Perhaps I should think of that story as a tale of initiatic rape : after all, Berndt and Berndt's description of the way some Aboriginal girls are conducted into womanhood suggests that one way some societies have controlled and channeled their sexuality is through a ritualization of violation - which may also remind us of the customs surrounding the marriage bed and the display of blood-stained sheets upon the morning after the wedding in medieval Europe.

It might seem that, contrary to what is being argued on this list, almost all socially approved forms of sexual intercourse, up until modern times, have been close to violation. Sex within marriage involves to a greater or lesser degree an element of coercion ; a chimpanzee may copulate according to his or her state of friskiness, maintaining some degree of control over the identity of his or her mate. For human beings, however, control is always exercised by others who impose their choices upon both boy and girl. That the Australian girl should be ritually raped by others than her husband-to-be is entirely apt.

In the tale, the young man (under his father's command) marks out the woman for his own by first of all drawing her blood with his spear ; the traces of this blood, as he follows them through the jungle, may be thought of as evidence of successful penetration.

You may remember that the lad's father is angry with him ; the reason given by the tale is rather obscure, but turns around the fact that the boy has lost his spear head, which is precious both in itself and because it has been magically blessed and is now clsely linked to its owner. That is, the girl has carried off some part of the boy's being. Penetration has not been followed by withdrawal and restoration.

So when the boy recuperates his spear head, he carries out a double act of healing : he draws the girl herself back from the brink of death, and reclaims an estranged element of his own self. He also both demonstrates and denies his rape of the pig/woman to her father's family ; he displays the blood-stained package to the villagers in a gesture which may find echoes in European custom, and returns the real instrument of violation to his pouch.

Not that there is no price to be paid ; he must remain in his wife's village for some years, during which time the fruits of his work in the gardens and of his hunting will contribute to the provisioning of his father-in-law's family rather than of his own. Furthermore, when he returns to his home, he may bring with him only his youngest child, his daughter, while his wife and his two sons remain among the pig-people of his father-in-law. The tale is, from the point of view of patriarchy, cautionary.

Comments to me at tmason@timothyjpmason.com.