Turkish Village
Copyright 1965, 1994 Paul Stirling. All rights reserved.
Paul Stirling
CHAPTER SIX
HOUSEHOLD AND FAMILY STRUCTURE
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Page 112
main living room. The old father slept in the guest room.
Examples of dissension between women are not of course difficult to find. Women are normally said to be the cause of the splitting of households, and in fact this is generally true. How far this dissension is itself the reflection of the structural cleavage already existing between the husbands, I am not sure (p. 133). One split at least appeared to be due to personal rather than structural factors. Two brothers married two sisters, and all four lived together for a long time. One of the women, howevr, lost all her babies and eventually her husband divorced her, reluctantly, it seems, and took another wife. Now, instead of being sisters, the two wives were strangers to each other. Within a year the household had split. Nevertheless, tensions between brothers and between their growing families must add to the difficulties of amicable co-operation between women in a large joint household.
Men and women. Men and women live in different social worlds. Only within the household do the two worlds touch closely, and even here the separateness of the sexes in the society at large affects individual relations between them.
Husband and wife. The basis of the household is the relationship of a husband and wife for the procreation of children. Marriage is a sharply defined status, with a clear-cut ceremonial beginning, and only a married woman is permitted to have sexua relations. Pre-marital and extra-marital relations are punished by violence or serious disgrace.
Men wield authority. No woman was head of a household with a grown man in it, and where a husband chooses to be unreasonable and selfish, the only recourse of a woman is flight. Wives are occasionally beaten by their husbands; open references to such beatings always arouse much mirth. Men decide all matters concerning the farming routine, all major sales and purchases, the marriage of children, visits to the doctor, in fact, everything of importance.
Women do of course influence their husbands in all these decisions. They can remind, argue, wheedle, scold, and their views on some matters may carry the day. But almost invariably it is the man who actually makes the decision. One man in Sakaltutan reversed a decision to sell a plough, and people laughed and said he was under his wife's thumb. In this household
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