Conjugal Rights. Rachel Jean-Baptiste
husband could authorize sexual access to his wife to another man—including a guest in his home, a neighbor with whom he hoped to establish a promise of mutual aid by exchanging wives for a period of time, or an unmarried man in the village—in exchange for some form of compensation.94 As with the Mpongwé, a girl could be betrothed as early as infancy, though it was not usually until the age of seven or eight that she left her paternal house to become a part of her husband’s household. Given the sex-segregated living quarters of Fang compounds (abeng), the child bride resided in the quarters with other women in the household. Expected practice was that a husband would not begin to have sexual relations with his young wife until after she had reached her first menstrual cycle (ivoum).
Though fathers had the final authority in contracting marriages, there was a variety of ways in which daughters and sons could influence or subvert their decisions. Sometimes a father submitted to his daughter’s wishes if she refused a suitor.95 Though a father usually selected a son’s bride, a young man might approach his father and request a specific bride. Also, a young woman and man could undermine patriarchal authority through the practice of marriage by kidnapping (abom). The suitor would “kidnap” the woman, and her father or male guardian would then have to accept the bridewealth.96 Having many wives and children represented wealth, but few men could obtain this status. It was mainly “chiefs” who had “harems” of five to twenty wives, as noted by European observers in the 1870s.97 In fact, increased bridewealth expenses over the course of the nineteenth century made it difficult for many men to marry at all.
Escalating bridewealth expenses not only made it difficult for younger men to marry but also resulted in conflict between households if a husband proved unable to complete bridewealth payments after his wife had moved in with him. As was occurring in Mpongwé communities, imported goods displaced iron in the composition of bridewealth among Fang over the course of the nineteenth century. Moreover, bridewealth amounts among the Fang exceeded bridewealth costs in Mpongwé communities. For example, an 1875 bridewealth list for a Fang marriage in the Gabon Estuary consisted of one or two pieces of ivory, two or three goats or sheep, three or four baskets of spears, small Fang knives, small bars of iron, and indigenous salt, worth about 500 francs.98 Bridewealth might also include likis, currency made of iron that circulated among only the Fang. For better-off Fang communities who resided near trade factories or missions, bridewealth was composed mainly of imported goods valued at around 770 francs.99 Bridewealth payments could also include salt, cloth, tobacco, and gunpowder. Given the paucity of data about the costs of such goods, it is difficult to ascertain how much value this would hold if adjusted for inflation. However, commentary by European observers relays that Fang marriage payments of the era represented an enormous sum that would take young men years of labor in collecting rubber, ivory, or wood to exchange for the imported goods to compose bridewealth. Some armed skirmishes that broke out between villages near Libreville were the result of unpaid bridewealth. The wife’s kin would attempt to kidnap her or an unmarried woman from the son-in-law’s village as compensation if a husband defaulted on promised bridewealth. A French colonial administrator named Largeau recounted a particular outbreak of violence that resulted in fatalities among inhabitants of clashing villages in the 1890s. A husband had not completed the promised bridewealth ten years after his marriage. His wife was a prepubescent girl for whom an exorbitant bridewealth list had been demanded: 100 spears, 100 war knives, 50 trade knives, 20 mirrors, 30 small trade trunks, 3,000 iron links, 50 trade guns, 50 small barrels of gunpowder, 4 iron barrel covers, 40 earthen pots, 300 trade plates, 1 large canoe, 10 goats, 4 straw hats, 3 white trade shirts, 30 bunches of tobacco, 10 pieces of trade cloth, 12 bottles of liquor, and 4 dogs.100
Fang men, French missionaries argued, fought for, bartered, and sold women like chattel. Catholic missionaries and French observers described Fang women as “beasts of burden condemned to complete the most arduous work.”101 Having been “purchased” at a high cost, Fang women were subject to lives of servitude until their husbands abandoned them for younger wives once they reached old age and could no longer work or were postmenopausal.102
However, marriages in Fang communities were not static relationships that were purely commercial or political or functions of patriarchy, but tenuous social relations between individuals and groups that fluctuated between perpetuating and upsetting hierarchies of power. A husband’s rights over his wife did not appear to be immutable but provisional, dependent upon his desire to remain in the marriage, his wife’s desire to remain in or leave the marriage, and the volition of both kin groups. As was the case for Mpongwé women, even though Fang women appeared to be passive objects before groups of competing men, it was women’s actions that precipitated the skirmishes. A wife’s desertion of the conjugal home challenged the notion that she had been “sold” and could no longer negotiate rights in her person. A wife who was “kidnapped” by a lover was usually complicit in her displacement from her father’s or husband’s home. The wife’s engagement in extramarital sex called into question the idea that her husband’s remittance of bridewealth granted him control over her sexuality.
However, a husband could subject his wife to bodily harm in order to extract a confession if he suspected her of adultery or as a punishment if his suspicions turned out to be correct.103 Over the course of the nineteenth century, Fang husbands could turn to violence against their wives’ lovers to avenge ther wives’ adultery and seek economic compensation as a public means of rectifying the offense. Should the lover be a man who lived in a different village, the adultery could lead to war between villages; it was not only the lover who was at fault, but his entire village. The husband could kidnap and hold hostage livestock, girls, married women, or men living in the lover’s village until amends were made. This action frequently resulted in a series of fatal reprisals between villages.104 A recorded payment for an instance of adultery in the 1870s was about 30 francs’ worth of goods; for example, one trade gun, five portions of gunpowder, and a piece of cloth or livestock.105
As among the Mpongwé, men and women alike could initiate divorce, and this could be resolved through multiple forums, though seeking a divorce was often a prolonged process. One option for a wife who could not or did not wish to leave her marriage, but sought to alter her husband’s behavior, was to deliver a public curse on him. French observer Largeau emphasized the gravity of the curse—the husband would not be able to marry other wives nor succeed in any economic enterprises without having been publicly forgiven by his wife.106 A man could repudiate his wife, send her back to her village (a suu minga jan) on grounds that she did not adhere to the behavior expected of a wife—perhaps she engaged in witchcraft, was disobedient or lacked respect for her husband, or was sterile.107
Like Mpongwé women, a Fang woman’s success in obtaining a divorce depended on seeking refuge and support in her father’s house. She needed to obtain the consent of the senior male family members—particularly the person who had received bridewealth (nya ndômô)—to represent her case for dissolution.108 Women could claim divorce on grounds of excessive brutalization, witchcraft, or insult to her birth family by her husband or his kin. If the nya ndômô found another suitor to agree to reimburse the first husband’s bridewealth, the marriage could be terminated more easily. If a father sent his daughter back to her husband and she fled again without anyone reimbursing her husband, a violent clash between villages could result. A husband sometimes attempted to exact revenge by killing a member of his wife’s village, and the father of the wife in question was obligated to compensate the family members of those who had been killed.109 Another avenue for a wife who wished to leave a marriage was to allow herself to be kidnapped by another man; her father was then responsible for reimbursing the first husband. Thus, it appears that Fang women had means at their disposal to rupture marital contracts or influence their rapport with their husbands.
The historical landscape of conjugal-sexual politics from the mid-nineteenth century through the turn of that century was neither a story of the unmitigated patriarchal hold of men over women nor a celebratory tale of women’s social and economic autonomy prior to colonial rule. Rather, the portrait is one of a mobile terrain of relationships of power. Tracing the intersections of the town’s founding, and trade and politics, with questions of sexual economy