SLFK 212, February 19, 2004
Last time - finish Douglas
Intro. to courtship
Special house hired in the winter time
At street corners in the summer
Tell about dug donut
Finished up with fortune-telling
There is lots of it and its lots of fun
Ring on a string
Listening outside other people's homes, outside church
Eating salt, sleeping on a piece of wood
Dripping wax method
Shoe/boot tossing
When it is done in front of a large group, lots of laughter and teasing
Recall other forms like sticking hand into barn to ask barn spirit if you will wed
It's kind of a risk and a dare and something like summoning Bloody Mary in the mirror
That method is used too and I told you about an instance where this goes very wrong
Well, with what they know from Douglas - yes, this is a marginal and a dangerous situation
Woman gets herself into big trouble in the narrative about the sword
In real life - shoe ends up in well
Not just loss of shoe at a point when footwear was really hard to get
Bad omen and gets everyone, esp. the woman, all depressed
But you need to do fortune-telling for some degree of control
There is a very delicate balance of male and female power
Women set up the courtship parties, both winter and summer
But guys have to show and have to make the marriage proposal - it always comes from the guy
Women can reject the guy in the sleeping on the straw part
But you can't reject too many of them or no marriage and that is not an option
There is no social welfare system
It is your family - and for that you have to produce one
Or neighbors and friends
Woman in Topilne
Going or not going to courtship parties
Long discussion of this
Great pressure to go - girls who refuse get their gates or their fences tarred and often with things like graffiti and hyperphallic figures
But if you are too accommodating, then you end up pregnant and what if the guy rejects you?
Rusalka stories
The various ballads
The institution of the pokrytka
In a sense, it is a ritual resolution to the dilemma above
Church edicts against vechornytsi
The Soviet system hates them, too
Soviet authorities like control - recall the ritual book
And the courtship parties are not exactly controlled affairs
Institution of the klub
Khrushchev's building campaign in the mid-1950's
The Khrushchev Thaw
Supposed to be a public meeting space for people to do nice, serious things like discuss politics - Communist type only
Various workers meetings and solving various labor problems
Disciplining of errant workers but public shaming
This is not real popular, even during Soviet period
Unless you have a very strict village head who enforces proper behavior
What klub becomes is a more social space for courtship
But the Soviets get what they want in the sense that you have essentially all the young people of a village in one place, not in a bunch of houses
There is usually adult supervision
There was supposed to be adult supervision by the person from whom the house was rented, but apparently not a whole lot of it
So they have movie night and music/dancing night
This continues now if the klub functions
People gather at the klub, usually 3-4 nights a week Thursday-Saturday
Or once mid-week and then the weekend
Music and dancing
Klub sells refreshments, like drinks and snacks
Or there are shops near by that do
Bring the food back to the klub, eat outside
When klubs collapse, in some towns the shops take over, build on areas where people can sit and eat or drink
Stages for shows, entertainment
Marina dressing up in Iavorivka
They can hold fortune-telling night
And do other yearly cycle festivals where the whole village comes to have a good time, but a big part of it is a party for the young folks so that they can meet and pair up
The 2 Ivan Kupalos
The Ivan Kupalos are lots of fun, but very dangerous
The inadvertent sacrifices in Berlozy