Hegemonic Masculinity in the Wedding of the Dead Andreea Baceanu

(HEGEMONIC) MASCULINITY IN THE

WEDDING OF THE DEAD.

A brief analysis of

recent concepts

regarding

masculinities and

their applicability to

a rural setting from

the late 70s Romania.

Andreea-Loredana Baceanu

Gender, Sex, Bodies.

Final paper.

Andreea-Loredana Baceanu. Gender, Sex, Bodies: Feminist Theories and Debates. Final paper.

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Contents Introduction ............................................................................................................................................. 2

Presentation of the issue .......................................................................................................................... 3

Analysis ................................................................................................................................................... 5

The Wedding situation ............................................................................................................................ 5

Dances of the Groom’s Flag and the Bride’s Crown: Jocul Steagului and Jocul Cununii ..................... 5

Gătata Mniresii: Readying of the Bride ............................................................................................... 8

Cererea Mniresii – Asking for the Bride .............................................................................................. 9

Horea Gainii: The Song of the Hen .................................................................................................... 10

Other aspects of the everyday life ........................................................................................................ 11

Discussion .............................................................................................................................................. 14

Conclusions ............................................................................................................................................ 16

Bibliography ........................................................................................................................................... 17


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(Hegemonic) Masculinity in The Wedding of the Dead.

Introduction

The aim of this paper is to analyze masculinity as it is constructed in description of the Ieud

village and in some of the wedding rituals presented by Gail Kligman in her book “The

Wedding of the Dead”, first published in 1988. I will begin by providing a brief outline of her

study, so the reader can place the facts in the broader time and space frame. “This study is

based on seventeen months of fieldwork in a Maramureș village [Ieud], the primary research

having been done during thirteen months in 1978-79.”1 “[It] is about fundamental aspects of

contemporary life in a Maramureș village: how certain significant events - life-cycle rites –

are constituted, managed, understood and made meaningful.”2 However, “The Wedding of the

Dead” is, by excellence, an ethnography and, therefore, it has a rather descriptive character.

Despite the fact that the author also analyses the facts, she is not particularly interested in the

gender relations in the village (with the exception of few pages in which she is briefly

outlining the social organization of this community). This is my topic of interest, with a

special focus on masculinity and how it was defined, lived and enacted in Ieud in the late 70s.

This is a very special time for Romania, because the communist period was at its very best

back then and phenomena like massive industrialization and commuting were deeply

changing the everyday life patterns, especially for the people who lived in rural areas of the

country. This is important because, with more and more young villagers going to live at least

temporarily in the neighboring cities, it is obvious that tradition started losing its importance.

Even though eternity was born in the village3, the meaning and structure of this mioritic

space4 was changing back in the day, and with it masculinity and femininity were also

1 Kligman, Gail, The wedding of the dead: ritual, poetics, and popular culture in Transylvania, Univ. of California

Press, Berkeley, 1988, p. 17. 2 Idem, p. 8.

3 Lucian Blaga, one of the most important Romanian poets and philosophers.

4 Kligman used this as a reference to one of Blaga’s (see the note above) philosophical essays about the rural

spaces in Romania. He used the term “mioritic” to emphasize the idyllic atmosphere and the importance of religious beliefs.


3

changing, slowly creating a whole new social order, based on the communist pursue of “the

new man”5.

I think the 70s were the last decade where one could experience the authenticity of the rural

life style in Romania, for after this decade the communist ideology started penetrating even

deeper the meanings of traditions, making it almost impossible for a researcher to find more

than stories and memories about how it was before. Even Kligman finally reached the

conclusion that traditions were already altered by ideology, giving as example the fact that the

ritual poetry chanted during the weddings or funerals was imbued with critiques and concerns

about the repercussions of the politics on the individual life (for example, during one funeral,

Kligman recorded some lyrics that addressed the issue of “dying among strangers”, far from

one’s family).

In this paper I will try to focus as much as possible on hegemonic masculinity, but this would

be a pointless approach without relating it to femininity, for “marriage rationalizes life and

death”6, it restructures identity and social actions. Anything is better than to be of age and

unmarried, but marriage means bringing femininity and masculinity together, allowing them

to shape each other while building a new family. Therefore, there is no masculinity without

femininity, just as it is no femininity without its masculine half.

