Tag Archives: marriage

“The Yellow Ribbon”

Genre: Folk Narrative – Ghost Story

Text:

A man named Johnny was going out for coffee one day when he saw the most beautiful woman he had ever seen. He introduced himself to the woman, whose name was Jane, and the two of them began to fall in love. Everything about Jane was perfect, but there was one thing that confused Johnny: every single day, Jane wore a yellow ribbon around her neck.

“Do you ever take it off?” Johnny finally asked her after a month of dating. Jane told him that she never takes it off, even to sleep, and that he should never untie it. But even though Johnny pushed and pushed, she would never tell him why.

“One day, I’ll tell you,” Jane would always say whenever he asked.

The years went by and Johnny and Jane fell deeper in love and eventually, Johnny proposed to her. Yet every day, Jane still wore the same yellow ribbon around her neck.

The night before their wedding, Johnny finally had enough. He decided he absolutely needed to see what was under that ribbon, that he couldn’t wait a single day longer.

That night, Johnny waited for Jane to fall asleep. When he was certain she was sound asleep, he reached over to her neck and gently tugged on the end of the ribbon to untie it…

But when Johnny pulled the ribbon undone, he realized why exactly Jane had worn it every single day: because without the ribbon to hold it in place, her head rolled right off her neck and onto the floor, where Jane’s eyes slowly opened.

“Oh Johnny,” she said, even though her severed head was now a few feet away from her body. “I told you not to untie the ribbon.”

Context:

“I first heard this story from my older brother when I was growing up, but I heard it a few times throughout my childhood at places like childcare centers and in elementary school. I think it’s a pretty common ghost story among kids. I always thought it was creepy to think about a woman’s head being held onto her body by only a ribbon, and for a while, I was scared of anyone I saw wearing a ribbon or a thick choker around their neck.”

Analysis:

The theme of this story seems to be trust within a relationship: Jane withheld a secret from Johnny – the only apparent “fault” about her. But Johnny could not trust her enough to live without knowing what the secret was, and it was his scheming/distrustful nature that led to him trying to discover the answer on his own and accidentally revealing that Jane’s neck was severed. The implication of this happening the night before their wedding suggests that a lack of trust within a couple is potentially ruinous to a marriage. However, another possible interpretation is to take the opposite stance: that it is withholding secrets from one’s partner that destroys a marriage, and that the skeletons of one’s past will always end up being revealed.

Two Weddings

It is apparently common for Nigerian immigrants to the U.S. to have two weddings when they get married: one here in the States, either in American traditional style or in hybridized cultural fashion, and one back in Nigeria, following (often pre-colonial) traditions of their tribes. 

For example, the Nigerian (Igbo) immigrant parents of Chika, a Bay Area native, had a typical “white wedding” in the U.S., and another in Nigeria during which his mom and dad “walked through his [dad’s] neighborhood with everyone playing music and dancing on the way to the ceremony.”

This practice makes complete sense in the context of ceremonial rites of passage like weddings being ritualized and performed publicly in order for transitions and new identities to be communicated to and recognized by community members. Being that Nigerian immigrants often have at least two international communities, each with their own cultural norms and social categories, it can be affirming of new relationships developing on the intersection of both to have two weddings.

The Undressing of Draupadi

Text:

Draupadi wanted to marry one of the 5 main brothers from the Mahabharatha, but another man, Duryodhana wants her to marry him instead. He proposes to her, but is refused. Upon this refusal, one of his brothers begins trying to rip Draupadi’s clothes off. Krishna sees this, and decides to save Draupadi by maker her clothing infinite. No matter how much cloth Duryodhana’s brother rips off of her, there is always more that she is still wearing. 

Context: 

This story is from the Mahabharatha, and is a plot point in the main storyline. An extremely simplified synopsis of the Mahabharatha is that it’s about the war between 5 brothers and 100 of their other brothers (Note that brother and cousin are essentially synonymous in this context). The “good guys” are the 5 brothers, and they eventually end up winning the war. 

This story is a simple lesson that one should respect women, and that to undress them is not okay.

Analysis:

In Indian culture, arranged marriages are a common practice, and the final decision on whether a marriage happens is given to the family as a whole, not the woman getting married. This story encourages respecting a woman’s desires for her marriage, even if the cultural norm or law doesn’t fully require it, and backs that up with a god taking the side of Draupadi. This makes even more sense to me that this story is found somewhat in opposition of the cultural norm when I remember that many tales come from being told by women as they do busywork. They used what ways they could to better how they were treated, and instilling good habits and respect in their children is a very powerful way to do so.

