The Trashing of Margaret Mead: Anatomy of an Anthropological Controversy

12 Virginity and the History of Sex in Samoa

175 12 Virginity and the History of Sex in Samoa T TAUPOU   a central place in the Mead– Freeman controversy. Its very existence, according to Freeman and many Samoan critics of Mead, showed that virginity was more than an abstract value; it was part of a system of institutionalized virginity, where the taupou played an important role in Samoan culture and provided a role model for other girls. For Freeman, the taupou was one of Samoa’s “most sacrosanct traditional institutions .” He stated that in pre-European times female virginity was “very much the leitmotif of the pagan Samoans,” and even in the late twentieth century, Freeman argued, “the sexual mores of the pagan Samoans are still, in many ways, extant.”1 In pre-European Samoa a young woman, usually the adolescent daughter of a high-ranking chief, was appointed to the role of taupou; she represented the chief’s political authority and the prestige of the village as a whole. Her marriage to another high-ranking chief could cement new political alliances. She was therefore an important figure in village political life. Beyond her valuable role in forging alliances, the taupou was also leader of the village’s association of unmarried women (aualuma) that entertained prestigious visitors. The taupou made kava for meetings of the village council, was a hostess and dancer, ate special food, wore distinctive dress, and did not engage in the heavy labor of her unmarried female counterparts. She was the pride of her village. At her marriage, there were elaborate gift exchanges between the families of the bride and groom. And she was required to demonstrate her chastity in a public defloration ceremony as part of the formal arranged marriage.2 Freeman provided an explicit description of the defloration ceremony: The exchange of property having taken place, the bridegroom seated himself on the ceremonial ground of his village. The young woman was then taken by the hand by her elder brother or some other relative, and led toward her bridegroom, dressed in a fine mat edged with red feathers, her body gleaming with scented oil. On arriving immediately in front of him she threw off this mat and stood naked while he ruptured her hymen with “two fingers of his right hand.” If a hemorrhage ensued the bridegroom drew his fingers over the bride’s upper lip, before holding his hand for all present to witness the proof of her virginity. At this the female supporters of the bride rushed forward to obtain a portion of the smear upon themselves before dancing naked and hitting their heads with stones until their own blood ran down in streams, in sympathy with, and in honor of, the virgin bride. The husband, meanwhile, wiped his hands on a piece of white barkcloth which he wore around his waist for the rest of the day as a token of respect for his wife. With the bride’s ceremonial defloration accomplished , the marriage was usually consummated forthwith, with the utmost decorum, in a screened-off part of a house.3 However, if the bride was not a virgin, she was cursed as a prostitute, and the marriage was nullified. Sometimes she was beaten by her relatives, even to death.4 Freeman argued that the value of virginity embodied in the taupou extended beyond her to all adolescent girls, and this “cult of virginity” continued after European contact. Christianity transformed and reinforced the values of the taupou system so that, in Freeman’s view, “after the mid 19th century, when a puritanical Christian morality was added to an existing traditional cult of virginity ,” Samoa was a society in which this religiously and culturally sanctioned ideal strongly influenced the actual behavior of adolescent girls.5 Freeman’s extensive discussion of the taupou system was intended to refute Mead’s portrayal of the taupou as a girl of high rank whose virginity was closely guarded but who was the exception rather than the rule in terms of virginity. Mead argued that, apart from the taupou and other daughters of high-ranking chiefs and despite the ideology of virginity for all girls, adolescent girls from lower-ranking families could and did engage in clandestine premarital sex. Instead of reinforcing a preexisting ideal of virginity, as Freeman would have it, Christianity and colonial government led to a relaxation of the severe traditional standards for the taupou in part by completely banning the defloration ceremony. Apart from the virginity of the taupou, to which Samoans were...