However, the reader of this paper should bear in mind that whichever conclusions about

masculinity I will reach to in the end, the present situation is very different. The knowledge I

will extract from Kligman’s study is a situated one, on a clearly determined time - space

continuum. Also, as noted by the author herself, whatever findings she came to in Ieud, she

could not in any way generalize or extend them to the whole territory of Romania. Having

cleared this matter, I will proceed to present the issue I want to investigate in this paper.

Presentation of the issue

When reading “The Wedding of the Dead”, I was constantly wondering whether one could

apply “Western” gender theories and case study findings to the Romanian (and, therefore,

Eastern) village of the 70s. Therefore, this paper aims to investigate an eventual link or

connection between the facts provided by Kligman’s study and the relevant literature

5 Phrase often used by the last Romanian dictator Nicolae Ceausescu in his political discourses when talking

about “building the socialism”. 6 Kligman, Gail, The wedding of the dead: ritual, poetics, and popular culture in Transylvania, Univ. of California, p. 75


4

concerning masculinities. If such link indeed exits, I feel that it would prove at least one very

valuable thing - that the theories and concepts I will use in this paper could be extended to

new social spaces and meanings, outside the settings where they had been elaborated at first,

thus making them really valuable for the study of hegemonic masculinity in different areas

and contexts.

However, I feel the need to formulate a terminological specification, regarding the difference

between orthodox masculinity (Anderson, 2010) and the meaning of hegemonic masculinity

in the present paper. The latter stands for the “traditional” (and orthodox per se) men in

Kligman’s study and after reading the book I think they have almost nothing to do with the

three particularities identified by Anderson: “homophobia, misogyny and excessive risk-

taking”7. Anyway, I will still use the terms “hegemonic” or “traditional masculinity”, because,

as Kligman wrote, “the system is male-biased”. Patriarchy and the patrilineal system were the

norm.

However, the difference between practice and ideology should be taken into account as well.

Because my unit of analysis will consist of descriptions of wedding rituals and some excerpts

of ritual poetry, it is obvious that I, like Kligman, could not refer to the individual lives or

practices of the men in Ieud. Rituals “inform (but do not determine) consciousness and

action”8 and, therefore, it is not necessary that every young man in the village acted as the

rituals prescribed, but, given the fact that these rites are an example of social philosophy, they

can help understand certain aspects of the rural life. “Ritual may be seen as a dramatic form of

symbolic action that articulates the relationship between a symbolically constructed order of

meanings and a system of interpersonal and institutional relationships”9. Therefore, it is not

the individual, subjective being this paper is concerned with, but rather the way (symbolic)

masculinity is articulated through the wedding rituals. My point is that I do not claim that

these villagers were not at all misogynistic, homophobic or heavy risk takers in their personal

lives, but what concerns me in this paper is masculinity as a supra-individual dimension of the

community.

For the sake of coherence, in the following section of the paper I will keep the structure of

Kligman’s study, following the steps of the traditional wedding in Ieud.

7 Anderson, Eric and Rhidian McGuire. 2010. "Inclusive Masculinity Theory and the Gendered Politics of Men's

Rugby." Journal of Gender Studies 19 (3): 249-261, p.1. 8 Idem, p. 10

9 Kligman, Gail, The wedding of the dead: ritual, poetics, and popular culture in Transylvania, Univ. of California

Press, Berkeley, 1988, p 10


5

Analysis

The Wedding situation Traditional Romanian weddings last three days, during which many rituals are performed. In

this section of the paper I will briefly present some of these key-moments and the way

masculinity is shaped during their unfolding.

Dances of the Groom’s Flag and the Bride’s Crown: Jocul Steagului and Jocul

Cununii

This is the first of the wedding rituals and it

takes place before the bride and groom meet to

get married per se. “The flag is a dominant

symbol of marriage; it is a masculine symbol

of colorful vitality and power in which

relations between men and women, life and

death, and the values of patriarchy are

symbolically encoded. The flag is the

responsibility of the groom’s best man (flag-

bearer) […]. The militaristic aspect of the flag

and the flag-bearer is persistently evident in

language and in deed. The groom is referred to

as “our king”, “our prince”. The flag-bearer

accompanies him throughout the wedding, proudly displaying their strength and vitality. […]

