ABSTRACT
This chapter presents data from market women traders in Lagos. It presents the data on the attitudes, definitions and conceptions of marriage of some female undergraduates of the Universities of Lagos and Ibadan. The antithetical conceptions of marriage by Nigerian educated elite men and women have resulted in considerable tension. An 'inside wife' is frequently suspicious and contemptuous of 'single' women who are of marriageable age. A woman's pre-marital virginity was said to be important to her fertility. A good husband, in turn, is kind to his wife's children. He must protect her from the molestation of co-wives, if he is a polygynist, and from his own relatives, if they are hostile. The chapter explains the extent to which the 'new' definitions and attitudes are in consonance or at variance with each other, given the new setting. It concludes with a synthesis of the 'traditional' and 'modern' definitions and attitudes of marriage.
