Mineke Schipper received her Ph. D. from the Free University of Amsterdam and is currently Professor of Intercultural Literary Studies at the University of Leiden. She has taught at the Free University of Amsterdam and has also held visiting professorships in several universities in Africa. Her major publications include Imagining Insiders: Africa and the Question of Belonging (Cassell, 1999), and Never Marry a Woman with Big Feet: Women in Proverbs from around the World (Yale, 2004). She has also published two novels. The present article is an abbreviated version of a lecture the author gave at the Wellcome Institute in London. Never Marry a Woman with Big Feet has been translated into Dutch and will also be published in Spanish, German, and Russian. A Chinese translation has been scheduled to appear in Beijing in spring 2006.
以下材料转自香港城市大学跨文化研究中心网页
A Womb Makes a Woman
Fertility, Pregnancy and Childbirth in Proverbs from around the World
Mineke Schipper
Women have always visibly (pro-)created with their bodies, whereas, in the remote past, men might not even be sure whether they contributed at all to this miracle of pregnancy and birth. In creation myths, however, women's role is often ignored. Many stories depict a male first god or first ancestor as a potter or sculptor making human beings. He shapes the human race with his own hands from mud or dust, or gives birth to them in one way or another. The Egyptian God Atum, for example, vomits twins or, in a variant, produces them by masturbating. The creation of Eve out of Adam's rib in the Bible is another case in point. The Hebrew Talmud explains the significance of Eve's origin from Adam's body by stating that "God did not create woman from man's head, that he should command her; nor from his feet, that she should be his slave; but from his side, that she should be nearest to his heart." The first woman comes from the first man's body and not the other way round, as has been visually represented in well-known European paintings.
A woman's physique is the subject of numerous assumptions and projections, in all sorts of oral traditions and written texts, and certainly in humanity's smallest literary genre, the proverb, where it provides endless references to what is good, bad, desirable or repugnant in "woman" as such. Most proverbs present the world from a male perspective and for male interests, and they frequently emphasize two basic fears vis-à-vis women: the fear of losing one's privileges in life and the fear of uncertain fatherhood. Because of limited space, I cannot go into this in any detail, but here are a few examples:1
A wife is the best piece of furniture; you can use her in every room. (Dutch)
Lucky the man who marries a bee. (German)
Housewife at home, pancake with honey. (Russian)
Everything comes from his wife, even tying his shoelaces. (Arabic, Tunisia)
The other and most fundamental fear is the uncertainty of physical fatherhood, the frightening idea that the child one's wife is giving birth to might not be one's own. Proverbs frequently deal with the tricky question of who actually fathers the children. A Baule proverb from Ivory Coast conjures the danger by stating that "Her husband away, a woman can bear, but she cannot conceive." There is a strong and fearful awareness that ultimately "The name of the father is the secret of the mother," as it is said in the Caribbean:
Mama's baby, papa's maybe. (Catalan)
Let the baby be born and he will tell who his father is. (Spanish, Mexico)
Only the pregnant one will know who is the father of the child (Twi)
The mother knows best whether the child is like the father. (English, USA)
A multitude of Latin American metaphors reflect the nightmarish scenario of a cuckold man as the one who "preheats the oven for somebody else to bake his bread"; or who "dresses up the altar for others to celebrate mass"; etc. How to prevent this from happening? Proverbs look for answers in multiple measures of control, and in prescriptions and proscriptions for female behaviour.
Having a womb and bringing forth children, proverbs seem to argue, must be balanced by excluding women from developing their other talents and qualities in life. Those other qualities such as intelligence, gaining wealth, political and religious power, and more generally, access to the public space, are to be strictly reserved for men. Large numbers of proverbs warn that men must prevent women from manifesting themselves outside the small world of housekeeping and childbirth. Why? The first and main reason seems to try for some balance, to compensate for the awesome female power of the life-giving womb. Apparently, men's exploits and achievements in life need constant protection from female intruders. In my book on proverbs, I have discussed in detail the ongoing efforts to preserve a precarious balance between humans with a womb and those without, and the striking and widespread message that man must be master. Does this message have to be repeated all the time because in reality the world is full of rebellious women?
In order to deny women reason and intellect, an Italian proverb goes so far as to say that "Women reason with the womb." An Oromo (Ethiopia and Kenya) proverb has this to say: "The breasts that contain milk, cannot contain intelligence." That a man must be master, especially in wedlock, is a "traditional" rule invented, endorsed, and repeated in most cultures. Proverbs strongly advise men to model their wives and daughters into strict submissiveness. A wife should never be allowed independence or superiority and an ideal wife submits on her own behalf. One proverbial tactic is to simply declare that women are "naturally" subservient.