The groom’s flag is danced by the flag-bearer, who chooses a girl to dance it with him. The

groom’s male peers form a circle around them. […] Women, however, never dance this

dance. The Sweing and Dancing of the Flag constitute the ritual separation of the groom from

his bachelor friends, from courtship, and from the prerogatives of youth. It underscores the

death of that phase in his life-cycle. The young men continuously shout ritual poetry verses

(strigaturi or shouts), emphasizing the gravity of the situation that is about to occur. […] The

wedding discourse is replete with the cultural vocabulary associated with bargaining. […]

When the dance is ended, the flag-bearer […] recites the following saying, directing its

message to the groom:

Pă cînd să pline anu When the year is over


6

Să sie gata Danu. Dan should be ready (born).

Pă cînd s-o plini doi ai At the end of two years

Să sie un Mihai ș-un Nicolai. May there be a Michael and a Nicholas.”

10

After this, the groom’s party is heading to the bride’s house, where she will be “crowned” (a

white crown, symbolizing her purity, will be placed on her head while songs and poetry are

sung or “shouted”). During this part of the wedding, “the white crown is the symbol of the

bride’s virginity, and it is displayed for her peers – and future husband – to appreciate. The

bride’s virginity is being handed to the groom on a platter, an act that will be repeated later.

[…] It is fitting that the bride’s crown is danced by both men and women: the bride’s virginity

is the critical element upon which male and female honor and shame rest.”

Connell (Masculinities, 1965) remarked upon the existence of an archetypal image of women

in the collective imaginary. This also applies to the community of Ieud and is of special

importance during the wedding, when the formation of a new family rests upon the bride’s

purity. As noted by Kligman, the bride must be a virgin and this has to be reaffirmed during

the dance of the crown, as shown above, for example). Even though this “ideal-type” of

womanhood might be of public interest (during the dance of the crown, the bride’s virginity is

publicly displayed), it is the groom who benefits the most from it. Somehow, as Connell

noted, the purity of the brides helps “men define themselves”. In the case of Ieud, because the

bride is a virgin, she is not a woman – she is a girl. When a man marries a girl, it is

underscored that she will make mistakes in the beginning due to her innocence and lack of

experience, and it is the man’s duty to support her (both spiritually and materially) so she

would finally become a good wife and mother and, thus, a “real” woman.

Connell also wrote on sex role theories and their limits. First, what caught my eye was the

observation about “linking the idea of a place in the social structure with the idea of cultural

norms”11

, thus creating a self-reproductive system. The cultural norms reinforce the social

stratification. In the case of Ieud, this stratification can be found in the village itself, as well as

inside the nuclear families. The main axes of such stratification are sex/gender, age and

marital status (Kligman). In the Dancing of the Flag described above, the final excerpt of

ritual poetry beautifully symbolizes the importance of patriarchy in this community. When

wishing the groom a happy married life, the flag-bearer encodes the message into wishing him

10

Idem, Pp. 82-85 11

Connell, R. W. Masculinities. Polity Press: Cambridge, UK. 1995.


7

to have three baby boys. Basically, happiness inside marriage is operationalized into the birth

of boys. This was of such great importance because it was the main mean by which the

patrilineal system reproduced itself and the continuity of the village was assured.

Furthermore, regarding sex role theories, Connel wrote that “roles [are] seen as specific to

definite situations, such as script-following in courtship and within marriage”12

. For example,

in the traditional Ieud wedding, almost the same ritual (in terms of “shape”) was performed

separately by the groom’s and the bride’s male, respectively female friends. This is about the

Dancing of the Flag, respectively the Crown and, as we will see later on, the Dressing of the

Bride. Though these rituals do not differ very much in form, the meanings are completely

different – the groom is praised for such a good “bargain” (he found the best available girl),

whereas the bride is expected to shed tears of desperation because she has to leave the world

of careless, free, young, un-married women, as well as the comfort of her parents’ household.

Also, as described above, the flag is displayed to prove the groom’s vitality and virility, but

his sexual “honesty” is taken for granted, not questioned in any way, strongly contrasting with

the almost obsessive manner the question of the bride’s virginity is being addressed during the

wedding, starting with the Dancing of the Crown.

