Ch 12 Weddings

WOW! This chapter was so interesting because someone was about to get married! So what exactly does this meant to Umoufia? Wedding time was a moment were everyone knew about and they had to somehow be involved with the preparations. The women were in charge of helping the bride's mother and they had the task of "cooking for a whole village" (110). Men, women, and children would have to work towards making the day a great one; Everyone got together to celebrate this event. For the bride and the groom, this meant business. Their families would get together and this meant a dowrie. This was the exchange that the families had to make in order to be able to marry the bride and groom. The day of the wedding everyone was supposed to bring a present to the couple and this usually meant goatskin. This was viewed as a sacred gift. But what i found most interesting of all, was the speech the family of the bride gave to the groom's family. They said: "We are giving you our daughter today. She will be a good wife to you. She will bear you nine sons like the mother of our town" (117). Wow...They pretty much decided the number of sons she was supposed to bear the man. What if she only bore 3 children? Was she going to be cursed by the gods? I don't know the answer, but what i do know is that this was like too much pressure to put on a woman. Nowadays, the couple decides the amount of children they want. I don't think that in this century women would appreciate their family telling her how many children to have. However, this was extremely important in the story because when a couple got married, it was as if they literally married each others family memebers.