ABSTRACT
Although not universal, the gendered opposition between female passivity and male activity in connection with sexuality and marriage is pervasive both in western societies and in cultures historically constituted in western discourse as ‘Other’. To provide a starting-point for the discussion, several generalized parallels may be drawn between nineteenth-century liberal notions of marriage and desire in the West and those pervasive in rural North Bali. The purpose of presenting the schematic outline of western liberal marriage is to provide a frame of reference against which uniquely Balinese marriage practices and cultural constructions of female desire may be brought into sharper focus. Owing to North Balinese inheritance practices in which wealth is passed on agnatically, unmarried women are in an economically marginal position. The pressure for women to marry is sufficiently great as to sustain a low incidence of polygyny throughout North Bali, at around five per cent.