Speaking of bargaining, Claude Lévi-Strauss beautifully remarked that “it is the men who

exchange the women and not vice-versa. […] In human society a man must obtain a woman

from another man who gives him a daughter or a sister”13

. This is another mean by which

patrilineal system is being reproduced, reinforcing the power of men on women and

re(creating) a hegemonic masculinity. However, these two dimensions of the (re)creating of

hegemonic masculinity in Ieud are somehow “politically correct”, for both men and women

have the opportunity to bring their contribution to the patriarchal system. Women do this by

giving birth to baby boys; men, by bargaining and exchanging women. Of course, this means

that women are subjected to biology and luck. If they are biologically able to have children

and are lucky enough to create male offsprings, then their status within the family and the

community will slowly but surely start to be more favorable. This also beautifully

demonstrated by a superstition – the first bathwater of the newly born baby girl will be thrown

over some flowers, so she will be lucky and her first born will be a boy.

12

Idem. 13

Lévi-Strauss, Claude. Structural Anthropology. Anchor Books: New York, 1967, p. 45.


8

Gătata Mniresii: Readying of the Bride It is the second main moment during the wedding and takes place right before the church

ceremonial. I choose not to discuss the religious wedding because all the rituals there are

performed by the priest and have their roots in the Orthodox dogma, and I feel like a critique

regarding such matters is beyond the purpose of this paper.

The readying of the bride (also called the Dressing of the Bride) is a quite lengthy moment –

it takes at least two hours, “most of which is spent braiding the bride’s hair and sewing fresh

greenery into her plaits, which will be tied together with the groom’s gift of white ribbons.

Older women do the honors; just as later they will wind the new bride’s bound braids around

her head, indicating her status as a married woman. The groom’s ribbons link the bride’s

braids together as a symbol of his claim to her soon-to-be-lost maidenhood”14

. Just as shown

before, virginity was of great importance and was symbolized and questioned throughout the

entire wedding. The white ribbons in the bride’s hair, the greenery, the flowers, her white

clothes – all come to publicly display her purity. However, there were no such indicators for

the groom’s “honesty”. He was never questioned and, even more, his soon-to-be wife’s

virginity was his to benefit from. The girls in Kligman’s village knew that a man wants to be

his wife’s “first” and the ones who did not conform to this generally accepted practice were

seen as “easy” and undesirable. In a sense (though the historical context is fundamentally

different), it is the same situation Hyde, Drennan and Howlett found in their study regarding

men’s vulnerability in constituting hegemonic masculinity in sexual relations: “sexually

experienced females posed a threat to the self of neophyte male lover. Women who controlled

and led sexual encounters and displayed a strong interest in sex were heavily criticized and

labeled.” Because both the bride and groom were supposed to be virgins, a potentially

sexually active woman would pose as a threat – she would be better than her husband and the

entire community would be aware of this, for marriage is a matter concerning the entire

village, not only the bride, groom and their respective families. However, I am not trying to

deny the biblical dimension of virginity. Especially for Ieud, as a former Greek-Catholic

village, it is obvious that Virgin Mary served as an example and maybe as a foundation for the

condition of young girls inside their community, but I think it was more than just reinforcing

the biblical, recommended behavior. It also had a social dimension and served as a tool for the

preservation of the patriarchal system, where girls (and women) should have had an inferior

place in the status hierarchies. Sexual activity was subjected to marriage and therefore it was 14

Kligman, Gail, The wedding of the dead: ritual, poetics, and popular culture in Transylvania, Univ. of California Press, Berkeley, 1988, p. 89


9

the marriage that turned a girl into a woman. When having sex outside marriage, girls put

aside their status as married women (which was not so high, as described above), and

therefore did not need a husband to “make them real” and went straight to being women on

their own, undermining the masculine dominance. These social practices and normativity

were deeply embedded into the collective mental, so no young man would take someone who

was known not to be a virgin to be his wife. This dimension of masculinity was defined

within one’s peer group. Therefore, “Masculinities were shaped through the cultural resources

available to the young men and, out of a fear of group sanction, their positioning of

themselves within prevailing discourses promoted by the peer group.”15

In Maramures, these

culturally shaped masculinities contributed to the stability of the broader social order, inside

the frames of patriarchy and patrilineal community ties.

