Mixed Marriages

In Polynesia

By Julian Hill As

SHORTLY before his death in Raro- Ch.rZ ga w Ul 9S6 J WaS S P old a r d ' wkose Islands memories reached back over half a century. W ' were discussing- the colour question.

Aah, said Charlie, “there wasn’t anv such question in them days. When I first came to Rarotonga there were only two white women on the beach . the trouble started later, much later, when there was more Europeans.”

“Were many white men married to Polynesian women then?” I persisted.

Not a great number, but quite a lot was living with ’em.”

“What about the anti-cohabitation laws, Charlie? I always understood thev were pretty strictly enforced.”

“Oh they were,” he chuckled, “but the fine didn’t amount to more than a few bob. It kind of put an edge on things,” and into his old eyes, which nearly four score years had failed to dim, crept the ghost of a reminiscent twinkle. “Human nature don’t give a damn for some laws ” he concluded.

THINKING over those remarks I wa* puzzled to understand why, when there was no social opprobrium attached to a mixed marriage, few Europeans had married native girls; and yet, to-dav, with so much prejudice apparent, the number of such unions is rapidly in creasing.

In the first place, the “old timers” were frequently rough and ready tvpes who viev/ed marriage less as a form than as a fact, the essence of which lav in the mutual consent of the two per sons concerned:— “May not we now Our contract make and marry before Heaven ?

Are not the laws of God and Nature more Than formal laws of men ?”

Nor did the social environment in which those early settlers lived require the neculiar odour of sanctity conferred by the legal rites of marriage.

But, with changing conditions and the influx of a numerous, and often married, official class, there arose a new set of social values. Unmarried couples were ipso facto “not nice,” and the stigma was automatically extended to their children. Consequently, the white mar who intended to remain permanently in the Islands got himself legally married, largelv on account of —and also quite probably at the prompting of—his nart ner, who had likewise begun to adopt a conventional outlook on such matters.

With respectability, the Polynesian woman also acquired “presentabilitv.”

She learned to read, write, play the piano, and drive a motor. She also learned how to dress. Lipstick and powder found their way into her hand bag.

But this same presentability soon proved a double-edged weapon; for, whilst increasing her eligibility as a wife, it aroused acute animosity in other quarters.’ In the physically attractive and socially presentable native girl,

European women saw a serious rival.

Sons, brothers, even husbands, might go the way pf all flesh in the wake of some black-haired, flower-wreathed, marzipan skinned daughter of the Islands, whom it was no longer possible or expedient to dismiss contemptuously as a “savage. ’

On more than equal terms, and in her own element, she now claimed recog nition As a defensive reaction to such a challenge, this attitude was intelligible, but it did not make for a frictionless state of affairs. By marriage with a native girl, a European to some extern jeopardized his social position. Occasion ally, he lost it altogether. But. at ail times, he was made to feel, by gentle inference, that he had done something reprehensible.

THE whole question of white man and brown woman has its roots buried somewhere in the far past. Whether the explanation lies purely in the attraction for opposites or is simply a lingering trace of civilised man’s primordial self asserting itself under favourable con ditions, the fact remains that in countries where the two races meet on a common ground, white men readily form relation ships with native women.

Eminent sexologists like Ivan Bloch and Havelock Ellis*have both stressed the universality of this attraction. Nor can it be accounted for only on grounds of promiscuity. The evidence for deliber ate selection is too strong.

During the last 20 years, intermar riage has not only increased quantitively, but qualitively. A new, and for the most part, intellectually superior class of European has settled in the Islands, and it is from their ranks that the majority of these marriages have originated.

The question which immediately rises in one’s mind is why should these men have deliberately chosen native girls ?

To dismiss this on the assumption that each and all of them were psychologic ally predisposed towards the women is as ridiculous as to suppose that they would have been unable to obtain wives from among the women of their own race or station in life.

The obvious answer is that they found the Polynesian better adapted to the con ditions of life in Polynesia. In other words, she filled the picture. The Is lands are notoriously unkind to European women. Many of them find it imperative to make frequent visits to colder climates.

Furthermore, they seem less able than men to adjust themselves to local foods.

Much expensive tinned food is consumed and, unless a man has considerable means, the drain on his income from these two sources alone is soon felt.

On the other hand, the native or half caste girl of moderate education is ad mirably suited to the mode of life to which such an alliance raises her, since marriage with a European invariably means a step up, socially, and generally financially.

IT has frequently been said that mixed marriages fail through inability on the part of the wife to provide her husband with “mental companionship.”

Frankly, I think that is all bunkum.

The supposition that most men are anxious to share their mental lives with someone else is a fallacy which one sus pects is of feminine origin. As a species, the male is a curiously reticent creature, the possessor of opinions about which he has no particular desire to argue or even discuss with his wife, much less to have changed by her. There is a blessed ness that must be experienced to be believed in living with a person upon whom one can safely rely not to invade tMs sphere There are no “soul mates” in Polynesia; but there are many loyal and faithful companions who, in return for little, give much, and whose com plete freedom from the senses of “time” and “worry” come as a welcome anodyne to civilisation-wearied nerves.

A GAINST the material advantages of a mixed marriage there must, in all fairness, be set those more subtle and at first scarcely noticeable factors which intimacy gradually brings into bolder relief.

There is a vague air of remoteness which clings to so many Islands girls like a faint aura of other-worldliness, so that they can sit, hour after hour, detached from their surroundings, star ing back along the untenanted alleyways of an ancestral past in which the white man has no share. Baffled, the latter will grasp out, but will meet nothing tangible.

Their ability, and tendency, to “go into the silence” when annoyed, has been also developed to a fine art in passive retaliation. For whole mornings, Madame Polynesia can sit cross-legged on the floor, sewing silently, or lie on a mat wrapped in a rug, with one kapok pillow under and another over, her head!

A native husband, intuitively wise, would go about his work; whereas the European, seething with a grievance for

which he can find no handle, wastes time and temper attempting to lure her into an argument. Occasionally, out of sheer exhaustion of spirit, he may smack her, in which case she will probably take mat and pillows off to a neighbouring house where she will remain until long after the dinner-hour.

But, as compensation for these little aberrations, there are long evenings when the shrill cries of children and the

quick unreasoning laughter of young girls echo through the cool, smoke-hazed air. And, later, when the moon floats like a golden gondola on the night-ways of the sky, there descends upon the white man a peace of mind and an absence of fear for what the future may bring forth. If he has burnt his boats, they have been destroyed on a safe shore and, should he think at all, it is prob ably with Rupert Brooke, who asked:— “And if the spirit be not there.

Why is fragrance in the air?”