Where this feeling exists,
modesty is offended when one eats in public; the modest man retires to
eat. Indecency, said Cook, was utterly unknown among the Tahitians; but
they would not eat together; even brothers and sisters had their separate
baskets of provisions, and generally sat some yards apart, with their
backs to each other, when they ate.[27] The Warrua of Central Africa,
Cameron found, when offered a drink, put up a cloth before their faces
while they swallowed it, and would not allow anyone to see them eat or
drink; so that every man or woman must have his own fire and cook for
himself.[28] Karl von den Steinen remarks, in his interesting book on
Brazil, that though the Bakairi of Central Brazil have no feeling of shame
about nakedness, they are ashamed to eat in public; they retire to eat,
and hung their heads in shame-faced confusion when they saw him innocently
eat in public. Hrolf Vaughan Stevens found that, when he gave an Orang
Laut (Malay) woman anything to eat, she not only would not eat it if her
husband were present, but if any man were present she would go outside
before eating or giving her children to eat.[29] Thus among these peoples
the act of eating in public produces the same feelings as among ourselves
the indecent exposure of the body in public.[30]
It is quite easy to understand how this arises. Whenever there is any
pressure on the means of subsistence, as among savages at some time or
another there nearly always is, it must necessarily arouse a profound and
mixed emotion of desire and disgust to see another person putting into his
stomach what one might just as well have put into one's own.
Pages:
91
92
93
94
95
96
97
98
99
100
101
102
103
104
105
106
107
108
109
110
111
112
113
114
115