Cererea Mniresii – Asking for the Bride This occurs after the religious service and is one of the most dramatic sequences of the

wedding. The central concept is that of bargaining (see Cl. Lévi-Strauss). In order to prove his

masculinity and virility, the groom has to be able to get a good wife (i.e. a virgin).

As the groom’s peers enter the bride’s house, her own guests must go and witness the asking

from outside. This is a strong symbolism of the status hierarchies within one’s enlarged

families: the first place is proudly held by the groom’s family, whereas the bride’s family

always comes second. A good indicator for this is the fact that kinship is being conceptualized

based on which side of the family one belongs to. For example, the groom’s mother is called

“big” mother-in-law by the bride’s family, whereas her own mother is “small” mother-in-law.

This gender-based status differentiation is conceptualized in Connell’s “Masculinities” as

“difference between instrumental and expressive roles in the family considered as a small

group. Thus gender is deduced from a general sociological law of the differentiation of

functions in social groups.” Same statement is applicable in Ieud, in the sense that the family

was dichotomized along the sex/gender axis: women were supposed to deal with the “less”

important activities – they stayed at home, took care of the house and raised the children,

whereas men were supposed to be the bread winners and more important, to represent the

family within the community (in administrative gatherings, for example). This is the reason

why during the Asking for the Bride the bride’s peers and family have to leave the house –

15

Hyde, Abbey, Jonathan Drennan, Etaoine Howlett, and Dympna Brady. 2009. "Young Men’s Vulnerability in Constituting Hegemonic Masculinity in Sexual Relations." American Journal of Men's Health 3 (3): 238-251, p. 248.


10

their own status depends on the bride’s status and is therefore, less important. I think this is an

extrapolation of the functionalist division of labor within one’s family – during the wedding

situation, because it is a communal matter, everyone is affected by the social differences

between the bride and groom, their status being transferred to their peers and family members.

The following moment of the wedding is the most awaited and the most explicit one. The

sexual symbolism becomes most evident now and the (hegemonic) masculinity is again

reinforced.

Horea Gainii: The Song of the Hen

“Because honor demands it, the bride’s virginity must be publicly certified. This is

accomplished […] during The Song of the Hen, […] which usually takes place around 4 A.M.

at the bride’s house. […] the bride’s symbolic mother, in this instance the woman who

prepares the wedding meals, attests to her “daughter’s” virginity through a versified dialogue

with the symbolic mother-in-law, the groom’s godmother. […] The hen is fashioned into an

icon of the bride. […] Social norms do not permit forthright public discussion of sexual

matters; hence, the discussion is carried on via metaphoric discourse.”16

“With regard to sexual dominance, many of the young men seemed to be exposed to a

hegemonic version of masculinity where one’s success as a sexual predator was a central

dimension. Sexual prowess, sexual performance, and exhibiting a strong interest in sex are

key dimensions of this identity”17

. This can also be found in Kligman’s study to some extent,

especially in the prevalence of sex-related rituals and shouts in Maramures. The Song of the

Hen is one example of this – the groom just bargained and obtained his wife from her father,

so now it is time that her virginity is certified in front of everybody, as a proof for the groom’s

ability to negotiate for a “honorable” wife. The Song of the Hen is preoccupied with nothing

else but sex and the bride is constantly reminded that she will soon lose her virginity.

However, such discourse is carried under the veil of versed joked exchanged by the cook and

the groom’s god-mother. This ritual is interesting for two reasons. First of all, it shows again

the functionalist division of labor and the prevalence of dichotomized gender roles – men

traded the girl in the public realm – the father gave the groom a wife. The strictly physical

matters fall into the responsibility of women. In the intimacy of the household, they are the

ones who should settle the virginity question, so the norms of patriarchy penetrate the

16

Pp 107 -109 17

Hyde, Abbey, Jonathan Drennan, Etaoine Howlett, and Dympna Brady. 2009. "Young Men’s Vulnerability in Constituting Hegemonic Masculinity in Sexual Relations." American Journal of Men's Health 3 (3): 238-251


11

wedding in great extent. Second of all, the superiority of the man is reinforced, for in the end

the “hen” is always “of good quality”. The groom got the best deal possible. How did the

groom learn the tricks of the job? By attending his older friends’ wedding. By “being exposed

to a hegemonic version of masculinity where one’s success as a sexual predator became

evident”.

