Nisa: The Life and Words of a !Kung Woman
Word Count: 548
From The Life and Words of a !Kung Woman by Nisa
“A man, when he marries you, he doesn't marry you for your face, he doesn't marry you for your beauty, he marries you so he can have sex with you” (649).
“Mm, today you will just lie there, but tomorrow, I will take you. If you refuse, I'll pry your legs open and take you by force” (648).
“Because when you first menstruate you don't tell anyone. A child who begins to menstruate isn't supposed to talk” (650).
“We lived and lived, the two of us, together, and after a while I started to really like him and then, to love him” (652).
The !Kung culture is dramatically different from most other places in the world at the time since they still lived on the hunter and gatherer system rather than the agricultural system. Because of this traditional thought, they also had a very traditional way of thinking about the roles of men and women especially in relationships but also in the societal rules that were to be followed.
Their ideas of marriage were not like todays where marriages are solely for love. Nisa’s marriage with Tashay was a marriage for children, not love or even power. Since Tashay seemed to be a much older man, marriage was probably dependent on a man being ready for a wife for the purposes of procreating and personal pleasure. They evidently believed the best candidates for these types of husbands were young girls. When Tashay and Nisa got married, Nisa had to be around 11 give or take a few years since Nisa had not gotten her menstrual cycle till later in her narrative.
Within a marriage, the man was the provider but there were also things expected of the woman, specifically bearing a child. This is the explanation provided when Nisa tried to reject this because of her fear. When she continued to reject her husband's sexual advances, her husband threatened to take her by force and later did. This was seen as normal because it was the wife's duty to provide in this way for the husband regardless of her feelings towards it. In fact when she described this portion of her marriage, for a while she seemed only like a passive observer rather than someone who enjoyed this aspect of marriage.
In this culture there were also many taboo topics that Nisa found she could not discuss with anyone else. When she asked about sex for example, her mother was horrified and Nisa never got any answers to her questions. Nisa was left in the dark about this, about her menstruation and about childbirth which could have been very dangerous for her. These topics were very important to have knowledge about since they were expected of her but answers were always refused to her because it was not polite to talk about. Even when she had her child, she had been so conditioned not to discuss these topics and not to show that she felt pain that she left and silently gave birth alone. Afterwards, even her husband knew that this could have been the cause of her or the baby's death. However, because their culture did not allow for answers to be given to Nisa, there was no way for her to understand this.
I loved how you discussed the idea of marriage and babies as a taboo. I think that marriage was very important an having babies. I think that Nisa was a great example of people in societies that were pressured into ideas even though they didn't believe them. These women were scared to have children because of death but their society thought this was the only thing for them. I think its great how you discuss this kind of idea and the impact of the culture.
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