respect for the maintenance of the wife during one year. This is particularly necessary, because the bride, in quitting her parents, leaves them all that she has received,[1] and takes away nothing but her body.
It is sometimes the mother who thus makes the conjugal sale of her daughter, but on condition of being recognised as guardian; and even then she does not enjoy, like the father, an unrestrained power, and she has to consult her daughter.[2]
Once purchased, the Kabyle wife is entirely at the mercy of the husband-proprietor. She must follow him wherever it suits him to settle; her only actual possession is the raiment which covers her. Her husband has the right to chastise her with his fist, with a stick, with a stone, or even with a poignard. He is only forbidden to kill her without a reasonably serious motive.[3]
If, however, when she has become a mother, she is unable to suckle her child, the law decides that the husband is obliged to provide a wet nurse;[4] though this is more for the child's sake than the mother's, as she cares little enough about the infant.
The married woman is considered so entirely as property in Kabyle that the prolonged absence of the master is allowed to set her free. In this case she belongs, after four years, to her maternal relations, who have the right to re-marry her—that is to say, to re-sell her—unless the absent husband has left her a sufficient provision. However, the husband's parents can delay the dissolution of the first marriage, sometimes for seven years, sometimes for ten years, but on condition of taking the place of the absent husband in furnishing the deserted wife with food and clothes.[5]
The Kabyle woman, therefore, married or not, is always a thing possessed. We shall see later that even widowhood does not enfranchise her. The right of correcting the woman who is not under the power of a husband ceases only when she has reached an age when marriage would be sterile, and especially if she has in a way abjured her sex by mixing with men in the markets.[6]