Other aspects of the everyday life In this section of the paper I will present some aspects of the everyday life in Ieud, as

Kligman noted them in her study, and then I will try to connect them with concepts and

theories regarding masculinity.

First of all, the concept of the salaryman seems to be very similar in the contemporary

Japanese corporate world and in the late 70s traditional Transylvanian village. Both Dasgupta

and Kligman made very similar notes on the gendered structure of the family: “An integral

element of the salaryman discourse [...] has been the equation of masculinity with the public,

work, production sphere and femininity with the private, household, consumption sphere”18

,

thus leading to „socio-cultural expectations that work defines masculinity19

”. In the case of

Maramures, this is beautifully illustrated in some shouts, when the image of the man as the

breadwinner for the family is conceived by the somewhat classic 50s Hollywood cliché movie

– the husband comes home from work, dressed in his usual working clothes. He also has some

kind of hat that he puts on a hook right after he enters the house (p 47). When she analyzed

the social stratification and order in Ieud, Kligman noted the same labor-division within the

family, where women are concerned only with the private, inside sphere, whereas men

represent the entire family in the larger community: “men tend to deal with the public sector;

women, the private. In keeping with the patrilineal, patrilocal biases, men have been, until

recently, the formal representatives of the households, the oublic arbiters of interfamilial

relations. Women are the informal managers of domestic affairs, the private mediators of

18

Dasgupta, Romit. The Gay Salaryman at Work: Negotiating with Hegemonic Ideologies of Sexuality in the Japanese Workplace., p.4. 19

Ibid.


12

intrafamilial relations. […] The experience of men is both socially and geographically broader

than women’s.”20

Second of all, what Quinn called “gril-watching”21

is not completely estranged from this

community from the late 70s. “A man watching girls is frequently accepted as a natural and

commonplace activity, especially if he is in the presence of other men.”22

In contrast, the girls

of traditional Maramures are not allowed to check out boys. First, they have to hold their eyes

into the ground when they walk the streets of the village. Second, a very important meeting

place for boys and girls is the Sunday dance (hora). The girls are not allowed to take part

(actively) in it unless they are invited by a man. If they refuse the invitation, this could result

in their permanent ostracization. So, they are not allowed to choose who they dance to (or,

more general, who they look at), but they are also not allowed to refuse a man. For men, it is

natural and they are the ones who are supposed to look at women and pick some of them. For

women, it is natural that they accept the man’s invitation. Somehow, this asking for a dance

“may be used by men as a directed act of power against a particular woman or women”23

,

because a girl’s refusal can led to her aging as an “old maiden”, a deeply criticized status

within the viallge. However, as it described by Kligman, the girls seem to have no problem

with this – for them, the moment when a man asks for a dance is a cathartic one. As Quinn

puts it in the context of sexual harassment, “the more men and women adhere to traditional

gender roles, the more likely they are to deny the harm in sexual harassment and to consider

the behavior acceptable or at least normal.”24

I think it would be exaggerated to underpin the

desire to dance with a girl in the audience in the category of sexual harassment, but I think

that we can use the same argument for the girls’ acceptance of their inferior position in the

village hierarchy. “The more one is socialized into traditional notions of sex roles, the more

likely it is for both men and women to view the behaviors as acceptable or at least

unchangeable.”25

, thus creating a system of power relations that reproduces itself over and

over again and which is thought to be unchangeable.

20

Kligman, Gail, The wedding of the dead: ritual, poetics, and popular culture in Transylvania, Univ. of California Press, Berkeley, 1988, P.50 21

Quinn, Beth A. 2002. "Sexual Harassment and Masculinity: The Power and Meaning of "Girl Watching"." Gender & Society 16 (3): 386-402, p. 387. 22

Ibid. 23

Idem, p. 393. 24

Idem, p. 388. 25

Idem, p.


13

However, one should not mistakenly think of “the gaze” in the article in the same way as the

dance invitation. “Through the gaze, the targeted woman is reduced to a sexual object,

contradicting her other identities, such as that of competent worker or leader.”26

When they

invite a young, unmarried woman into their dance, men of Ieud do not reduce her to a sexual

object – rather, they want to see if she would be a suitable life partner. Of course, we cannot

rule out the sexual connotations of the dance, for it implies closeness and intimacy to some

extent and, most important, in this traditional Romanian dance, the man has to take the lead.

