| and most interested in her. It is the standard by which her relations with her mother-in-law are measured and found wanting. |
| Sister-Sister | Like brothers, sisters, especially full sisters, begin life in close |
| intimacy, having as much in common as two people can have - parents, home, sex and, roughly, age. But at marriage the situation changes. The intimacy of their relationship depends mainly on the physical distance separating them. If they remain in their natal village, they will visit each other constantly and exchange help. If they live at a distance they may hardly even meet, and their relationship may be no more than an interest in news of each other from others who come and go. A woman cannot visit at a distance within male company for protection, which means, where the woman is not in her natal village, the company of her husband or one of his very close kinsmen. As they grow older, and their interest centres more and more on their growing family, the ties between sisters, barring special circumstances, are less and less maintained. Mother in law-Daughter in law A young girl is taken suddenly from her mother’s home and the familiar surroundings in which she has grown up, and set down among strangers to whom she owes respect and service. In studies of joint patrilocal families from other parts of the world (Fei, see bibliography.) it is shown that the relationship which matters most to her, and which is the most critical for the whole household, is that with her mother-in-law. It is true that in the Turkish villages which I observed splits in the family were attributed to quarrels along this line among women, and it is also true that a gelin regards marriage as a great hardship, partly for this reason. But in spite of being prepared to find this relationship one of tension and hostility, we did not find any evidence to suggest that the adjustment was not usually made satisfactorily. I think this raises a methodological point. The sort of words in which an author discuses the matter - “tension”, “critical relation”, are vague terms. They may spring quite naturally and fairly to an anthropologist’s mind as the best way to convey something he wishes to say about the typical reactions to each other of women who stand in a given relationship. But the use of such terminology cannot make clear either precisely what behaviour the anthropologist observed in the society he studied, or precisely what behaviour in another society would justify another anthropologist in using the same language. I went to these Turkish villages expecting to find something which would justify me in speaking of tensions between mother-in-law and daughter- in-law, though not at all sure what that something would look like if I came upon it. In fact, with one or two exceptions we found no overt evidence of hostility or animosity, and plenty of evidence that each partner in the relationship understood their part and played it, with the result that harmony |
| was obtained in the majority of joint households. Nevertheless, I am disturbed by the thought that another anthropologist might have expressed his observations of the same examples in the language of tensions and hostility. A gelin is expected to do all the more menial chores in the new home, and to wait on and be at the service of the senior members in the household. She is subject to no taboos; she may talk to her new relations, and, as they say in the village, it is the duty of her parents-in-law to treat her exactly like a daughter. As in fact a young daughter is also expected to do the more menial tasks for her mother, and to wait on her parents when necessary, there is nothing inconsistent in the gelin being both the family servant, and the adopted daughter of the house. Several times we were surprised at the close co-operation of mother-in-law and gelin. In ali Osman’s household, his mother and wife shared the work between them. The wife, mother of an already adolescent son, was definitely in control of the cooking and domestic arrangements, when at home. The mother was quite able-bodied still, and did a good share of the work, especially at times of stress such as the harvest. On another occasion, a girl told us, with evident enthusiasm and sincerity, that she got on better with her mother-in-law than with her own mother. The girl, not a Sakaltutan, who expressed herself to us most forcibly on the subject of her unhappy lot, with three small boys, a husband and a father-in-law to look after single-handed, said how much she missed her mother-in-law who had defended her against the demands of the men of the household. We could not tell whether she would have said the same before her mother-in-law died. The relationship with the mother-in-law seems to be relative to a girl’s relation with her husband. The girl quoted above as being fond of her mother-in-law capped her declaration of affection by saying - “I love my husband. If you love your husband, how can you not love his mother?” The same point seems to explain another fact. All the cases of separation from the paternal household before the father’s death were by young men whose mothers were dead, and who were, therefore, step-sons of their father’s wives. In every case the women were said to have been the cause of the separation. “A true son”, they would say, “cannot take sides against his mother, but a step- son will side with his wife against his step-mother”. This might be interpreted to mean that, in cases whether the girl is faced with a combination of husband and mother-in-law, she cannot do otherwise than submit, but that where she can use a split in the household, she can gain independence by working on this and so forcing her husband to separate. I do not think this would be a fair interpretation. Rather, I think that, faced with the true mother of the husband, the wife would feel more respect and make more effort to please, while the |
| mother would be more favourably predisposed to the wife of a true son than to the wife of another woman’s son. Further, if the gelin should feel angry, a true son would use all his influence for peace. These generalisations are highly tentative. The play of contingent, especially personal, factors in any situation, in which complete strangers are thrust together in close intimacy, is bound to be great, and hence adjustment varies from house to house. The process is made both easier and more uniform by the preknowledge of each party of their role, and of the difficulties they are likely to meet, and by the cultural homogeneity of the community. The women are all equally limited in training and interest, and cooking and domestic arrangements vary very little, even between the rich and poor households. But to characterise the way in which the adjustment takes place is rash, because more careful and detailed investigation into this, as into any given relationship, might well reveal so much variety as to falsify any general description claiming to characterise the “typical mother-in-law - daughter-in- law relationship.” |
| Gelinler | The one remaining important relationship between women is that |
