To fully understand a folktale, we need a frame in which to place it so, as promised, we're now going to take a look at Martha Champion Randle's Psychological Types from Iroquois Folktales, and W.M. Beauchamp's Iroquois Women to get a better idea of women in Iroquois society. Remember, though, that the Iroquois were comprised of several groupings, and that some of the details to follow may not apply to all groups therein.
The importance and prestige of Iroquois women was well-known. Agriculture was controlled by women. Equality of religious positions allowed for women spiritual leaders. Society was matriarchal in nature; women did not rule, but delegated to their male relatives, and, in fact, the basic unit of Iroquois society was the maternal family.
So, since that's quite a lot to chew on, let's break it down into that most favoured study aid, the bulleted list.
1. Family—what exactly is a maternal family? Simply put, the maternal family was comprised of a head woman, her immediate male and female descendants (think sons and daughters), the male and female descendants of her female descendants (her daughter's children) &c. &c. According to Randle, "some maternal families, consisting of individuals of three or four generations living at one time, numbered fifty or less member, while other has as manyas as 150 or perhaps 200. Such a maternal family lived in one long bark house, each married pair with its children having its own section of the house where the wife did her own cooking…tow or usually more maternal families constituted a clan; clans were exogamous."
2. Leadership—although it was the men who "exercised the real executive power" [Randle, p.15], titles were carried through the maternal line, and the decisions of who would be appointed clan chief were made by the matrons. Perhaps this does not seem like a power as great as that of the male chiefs—and perhaps it is not—but having the appointment of a leader in one's hand is indeed something.
3. Marriage—according to Beauchamp, there are few, if any references to polygamy within Iroquois society, though the dissolution of the marriage state, I.e. Divorce, was easily granted even if rarely applied for (possibly tied to the seeming informality of Iroquois marriages, though Beauchamp's paper does not allow for views other than those of the late nineteenth to early twentieth century Western world). There were, however, certain points, or aspects, of marriage that stand out: among the Mohawks, there was an allotment of a couple's resources or assets allocated to the wife; among the Onondaga, "the only community of goods there is between the one and the other is that the husband gives all the fruits of the chase to his wife, who renders him some services in recompense, and is obliged to cultivate his fields and make his harvest," [Beauchamp, p.81]; men and women within the same clan were not allowed to marry due to the nearness of their relationship; and children were considered of the mother's clan rather than the father's.
4. Work and the division of labour—according to Beauchamp, "there was a division of work between men and Women, and the women's work was often assigned to men who had become slaves of the Iroquois. They had lost their rank as warriors, unless adopted by some family or clan: The work of the women was to collect fuel, usually only dry sticks gathered in the woods; to cultivate the ground, a very light, and rather jolly task; to carry the necessary baggage on the trails, while their husbands held axe and bow ready for defence against any sudden assault; to prepare clothing from the hides and furs the men brought in from the weary hunt; to cook the meat that had been found in the woods. There was lighter and tasteful employment in weaving and embroidery, but the Iroquois woman's daily lot was by no means hard. It was considered light by them. With the use of iron axes, fuel was more easily obtained, but the primitive mode was not very laborious" [Beauchamp, p.81].
I think, perhaps, that Lafitau said it best when he wrote that "There is nothing more real than this superiority of the women. It is they who constitute the tribe, keep up the genealogical tree and the order of inheritance, and perpetuate the family. They possess all real authority; own the land and the fields, and their harvests; they are the soul of all councils, the arbiters of peace and war; they have care of the public treasury; slaves are given to them; they arrange marriages; the children belong to them, and to them and their blood is confined the line of descent and the order of inheritance."
So, now we've learned a little about the Iroquois. What does this mean in terms of The Dead Wife? Well, we know that the wife's role in the story—collecting &c. was the norm. There are several elements within the tale, however, that remain without sufficient explanation, so we'll consider them one by one.
A sojourn in the wild
Once upon a time, there were a man and his wife who lived in the forest, very far from the rest of the tribe. Very often they spent the day in hunting together, but after a while the wife found that she had so many things to do that she was obliged to stay at home; so he went alone, though he found that when his wife was not with him he never had any luck…
…[After the wife's resurrection] "It is now two years since you died. Let us now go back to our tribe. Then you will be well, and I can touch you."
In the first section of the story, it is implied that the husband and wife have always lived away from their tribe. In the latter part, however, the husband's speech suggests that this is not the case. My recent reading does not yield a possible reason for the couple's prolonged sojourn in the wilds, though I am inclined to think though it is a little unusual, it's somewhat akin to the European "A long time ago in a faraway land…" providing an adequate setting for the supernatural element of the story for, as we know by the wife's initial words to her husband,
"The Great Spirit felt sorry for you, because you would not be comforted, so he let me come back to you, but you must not stretch out your hand to touch me till we have seen the rest of our people. If you do, I shall die,"
it could not take place in the presence of the rest of the tribe. Although not always the case, the magic only occurring in the lack of observers (aside from those directly acted upon) is quite common.
