2012

Laura Bohannan

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We are fortunate in possessing enough good ethnographic material on Dahomey to attempt a reassessment in the light of later theoretical developments of the very interesting types of marriage reported there.

Analysis shows that three criteria are involved in the thirteen ‘types’ of marriage as given by Herskovits's Dahomean informants: (i) the method of arranging the marriage, including courtship and payment of the bride-wealth; (2) the status of the children; and (3) the relationship between man and wife—a constant which is, however, influenced by the distribution of rights and duties in regard to the children. The nature of the social groups concerned in the configuration of rights and duties connected with marriage is a point of great importance which does not appear in connexion with Herskovits's analysis of marriage; he divides these ‘types’ into a matrilineal and a patrilineal class on the basis of the status of the children. The starting-point of the following analysis is the transfer or non-transfer of puissance, or jural authority, through marriage—a criterion emphasized by Le Hérissé.

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LE MARIAGE DAHOMÉEN: UNE RÉESTIMATION

L'Auteur passe en revue divers types de mariage au Dahomey et les analyse sur la base du transfert ou non-transfert de la puissance. Elle fait une distinction entre des droits in uxorem, c'est-à-dire des droits sur une femme en tant qu'épouse, et des droits in genetricem, c'est-à-dire des droits sur les enfants auxquels la femme pourrait donner naissance. Malgré que dans certains types de mariage ces droits soient transférés concomitamment au mari ou à sa lignée, dans d'autres types ils sont partagés, de sorte que le mari acquiert des droits sur sa femme, mais les droits sur ses enfants sont retenus par la lignée de l'épouse, ou pourraient être dévolus à un office, un ‘titre’ ou un nom. Cette répartition différentielle varie d'après les besoins et les situations des divers groupes en question. Elle peut dépendre des considérations économiques ou politiques, ou résulter de la tendance d'établir des lignées de descendance directe, afin de perpétuer des prérogatives individuelles; dans certains cas, elle s'explique dans des termes de relations entre lignées.

La possession de l'autorité de droit sur des enfants n'implique pas nécessairement des relations de parenté avec ces enfants, mais simplement des droits in genetricem sur leur mère.

Type: Research Article
Information: Africa , Volume 19 , Issue 4 , October 1949 , pp. 273 - 287

DOI: https://doi.org/10.2307/1156403 [Opens in a new window]
Copyright: Copyright © International African Institute 1949

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References

^{page 273 note 1} Herskovits, M. J., Dahomey, An Ancient African Kingdom, 1938, i. 301–2Google Scholar .

^{page 273 note 2} , Le Hérissé, L.'Ancien Royaume du Dahomey, 1911Google Scholar , I shall translate puissance as ‘jural authority’ rather than potestas to avoid confusion with the implications of the latter term in Roman Law.

^{page 273 note 3} I shall refer to Herskovits's term ‘sib’ as ‘lineage’, and to the ‘extended family’ and the ‘compound’ as segments of the lineage. For definitions: Herskovits, 1938, i, pp. 137 ff., Evans-Pritchard, E. E., The Nuer, 1940, pp. 6–7Google Scholar .

^{page 273 note 4} For full details: Le Hérissé, 1911, pp. 203-8; Herskovits, 1938, i. 303-8.

^{page 273 note 5} Ibid. i. 303-9; 335-7.

^{page 274 note 1} In Dahomey a name, generally allusive, is given at the assumption of every new status. Herskovits. 1938, i. 263.

^{page 274 note 2} Ibid. i. 311-13. If such repayment is necessary, the marriage becomes one of the ‘woman give back woman’ type, p. 312.

^{page 274 note 3} Ibid. i. 310-11.

^{page 274 note 4} The village or quarter chief, who serves in this case primarily as witness. Ibid. i. 7-16 and passim.

^{page 274 note 5} If he does not do so, the girl may be expelled from her lineage, especially if the original marriage had been arranged to ease tense relations between the two lineages and the consequences of her elopement were serious. Ibid. i. 311.

^{page 274 note 6} Ibid. i. 313.

^{page 274 note 7} Despite Herskovits's use of the term ‘divorce’, there is under such circumstances no permanent dissolution of the marriage and the return of the bride-wealth is not an issue. This is implicit in Herskovits, i. 310, 349.

^{page 275 note 1} Herskovits associates the two explicitly. Ibid. i. 93.

^{page 275 note 2} Cf. the bride's blessing. Ibid. i. 307.

^{page 275 note 3} Ibid. i. 313.

^{page 275 note 4} Ibid. i. 138-42.

^{page 275 note 5} Ibid. i. 313-16.

^{page 275 note 6} In no other case is the bride-wealth returnable if the girl dies before consummation of the marriage. Le Hérissé, 1911, p. 207. Here, however, it is a matter of a heritable debt.

^{page 275 note 7} Both offenders might be expelled from their lineages and cut off from their ancestors to become wanderers in Dahomey. The breach of obligation here is much more serious than in an ordinary elopement. Herskovits, 1938, i. 314.