Proverbs give lots of advice to men on how to be the master and how to stay in charge; thus proverbs throw an interesting light on the history of a task division on the basis of sexual differences. Things have only started changing drastically thanks to safe birth control, which became available in the second half of the twentieth century — very recently in the cultural history of humanity. "In virtually all societies men fare better than women. Men exercise more power, have more status and enjoy more freedom," as many scholars have pointed out. "Child-rearing is the only domain where women regularly exert more influence than men."2 And here, oral literature plays an important role in reflecting and confirming "traditional" ideas. Proverbs, in particular, provide us with a rich collection of reflections on the female body and an equally rich mosaic of the social consequences people's sexual differences have brought about. Indeed, proverbs about women throw a fascinating light upon the worldwide existing gendered division of roles in life.
Wombs
The womb preoccupies proverbs intensely: "In woman's womb lies the destination of the home" (German). "A womb makes a woman," a Latin proverb states, and the womb is truly the fundamental organ to distinguish women from men, and it does so in a spectacular way through childbirth. Both men and women seem to attach crucial importance to having children. From a man's perspective, a female's main utility is her fertility. It is posterity in the first place that men need women for — and women, men. Most proverbs about wombs are concerned with what the womb is actually meant for: procreation, the wonders and worries of the mystery of bearing a child.
1. Michelangelo, Creation of Adam, 1510.
Interestingly, the womb is referred to in all kinds of metaphors, and the container metaphor is the image par excellence with which women are associated all over the world, due to the shape and functions of the female body. I found more than a hundred container metaphors referring to women, from utensils such as bags, baskets, bottles, buckets, calabashes, cups, fishnets, gourds, jars, jugs, kettles, mortars, ovens, pitchers, saucepans, vases, to huge vessels, such as beds, dustbins, rice-bins, vats, washtubs, etc. Other container images (to protect women against seduction) are clothes, coats, kitchens, tents, veils, abodes, fences, hedges, walls, and also caves, pools, holes, stables, houses, ships, and so forth. The container metaphor is associated with the various ways in which women are seen as serviceable and needed: the children they conceive, carry in their wombs, and give birth to. Frequently, a container is complemented with a "male" object meant to enter or cover a "female" object, and thus we find: mortar and pestle; shoe and foot; stocking and leg, candlestick and candle; pot and pot lid; bowl and spoon, pan and dipper, and so forth. It is repetitiously stressed that access to the female container has to be barred from undesirable intruders until it is officially unlocked. The defloration exercise had (or has, until this very day) to be performed preferably during the wedding night. As an Uzbek container metaphor has it: "A jug breaks only once," and also a Cuban image: "When a bell breaks, it will never ring again." The most familiar fragile "virginal" containers commonly referred to are glass and crystal. Below are some other container examples referring to virginity, its attractiveness, and its precariousness:
It will never do to be careless with a little girl and a small bag. (Japanese)
The bottle [is only good] with its seal, the girl with her hymen. (Arabic)
Until the age of twelve the girl is a cup, until the age of sixteen a tub, after the age of sixteen, thank him who takes her out of the house. (Czech)
Precious essences are kept in small vessels. (Spanish, Chile/El Salvador/Puerto Rico)
Most container proverbs incessantly insist that a female container needs to be controlled not only before the wedding but for life, or at least until she has reached menopause, because a man wants posterity of his own. This is one of the gravest concerns in container proverbs whether talking about brides, wives, co-wives, or even widows. In order to close the womb off against external threats, it is advised that vulnerable female containers be safely guarded, and preferably put up in a father's or husband's house.
Sterility
"Do not accuse the bed of infertility," a Chinese proverb argues. Rightly so, but in reality, when a couple remains childless, it is often the woman who gets stigmatized. However, "miscarriage is not sterility," as it is said in the Minyanka culture in Mali, where friends and relatives will comfort a woman with this proverb when she suffers a miscarriage. Within the proverbial procreation hierarchy, at the very bottom are sterile women, followed by women who have miscarriages, a little higher up are mothers of stillborn children, and those who have lost their child or children. These last are somewhat "higher up" as they have at least shown to be able to "conceive." For the sterile woman, there is no such comfort. When a woman is childless because her child has died, some African proverbs stress that such women are "better off" than barren women, because they can cherish hope for new pregnancies. Here are more examples:
The woman whose sons have died is richer than a barren woman. (Gikuyu)
The one whose children are buried in her womb will not see their graves. (Rundi)
Rather condolences for dead sons than no hope of giving birth to them. (Ladino)
A woman without children doesn't know what love is. (English/Italian)
What can a sterile woman know about the happiness of having children? (Telegu)
A sterile woman is advised not to make fun of those who have given birth and are more prestigious and experienced, and the same holds for young girls — as a Creole proverb from Jamaica reminds them: "You done no breed, so no laugh after your grannie." And the mother of only one child should not mock a childless woman, according to a Ghanaian Mamprusi advice, as the risk of losing one's only treasure is always high.
