ABSTRACT
My grandmother – and probably also your great-grandmothers – was married at the age of sixteen years. She was neither a delinquent nor promiscuous (although the retroactive virginalization of the old and deceased seems to be an atavistic and normative mechanism of idealization). She was in fact my grandfather’s second wife, and she took her place after the death of his first wife, her older sister, during childbirth – an ancient and accepted arrangement about which I never heard a single word of complaint, either directly or indirectly. She assumed the responsibility of her sister’s surviving daughter and immediately started to bear her own family. She had her own son before my grandfather left for South Africa. He worked there for ten years before sending for her to join him – and, when she finally did, she immediately became pregnant and had, as fast as is humanly possible, another three sons. My grandfather was probably aged eighteen years when he got married. Altogether he fathered six children.