^{page 275 note 8} A creditor might claim a female pawn as wife if she were not redeemed in a reasonable time; the debt cancelled the bride-wealth. Ibid. i. 83. The ritual payments are not mentioned.

^{page 276 note 1} Herskovits, 1938, i. 162.

^{page 276 note 2} Herskovits, M. J., ‘Outline of Dahomean Religious Belief’, Memoirs of the A.A.A., No. 41, 1933, p. 28Google Scholar .

^{page 276 note 3} Le Hérissé, 1911, p. 205; Herskovits, 1938, i. 335.

^{page 276 note 4} Ibid. i. 337.

^{page 276 note 5} Le Hérissé, 1911, p. 208; Herskovits, 1938, i. 342.

^{page 276 note 6} Le Hérissé, 1911, p. 77.

^{page 276 note 7} For the use of pater, Radcliffe-Brown, A. R., ‘Social Organization of Australian Tribes’, Oceania, i, 1930-1931, p. 42Google Scholar ; Evans-Pritchard, E. E., Some Aspects of Marriage and the Family among the Nuer, Rhodes-Livingstone Papers, No. 11, 1945Google Scholar .

^{page 276 note 8} Le Hérissé, 1911, pp. 204-5. Such offences are: (1) grave injuries to her parents.; (2) sexual relations of her husband with her sister or with a wife under the jural authority of her father, brother, or father's brother; (3) failure of her husband to participate in certain funeral ceremonies of her close relatives. Her lineage could then initiate divorce. Herskovits, 1938, I. 346.

^{page 276 note 9} Le Hérissé1,1911, pp. 204-5.

^{page 276 note 10} The inheritance of widows, ‘dead man woman’ marriage, appears in the class of marriages in which the children stay with the mother. Herskovíts, 1938, i. 302. It is more correct to say that the dead husband's lineage retains jural authority over his widow and children.

^{page 276 note 11} Le Hérissé, 1911, p. 204.

^{page 277 note 1} Herskovits, 1938, i. 349.

^{page 277 note 2} For the general importance of analysing the rights which together define a person's jural position, I am indebted to , Radcliffe-Brown, ‘Patrilineal and Matrilineal Succession’, Lowa Law Review, xx, No. 2, 1935Google Scholar .

^{page 277 note 3} Herskovits, 1938, i. 346. Since the corollary of this statement—where the ritual payments are not given, the children do not ‘belong to the father's sib’ —is supported by other evidence, I have used this assumption. However, Herskovits also states exactly the opposite (Ibid. i. 156, 302): there can be little doubt that a child is in some special relation to the lineages of both parents, irrespective of which lineage has jural authority over him.

^{page 278 note 1} Herskovits, 1938, i. 323. Of five or six children, two are sent to the father; of four, only one goes to the father. Also Le Hérissé, 1911, p. 210.

^{page 278 note 2} Herskovits, 1938, i. 324.

^{page 278 note 3} Ibid. i. 345. Dahomean marriage prohibitions corroborate this view: a man may not marry the daughter ofa brother by a wife whom he may inherit, i.e. one for whom the ritual payments have been made; conversely, if he may not inherit his brother's widow, i.e. if she does not fall under the jural authority of her dead husband's lineage, he may marry her daughter. Marriage prohibitions and widow inheritance are compatible with the distribution of jural authority and jural status. (However, in the royal lineage half-brother and sister may marry.) Le Hérissé, 1911, pp. 211-12.

^{page 278 note 4} I have coined the phrases ‘rights in uxorem’ and ‘rights in genetricem’ both for convenience and to indicate that I am discussing both rights which may be held in the woman.

^{page 279 note 1} ‘Les enfants nés d'union libre ou de toute autre union qui les place sous la puissance maternelle ne peuvent hériter de leur père, à moins que la famille de leur mère n'ait formellement renoncé à ses droits sur eux.’ Le Hérissé, 1911, p. 252.

^{page 279 note 2} In Evans-Pritchard's discussion of Nuer marriage pater refers either to cases in which both rights in uxorem and rights in genetricem are held concomitantly, or to the holder of rights in genetricem where they are not held concomitantly (op. cit. passim.) In Dahomey rights in genetricem may be vested in office, tide or estate as well as a lineage; it is difficult to reify these as pater. In Ashanti marriage as discussed by M. Fortes (‘Kinship and Marriage among the Ashanti’, Kinship and Marriage in Africa, in press), the tetmpater refers to the socially recognized father, the mother's husband. In Dahomey also the socially recognized father of the child is the mother's husband, i.e. the man who held rights in uxorem the mother at the time of the child's birth. The distribution of rights in genetricem does not affect this status.

^{page 280 note 1} The Dahomeans give a political explanation: if the child of a princess were to become a commoner, that child, as a commoner, would be eligible for high political office and yet possibly have connexions with other than the ruling branch of the royal lineage, which might make him disloyal. Le Hérissé, 1911, pp. 30-2.