Dancing is a mean by which men can see if they are compatible with their chosen female

partners – it is believed that if two people can dance gracefully together, then they can also

maintain a happy and prosperous household. Compatibility in dance in translated into

compatibility in everything – from beliefs to sexual behavior. Here lies the major difference

between the gaze and the dance invitation – the latter does not reject a woman’s other

identities, but rather it tests and puts them on display for everyone to see. The woman is (1)

the unmarried, virgin girl and therefore a (2) potential wife and sex partner. If during the

dance the man and the woman have the desired connection, then the girl becomes (3) the

future daughter-in-law for the man’s parents (they always stand on the side and watch the

dance), (4) the future responsible for “internal” matters of the family-to-be and, (5) the mother

of the children-to-be (preferably boys) and, as the system reproduces itself, (6) the future

mother-in-law of some other young, unmarried, virgin girl. However, it is quite evident that at

least accordingly to our present standards or to the 70s Western ones “the system is male-

biased”, for the women are always destined for the internal affairs of the family, the husbands

being the ones to represent everyone in the public sphere. “Play (read “the Sunday dance”)

functions as both a source of fun and a mechanism by which gendered identities, group

boundaries, and power relations are (re)produced.”27

Also interesting is the fact that they only

dance one or two dances. This allows men not to look desperate and therefore controllable by

their need for a wife. They only “test the waters”.

I already said that Kligman’s village was a deeply patriarchal one. However, "Patriarchy is as

much about relations between man and man as it is about relations between men and

women”.28

Even woman-woman, I might add. In traditional Maramures, this is best shown in

the wedding rituals, where older, married women have to introduce and remind the newly

26

Idem, p. 392. 27

Idem, p. 393. 28

Idem, p. 394.


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wedded bride that she will from now on be a part of the patriarchy system and that she cannot

escape it. It is the desired tragedy girls dream about their entire childhood and adolescence.

To sum up the connection between the Sunday Dance and girl-watching, it is important to

also note that “girl watching works as a dramatic performance played to other men, a means

by which a certain type of masculinity is produced and heterosexual desire displayed. It is a

means by which men assert a masculine identity to other men, in an ironic "homo-sexual”

practice of heterosexuality”29

, allowing therefore the appropriate masculine conduit to pass on

from one generation to another, preserving the social order and the hegemonic masculine

archetype.

Also interesting is the fact that Connell’s critique regarding the limits of this functionalist

theories can also be found in this traditional Maramures village. “Functionalist theory

assumed a concordance among social institutions, sex role norms and actual personalities”30

.

People of Ieud did not care of “actual personalities” – culturally transmitted values and

practices were prevalent over personal traits as long as the individual had nothing out of the

ordinary. For example, during the wedding, the bride was supposed to cry. If she could not do

it by herself, the older, married women would do something to start her tears. Personal

matters became of public interest only when one is deeply crooked or flawed: this is evident

in the use of nicknames ((the) Lame (one), (the) Blind (one) etc.) and in some customs which

function as public stigma (the grossly manufactured old lady/man placed in front of an

unmarried old (wo)man’s house in the New Year’s Eve).

Discussion It becomes evident from the above analysis that certain aspects of masculinity can be

conceptualized in a cross-cultural manner, disregarding the time and space difference. For

example, the male gender normativity had been around for more than 2000 years now and is

still a big issue to be addressed and finally settled. Though it deeply permeated the social

order of Ieud, Kligman also noted that these gender relations were taken for granted by both

men and women and everyone did his/her part to make sure that nothing changes. Perhaps

hegemonic masculinity is not such a great problem unless the subjects have already been

29

Idem, p. 400. 30

Connell, R. W. Masculinities. Polity Press: Cambridge, UK. 1995. .


15

exposed to alternatives. The women of Ieud were mainly concerned with the internal, homely

affairs and were not travelling around very much. The community was the center of their

universe and it was perfect, for, as Kligman noted, it somehow reproduced the surrounding

nature. Regarding hegemonic masculinity, it was constantly shaped and reinforced, during

both everyday life and special occasions, such as the wedding rituals from above. The female

sexuality was of great importance for the safe-keeping of this form of masculinity. Men

defined themselves in relation to the female population of the village and not only the other

way around. The most important thing for a successful bargaining (on the groom’s side) was

that the girl was “pure”. The groom’s masculinity depended on his bride, on her good habits.