Fertility and sterility mark women for life. In proverbs the various disadvantages surrounding female barrenness are considered in detail. Families want to secure heirs; thus in many cultures, men are allowed to divorce a "sterile" wife, one who has not given birth within a few years after marriage, as if this could only be a woman's fault:
A marriage without children does not last long for men. (Arabic, Maghreb)
A bride who bears no child after three years of marriage should be divorced. (Japanese)
Quite some messages are harsh and devastating: "Rather mud than an infertile wife" is an Andrah proverb from India. And what to do with a sterile tree? It is best chopped down and thrown into the fire according to variants of the same message in Hebrew or Romanian. Only one proverb gives women the benefit of the doubt for a longer period of time: "Seven years is not too long for a pumpkin vine to start bearing fruit" (English, Jamaica).
Inevitably, people try to discover the cause of such extremely bad luck, and many natural and supernatural causes and cures have been found or invented. According to the Mapuche in Chile it is believed that the scrapings of a mule's nail transmit infertility. It can also be caused by witchcraft. The idea that you can be rejected (and so lose your livelihood) if you do not get pregnant soon enough is apparently alarming. Of course, women pray, and visit priests or doctors if they do not conceive quickly. They practice customary rituals, and try to cure themselves by means of herbs, potions and magic in order to solve the problem, and it seems to work in a Telegu proverb: "She had but just passed the holy tree and already felt signs of pregnancy." Especially in Africa and to a lesser extent also South Asia, sterility and childlessness are a more frequent issue in proverbs than in Europe and North America, although negative proverbs about female sterility are certainly not lacking in the West. In many societies the fate of a woman who cannot have children is far from enviable.
Fertility
Women's irrefutable birth-giving capacity is notified, for example, in a Minangkabau proverb from Indonesia: "A cock does not lay eggs", or in Igbo (Nigeria): "A cock lays nothing." A clan prospers only as long as there are nubile girls who will bring forth a new generation. This point is especially emphasized in proverbs from African societies where infant mortality is experienced as an imminent threat:
A girl is a peanut seed: she enlarges the clan. (Woyo)
The wealth of a girl is in her frontside. (Rwanda)
Girl, bring forth, that we may see [what you're worth]. (Bembe)
The girl grows up in order to raise a family. (Rundi)
May your daughter fill the house [with boys] and bear fruit, thanks to God. [A marriage wish] (Arabic, Maghreb/West Sahara)
2. An ivory sculpture of the Upper Paleolithic from Lespugue in France conflating breasts and buttocks into a zone of eggs circling the figure's middle — possible metaphor for intensified fertility.
Men are advised to carefully choose their wives with a view to their conceiving capacity, and not their beauty. The problem is that the proof of the pudding is only in the eating, so to speak. There is always a risk, especially in cultures where virginity must be respected until the wedding night. People can be lucky or not, a wife can conceive quickly or not, or even wait in vain for the faintest sign of pregnancy. "If a bride can be bought, a child cannot," as the Bulgarians say. A Fulfulde proverb jokingly tells men who are in a hurry for posterity: "If you are impatient to have a child, you marry a pregnant woman." Several Latin American proverbs compare the purchase of a wife for breeding to another serious matter of concern, the purchase of dogs or cattle for the same purpose:
Rooster, horse and wife should be chosen for their breed. (Spanish, Mexico)
Women and goats: choose them for their breed. (Spanish, Puerto Rico)
Women, horses and hunting-dogs: choose them for their breed. (Portuguese, Brazil)
Children are not only a precious treasure of family happiness, but also a source of practical profit. Thus, from a maternal perspective, even the very young ones will lighten their mother's daily burdens:
Where the mother sends [her children], the childless goes herself. (Ganda)
Who will draw water for the childless old woman? (Gikuyu)
Those who have children arrive first at the water; the childless one fetches muddy water. (Yaka)
Sterility is to fertility, then, as poverty is to wealth. This not only holds for mothers, but also for fathers. Having children is a long term investment in the material sense, in societies where children are the only possible insurance in old age: "Those who fear children's crying will cry in their old age", as the Swahili say. In such a context, the more numerous your offspring is, the more chances you have that some will survive and take care of you in your last phase of life.
Children are the riches of the poor. (Japanese)
If you have sons, what would you need money for? (Chinese)
A house full of sons is like a house full of pearls. (Kurdish)
[ 本帖由 匪兵甲 于 2007-11-29 12:19 最后编辑 ] |