If Fijians really were
capable of considering it indelicate to spend the night under the same
roof with their wives, it would indicate their indelicacy, not their
delicacy. The utterly unprincipled men doubtless had their reasons for
preferring to stay away from home, and probably their great contempt
for women also had something to do with the custom.
HOW CANNIBALS TREAT WOMEN
In Fiji, says Crawley (225), women are kept away from participation in
worship. "Dogs are excluded from some temples, women from all." In
many parts of the group woman is treated, according to Williams,
"as a beast of burden, not exempt from any kind of labor,
and forbidden to enter any temple; certain kinds of food she
may eat only by sufferance, and that after her husband has
finished. In youth she is the victim of lust, and in old
age, of brutality."
Girls are betrothed and married as children without consulting their
choice. "I have seen an old man of sixty living with two wives both
under fifteen years of age." Such of the young women as are acquainted
with foreign ways envy the favored women who wed "the man to whom
their spirit flies." Women are regarded as the property of the men,
and as an incentive to bravery they are "promised to such as shall, by
their prowess, render themselves deserving.
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