However, unlike the men in the girl-watching study, the villagers of Ieud were not “sexual

predators” – at least their actions were not directly sexually charged. Instead, their masculinity

became even more powerful when they were getting married – it was not enough to just have

intercourse, thus they were constantly seeking for a wife, and not for a “friends-with-benefits”

kind of relationship. I think this is the main difference between the hegemonic masculinity as

it appears discussed in the course literature and the way it seems to have been practiced in

Ieud: the importance of marriage. With the exception of the Japanese breadwinner situation

(which, anyway, did not necessarily underscore marriage per se), married life does not seem

to be the concern of these recent studies. Hegemonic masculinity was…hegemonic in Ieud,

but it was the main resort which finally led to marriage. And getting married was of crucial

importance for both men and women, because they were defining one another by their union.

Speaking of masculinity and its enactment, it is important to bear in mind that, “since the role

norms are social facts, they can be changed by social processes”31

. Norms, values and

identities shift over time, they are not static. Though change is not desired, it is inevitable.

This was happening to the inhabitants of Ieud while Kligman conducted her study (late 70s).

Due to the communist obsession with industry and urbanization, more men had to commute

weekly to the cities. Therefore, agricultural work, a domain conceived as deeply masculine,

became more and more feminized, because the men were all going to the city to work and

were no longer able to also take care of the land inside the village. Although this might have

been a tool by which the women of Ieud could have claimed more power in relation to their

masculine halves, Ceausescu’s project of “a new man” partially destroyed agriculture and

certainly disrupted the normality of the village, because, at least in the first years, women

were not “socialized” into the field work and were not performing very well.

31

Idem.


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Conclusions For the people of Ieud, hegemonic masculinity meant the following: men as the norm, a

certain type of misogyny (women were rendered as not being capable of dealing with the

public sphere of the community); also, it was reinforced through the “pureness” of the

women. Patriarchy was a self-reproducing system mainly because neither the men nor the

women wanted to change the already familiar social order, but gender relations and therefore

masculinity started to change and shift towards what we today think of as being more

“correct” interactions through the large, societal changes induced by the communist ideology

and practice. Moreover, it should be evident by now that the hegemonic masculinity in Ieud is

not the same as hegemonic masculinity in Anderson’s paper. I have not been able to find any

clue towards homophobia or excessive risk-taking in Kligman’s description and analysis of

the village, so this stands as a proof for the way that our words are also culturally constructed.

It is interesting how the meaning of a term which seems to be so generally accepted as having

one definition – misogyny, risk-taking and homophobia, can be slightly changed when the

cultural, historical and societal environment also change.

However, I think it is interesting how concepts which emerged many years later (girl-

watching, for example) can be applied to a completely different setting than the one they have

been crafted in. This points to certain commonalities regarding gender relations and the

problems that arise from the daily doing of the gender.


17

Bibliography

1. Anderson, Eric and Rhidian McGuire. 2010. "Inclusive Masculinity Theory and the

Gendered Politics of Men's Rugby." Journal of Gender Studies 19 (3): 249-261

2. Connell, R. W. Masculinities. Polity Press: Cambridge, UK. 1995.

3. Dasgupta, Romit. The Gay Salaryman at Work: Negotiating with Hegemonic

Ideologies of Sexuality in the Japanese Workplace.

4. Hyde, Abbey, Jonathan Drennan, Etaoine Howlett, and Dympna Brady. 2009. "Young

Men’s Vulnerability in Constituting Hegemonic Masculinity in Sexual Relations."

American Journal of Men's Health 3 (3): 238-251.

5. Kligman, Gail, The wedding of the dead: ritual, poetics, and popular culture in

Transylvania, Univ. of California Press, Berkeley, 1988

6. Lévi-Strauss, Claude. Structural Anthropology. Anchor Books: New York, 1967.

7. Quinn, Beth A. 2002. "Sexual Harassment and Masculinity: The Power and Meaning

of "Girl Watching"." Gender & Society 16 (3): 386-402

Hegemonic Masculinity in the Wedding of the Dead Andreea Baceanu

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