[Glorantha] Re: Grandmother, a patriarchal concept?

In message <20060704104914.23818.qmail@web51014.mail.yahoo.com> Simon Phipp writes:
>Donald R. Oddy:
   

> Actually, unmarried uncles who still live at home would probably
>have a similar status to husbands - they are adult or adolescent
>males who live within the same household and would provide similar
>services.

I'm not sure how common that is, there are social and sexual reasons to move unmarried adult males out of the family home. I vaguely remember something about young males being sent to the local militia barracks for training. This gets them used to female authority and makes them fit to be husbands.    

> Absolutely. Any society has a problem with dealing with orphans or
>foundlings. In a patriachal society, a man can father a child on a
>woman out of wedlock and abandon her, leaving a bastard with all the
>attached stigma. In a matriachal society, the stigma is not as great
>as the child derives clan membership from its mother, so the child
>is not illegitimate. However, children whose mothers die are probably
>taken in by maternal aunts or strangers. Abandoned children in a
>matricahy must be doubly challenged - they have been abandoned by
>their mothers in a society where there is not a stigma attached to
>being an unmarried mother.

I'm not sure about that, Esrolia is a much more settled and organised society than Sartar. Getting pregnant without a husband is likely to disrupt the family plans so could well incurr Grandmother's disapproval. From Greg's recent contribution it's clear that Esrolian society is far more restrictive than Sartarite. It may well be that instead of "No one can make you do anything" Esrolia's motto is "Family and clan before self". So being irresponsible enough bring a baby into the clan without permission could be a serious social error.

> There is also the problem of adoption into the clan - a man can be
>adopted into a clan simply by marriage, but a woman must be adopted
>into the clan and given a new mother and new bloodline.

I don't think that's true, I see the Esrolians having all the different marriages that the Heortlings do. Which marriage is chosen is a matter of negotiation and politics although husband and underwife will be almost non-existant. There's probably some stigma attached to the woman marrying into another clan but it will happen.    

> Bashkiri has a word "Keoh" which seems to mean "male in-law" and
>my wife uses it to describe her brothers-in-law, but my mother-in-law
>uses it to describe her sons-in-law and brothers-in-law, so I am
>Simon-Keoh to her, or just "Keoh!" when she wants something.

Probably depends on context, there may well be a series of words which describe precise relationships but are replaced in common useage by a generic one.    

> Clearly, we can use the terms "mother", "grandmother", "aunt" and
>"uncle" without a problem, although in English, Uncle/Aunt can mean
>both "parent's sibling" and "parent's sibling's spouse", so it would
>better to have words that distinguish between different types of
>uncle/aunt. Father is pretty standard, even though it doesn't
>necessarily imply a blood-link, in cases where a woman has multiple
>husbands, they would all be called "Father". Cousins are the children
>of maternal aunts. Children of uncles would not necessarily be
>considered kin.
>
> So, ideally we would need specific terms for:
> Mother's Sisters
> Mother's Brothers
> Mother's Sisters' Husbands
>
> We probably don't need any specific term for:
> Mother's Brothers' Wives (Uncle's Wife - not really kin)
> Father's Siblings (Father's Sisters/Brothers - not really kin)
> Mother's Brothers' Children (Uncle's Wife's Children - not kin)
>
> Or maybe that's comlicating things too much.

I think the Esrolians, like Heortlings, will have names for all these relationships. The easiest way of handling the translation is to prefix with "maternal" or "paternal" as appropriate. I'd still consider the latter group kin, they are just not clan.

-- 
Donald Oddy
http://www.grove.demon.co.uk/