| between gelinler imported into the same household. In only four cases in the village was a man married to two women. In two of these cases, one woman was considerably older than the other, and had renounced any share in the husband’s sexual activities. One of these old wives had broken away and set up on her own with her own bit of land, and her own son and his gelin. Her son was away doing military service, so that she and the gelin lived alone together. The other old wife, father’s brother’s child to her husband, had no son and no land, and had remained on in the one house with the second wife, who, it appeared, ran the house. The older woman never cased to complain of her treatment, especially at the hands of the younger one. In the third case, that of Abdil (AM), his old wives seemed to get on reasonably well together, without the advantage of separate rooms. I have seen them attending together to the old man when he was sick, and working together in the house. The fourth pair of wives, supported in rather more style by the towngoing plumber (SI 3), had separate rooms and an identical set up. These two also claimed to get on reasonably well together. They were both young, high spirited, and above the average in intelligence and knowledge of the world. The relationship between co-wives is exposed to the danger of jealousy; perhaps, also, they are closely linked by a common interest in their husband. But in most respects the relationship is similar to that of brothers’ wives, where the brothers are still part of one household. The number of examples where this situation was found was in fact small, and in only one case were we |
| on intimate terms. In this case, (CS 2), the mother-in-law had died, and the junior gelinler each had a room of their own, the most senior one living in the ev. The second gelin had a small oda of her own of which she was very proud, and the men of the household were busy building a new block to contain more rooms - for the new bride, married to a younger son while we were in the village, and for the future brides of the two remaining sons. The most senior gelin exercised authority over the junior ones, but there seemed to be no obvious tension or animosity between the women. Each of the senior wives had a small son of two, who, though being brothers’ children will, if the household does not split, be brought up in as great intimacy as brothers - in fact, more, in so far as they are of the same age. In another household, (O), at the other end of the village, two young married women lived alone with their children, their husbands having been away in Izmir, one for four years, and one for one year. Our evidence was that they co-operated well. It is not, of course, difficult to quote examples of dissension among women. Women are often said by men to be the cause of a split in a household, and in at least some cases this does indeed seem to be the true explanation. Two brothers (KA 3) married two sisters from Ac village and continued to share one household for some years. However, one of the sisters lost all her children, and her husband at last divorced her and took another wife. Within a year the brothers had separated, Mustafa going temporarily to his wife’s village, which was less than half an hour’s walk, and accepting an ev from her father. Abdurrahman (PA 2), inherited his brother’s widow, as a second wife, and a year later his first wife left him. Both FB 4, a group of four brothers, and the five sons of Melik (CS 2) profess firmly their intention of staying together as one household, subject only to good relations among the women. Yet, on the whole, what is surprising is rather the majority of cases in which adjustment is successful. The adult women of a household are almost bound to be strangers by birth to the household in which they pass most of their lives. If a girl marries a kinsman, or if brothers take their wives from one household or kabile, then the new wife may find a kinswoman in the conjugal household, but this is true only in a minority of cases. Inside the home, even though in the wealthier households a bride may have a sleeping room of her own, there is no physical separation of territory for each woman. They are compelled almost literally to rub shoulders together and to co-operate in all the feminine tasks of the household. Much of the minor daily friction may have escaped our notice, because the household is a highly private stronghold into which a stranger does not easily penetrate. Although the women are far more naive than the men, and much less inclined to conceal or falsify information for the sake of family prestige, they naturally do not air a quarrel in front of guests, unless it is in the active stage. But the absence of serious or |
| public friction between women of the same household seems to indicate, taken in conjunction with the examples where we had reliable evidence, that the picture I have drawn is at least roughly correct. I have already said that a girl, on marriage, knows what part she is expected to play in the household to which she is going. Marriage is not an occasion for joy, it is an inevitable step on the path which every woman must follow - a step of misery later to be alleviated by the birth of children and the attainment of the status of mother of grown sons. Her acceptance of her lot is strengthened by her religious beliefs. Whomsoever she marries she marries by the will of Allah, and it is not her place to complain or resist. A second factor which may perhaps influence the relations of women in the household is the structural sexual dichotomy of village life. The women have a permanent common interest in opposition to the men. On no occasion does a household have a common ceremonial in which all members share. One of the women said of the Seker Bayrami (end of Ramazan) - “what is the use of it to us? All we do is to cook extra food for the men to eat”. Such ceremonies and celebrations as the women do have are confined to them - no man may ever see them - and are all in some way or other associated with marriage - the social institution which above all others emphasises their submission to men. A woman, even an older woman who has reached intimacy and affection in her relations with her husband, cannot depend on him for companionship. For understanding, sympathy and friendship, she must rely on other women, and those nearest are the women of her husband’s household. |
| 5. | Men Together |
| The men of a household, in contrast with the women, are close patrilineal kin, and at the same time are not forced into the same degree of intimate co- operation in work, since their work is out of doors and often solitary. Thus, they have tighter natural ties, and less pressure on them in daily life. On the other hand, since economic and business affairs are entirely in male hands, there may be a conflict between men of the household on these grounds. |
| Father-Son | A man is delighted and proud to have sons. A small son may be |
| taken to the oda at an early age, and as soon as he is old enough to go on his own, he may attend the odalar in the evenings. Often a father has proudly pointed out his children to me in the oda in the evening. As the boy grows, his father takes him with him and teaches him, first to look after animals, and then to do the other duties of a man, - to plough and sow, to mend the tools and to construct some of the simpler ones. A boy of twelve can normally be trusted to plough on his own. The father is also the source of discipline. |