ABSTRACT
Men, as we have seen, regard women as the highest form of good, the most precious of all currencies. Women are the means of pay ment for the highest price that can be paid. Women have a unique value as the source of men's posterity. The reproductive function is regulated by marriage which ensures that men relinquish their sisters in exchange for those of other men, following that un mistakable mark of humanity - the incest prohibition. Marriage makes woman the characteristic, indeed primordial, go-between and the natural target for the ambivalent attributes ascribed to the professional mediator; this is reflected in the stereotypes assigned to the female role by different cultures.