Indian Wedding Ritual: Sisters Demanding Money

Context: The informant, AV, is an 18 year old student with parents who immigrated from India, specifically Gujarat. She’s been to multiple weddings in India, and observed this at her first cousin’s wedding. She remembers being somewhere around 5th grade-aged, and so she recounted what she remembered, with a general explanation. She doesn’t know if this is an Indian ritual or just a Gujarati one.

Text: AV said “When our cousin got married, he didn’t have any sisters, so me and my sister stood in front of his horse and didn’t let him through until he promised us money and silver chains. We were really young so I don’t remember it as well, but I remember it happening” and explained that essentially, when either your brother or a close cousin who has no sisters is getting married, you’re supposed to stop them from going into the wedding. They usually enter on a horse or in a car and they’re meant to walk into the venue, but before they can, you physically get in front of the horse/car, stop him, and tell him he’s not allowed to pass. He then is supposed to bargain, offering you money or gold or silver to let him pass. When it’s enough, you let him pass — usually now, it’s ritualized in the way that you push back like three times and on the second or third time you let them through.

Analysis: This ritual feels somewhat similar to the pranks traditionally played on couples during weddings, as a way of disrupting that liminality, except it’s specific to the groom and his side of the family. It’s a ritual for the groom to also leave the family; as the groom goes to the bride, the sisters will no longer be the most important women in his life, and they cede that position in a joking ritual that requires the groom to bribe them, proving how much he wants the bride. It’s a wedding ritual that rearranges the structure of the families that will be combining, and visually reorders the groom’s priorities. For the sisters, it’s also a form of letting their brother go, knowing that their relationships will fundamentally change, but disrupting that transition with this joking ritual.

Generational Fire

CONTEXT: DM is a current USC student who attended a North Carolina Christian sleep-away camp in the summer of 2011. This is a story that she heard from an elderly woman named Libby. Libby had been raised at the camp, was head of camp for a number of years, and taught Bible Study and Devotional at the camp. DM interprets this story as a personal story based on the region of North Carolina that Libby was from. Different from many of Libby’s other stories, DM does not believe this was explicitly religious in theme.

TEXT:
This was a story that was said to be sort of local, in the area where I went to this summer camp. It was said to be from a long, long time ago, but in these same hills. Like, back when white people, I guess, first came to these hills. And it’s a story about this tiny village and there are these two young people – this young couple – that falls in love and decides to get married. The boy was learning new skills and working overtime so he could afford to buy the things, like the wedding dress and buy the food for the feast, and have a pig ready when the time comes, so they could kill it and roast it and give it to everybody. He was making all these preparations to get his own stuff and learn how to build a cabin because their dream was to go off into the woods and go away together and build a cabin in the woods. She was bartering things so she could get the best white wool to spin her dress with and she spent months and months sewing
her dress together so it would be perfect. The day comes and everything goes wonderfully, and they get sent off into the woods and basically pack up their two backpacks worth of belongings and set off into the woods together. Their first night in the woods they’re along and cold but they were together, and they were so, so happy. And he chops up some wood and builds a fire for her as his first gift of their marriage. They sleep next to the fire and the warmth from the fire and the warmth from their love is what kept them warm. So, the next morning, when they got up to leave to go find a place to build their cabin, the husband scooped up all of the live coals and put them in this pot that he was gifted – this cast iron pot. And she carried around the ashes and coals from the fire all day, and then as soon as they got where they were going, he would start a fire with these coals and then would continue on like that. And the story is for five generations somewhere in the Appalachian Mountains this fire has been kept going by their daughters, their daughters’ daughters, their daughters’ daughters’ daughters, and they keep this one fire going with the original coals and ashes from the people who found this new place to settle down.

ANALYSIS: This story uses a common symbol of embers/coals/fire as a representation of love. If the love of the young couple is represented in this way, both the relationship and the fire are undying, resulting in new fires, and generations of children. The couple nurtures the fire together, with the husband building the fire and collecting the coals, and the wife nurturing the coals during the day as they walked. This could be representative of the life they built together, lasting long after they were gone. The foundational fire and foundational love that they had set them up for future success in their posterity and survival of the fire itself.