A tale of love and marriage or a tale of disobedience?
So he made haste, and opened the door quickly, and instead of the wooden doll, his wife sat in front of the fire.
Then she spoke to him and said, "The Great Spirit felt sorry for you, because you would not be comforted, so he let me come back to you, but you must not stretch out your hand to touch me till we have seen the rest of our people. If you do, I shall die."
Haven't we all wished to have a loved one back? Bargained, begged, and cajoled for the Great Spirit, God, the Universe, to return someone to our earthly grasp? And, if were to be granted such a wish, wouldn't we be eager to touch said loved one, to reassure ourselves that they were, in fact, real? From the moment the wife dies, we know that she will be restored. From the moment she is restored, we know there will be a condition. From the moment we read the condition, we know the husband will break it. But why is the husband, so close to being able to hold his wife without penalty, unable to resist touching her? And, moreover, why do the couple remain in the wilds for two years after her return, thereby actively allowing the Great Spirit's condition to hang over their heads?
Well, there is no correct answer, nor even a hint at an answer within the texts I've been reading of late. That said, the fairy tale condition, like the myth condition, is a well-known convention. Like fairy tales in which the hero or heroine must befriend an old man/woman/animal &c., or those where the youngest sibling succeeds, The Dead Wife is reliant upon the reader's acceptance of a particular world view—not only must he or she agree to the existence of a Great Spirit, but also to the suspension of what he or she may, in the real world, consider common sense.
Such acceptance and agreement to the fairy tale world can also be seen as a way of creating distance for the reader, of putting the story, its truth an disturbing elements, amongst other things, at arms' length. In the case of The Dead Wife, it's also possible to take the tale as a mixture of cautionary elements (though this seems something of a stretch) and a pattern of grieving. If we allow for the tale to be mostly metaphorical and treat it from a psychological perspective, it is easy to see the story as that of a husband unwilling to accept loss until he is forced to by returning to his people—it is at this moment, only a day's journey away, that the man fails, is left with the wooden doll, and the fiction is ended.
Conclusion
Interestingly, Randle offers us a turned table, stating that, "It is a folkloristic platitude that the more one understands a society the more one is able to understand of its tales and other imaginative creations. Here, however, the attempt has been to get further insight into the Iroquois culture by a close examination of a few peculiar fictional creations of the Iroquois," [Randle. P.21]. I've tried to suggest a few interesting points in this tale, and though they provide little insight into Iroquois culture, I hope they have at least proven interesting.
And so we come to the end of this commentary; I'm sorry it's taken so long! A new fairy tale will be up tomorrow morning, along with an interesting excerpt I discovered during the research for this work. 'Til then!
References:
Beauchamp, W. M. "Iroquois Women," The Journal of American Folklore, Vol. 13, No. 49, (Apr. - Jun., 1900), pp. 81-91.
Online version kindly provided by JSTOR at http://www.jstor.org/stable/533798
Boas, Franz. "Mythology and Folk-Tales of the North American Indians," The Journal of American Folklore, Vol. 27, No. 106, (Oct. - Dec., 1914), pp. 374-410.
Online version kindly provided by JSTOR at http://www.jstor.org/stable/534740
Dixon, Roland B. "The Mythology of the Central and Eastern Algonkins ," The Journal of American Folklore, Vol. 22, No. 83, (Jan. - Mar., 1909), pp. 1-9 .
Online version kindly provided by JSTOR at http://www.jstor.org/stable/534304
Gayton, A. H. "The Orpheus Myth in North America," The Journal of American Folklore, Vol. 48, No. 189, (Jul. - Sep., 1935), pp. 263-293.
Online version kindly provided by JSTOR at http://www.jstor.org/stable/535272
Randle, Martha Champion. "Psychological Types from Iroquois Folktales," The Journal of American Folklore, Vol. 65, No. 255, (Jan. - Mar., 1952), pp. 13-21.
Online version kindly provided by JSTOR at http://www.jstor.org/stable/536283
Roufs, Tim and James, Bernard J. "Myth in Method: More on Ojibwa Culture ," Current Anthropology, Vol. 15, No. 3, (Sep., 1974), pp. 307-310.
Online version kindly provided by JSTOR at http://www.jstor.org/stable/2740908
White, Bruce M. "The Woman Who Married a Beaver: Trade Patterns and Gender Roles in the Ojibwa Fur Trade," Ethnohistory, Vol. 46, No. 1, (Winter, 1999), pp. 109-147.
Online version kindly provided by JSTOR at http://www.jstor.org/stable/483430
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