For a widow or divorcée, the price is always much lower -about T.L.200 in 1950 - and arranged ad hoc. A small trousseau may be sent, but in general, again, a father spends much less than he gets.
Bride price is sometimes said to be a symbol of the legal transfer of rights over a woman. But in these villages it certainly is not. A woman is no less a bride if a bride price has not been paid, so long as a nikah has been pronounced. On the other hand, payment of bride price without nikah is not a marriage. Moreover, if the marriage breaks up, the bride price is not repayable to the husband or his father.
Rather, the cash payment appears as a material consideration to induce the holder of certain rights to part with them. It is in no sense a sale of the woman, but it is a kind of sale of the right to take her to wife. We cannot say that the money is direct compensation for the loss of a member of a household, because no one can hold on to his daughters as workers, and every father is anxious to marry them off as well as he can. What the father of the groom really buys is prestige for himself and his new affines. The owner of a modest, healthy, hardworking, unmarried girl drives as hard a bargain as he can in order to show the' high standing of himself and his daughter in the community and to demonstrate his virtuous solicitude for her.If he did not do this, he would be shamed.
Basically, then, the bride price is conspicuous consumption. The less known the other party, the more the need to impress them; the more distant they are socially, the more outsiders will be involved in and know about the wedding. Thus there are two good reasons why the consumption tends to become more conspicuous the greater the social distance. The less honourable the girl, the less the distance between the households, the less the circle of people involved, the less the readiness of the parties for reason of poverty to spend on ceremonies, the smaller the bride price. Equally, a foster father will take less trouble over a girl who is not his daughter, because she reflects less on him and his household. Bride price, then, does not play an indispensable function in village society, but is simply a self-perpetuating