^{page 280 note 2} Herskovits, 1938, 1. 330-1.

^{page 280 note 3} In his discussion of kinship groups Herskovits couples ‘prince child child’ marriage with ‘child stay father house’ as regards the position of the children (in this connexion compare the differential marriage of the daughters). Ibid. i. 156. He does not do so elsewhere. Ibid. i. 302 and 346.

^{page 280 note 4} Fortes, M., Web of Kinship, 1949, p. 110Google Scholar .

^{page 280 note 5} Le Hérissé points out that they were neither slaves nor relatives of the office-holder (1911, p. 211). Herskovits's statement that they were young women sent from the country-side to the King's palace as attendants on the princesses (1938, i. 325-6) probably refers to the daughters of such women, who would be returned to the holder of rights in genetricem in their mother.

^{page 280 note 6} If the head of a ‘family’ committed a serious crime, his lands were confiscated and his wives and children were given to the ‘law’ in the person of the King or certain of his chiefs. The position of the women, who were usually married out again, seems similar to that of pawns, except that they were apparently kinless. Le Hérissé, 1911, pp. 78-9.

^{page 281 note 1} Herskovits, 1938, i. 326.

^{page 281 note 2} Ibid. i. 325.

^{page 281 note 3} The father could retain the sons only at the express wish of the office-holder, Le Hérissé, 1911, p. 211. If the office-holder relinquished these rights formally, the sons apparently had (as in ‘child stay father house’ marriage) full status in their father's home. Ibid., p. 223.

^{page 281 note 4} Herskovits, M. J., ‘A Note on “Woman Marriage” in Dahomey’, Africa, x, No. 3, 1937, pp. 335–41CrossRef Google Scholar .

^{page 281 note 5} Herskovits, 1938, i. 342.

^{page 282 note 1} Herskovits, 1938, i. 319. A man, who is married or head of a lineage segment, has through his jural authority over his children and members of his lineage, a source of labour which a woman lacks.

^{page 282 note 2} Ibid. i. 320.

^{page 282 note 3} Once the ‘wife’ has children, she may not easily ‘divorce’ their father, ‘particularly when both her own family and the woman who has “married” her insist that she remain with him’. Ibid. i. 346.

^{page 282 note 4} Herskovits notes,‘every Dahomean with whom the matter of marriage types was discussed placed this form (‘giving the goat to the buck’) in the second category rather than the one in which strictly and legally speaking it (‘woman marriage’) should belong’. Ibid. i. 337. That is, the Dahomeans consider the active holder of rights in uxorem as the woman's husband. Alsocf. Le Hérissé, 1911, p. 210.

^{page 282 note 5} Herskovits, 1938, i. 53.

^{page 282 note 6} Ibid. i. 321. Apparently in non-lineage compounds marriage prohibitions are not coterminous with the distribution of jural authority. Vide supra, p. 278, footnote 3.

^{page 283 note 1} A barren woman might, of course, found a compound, but I believe that in such a case further inquiry would reveal that the compound would be inherited by the woman's sisters or brothers, as is the case with other property. The population of the compound seems rather an asset attached to it than the beneficiary of its foundation.

^{page 283 note 2} Herskovits, 1938 i. 321. Herskovits states that: (1) the daughters may not marry a man outside the family; (2) their husbands are always brought from outside the group; (3) their husbands are chosen from the lineage of the compound head's husband, or (4) if the head is a man, his sons marry within the compound, (5) the population of the compound intermarries. Ibid. i. 319-46.

^{page 283 note 3} Cf. instance in connexion with palm-trees, supra, pp. 274-5.

^{page 283 note 4} Cf. Le Hérissé, 1911, pp. 210-12, 370, for overt manifestations of such conflict. Also vide infra, pp. 284-5.

^{page 283 note 5} Le Hérissé records a comparable confusion as to the status of the son of a free man and a female slave, Ibid., pp. 54 ff.

^{page 284 note 1} The girl is not a pawn nor a ‘wife’ (Herskovits, 1938, i. 324). It is difficult to see how the mother would be in such a position unless she were either disinherited from her lineage or de facto independent through spatial separation. As a ‘friend custody’ wife (vide infra, p. 285) her husband might have given her enough to build a compound.

^{page 284 note 2} Ibid. i. 347. Note that when rights in genetricem are not transferred, neither is ritual power over a woman as mother.

^{page 284 note 3} Le Hérissé, 1911, pp. 211-12.

^{page 284 note 4} Ibid., pp. 37 and 200.

^{page 285 note 1} Herskovits, 1938, i. 318-35.

^{page 285 note 2} This is probably the origin of many female compounds of the ‘child father threshold over’ type; the daughters of ‘friend custody ’ wives are generally married without transfer of rights in genetricem. Ibid, i. 318.

^{page 286 note 1} Even when they vest in his own lineage, the power of that lineage to deprive him of his wives (supra, p. 276) is important.

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