Girl Cases

Beginning in the late 1930s, a crisis in colonial Gusiiland developed over traditional marriage customs. Couples eloped, wives deserted husbands, fathers forced daughters into marriage, and desperate men abducted women as wives. Existing historiography focuses on women who either fled their rural homes to escape a new "dual patriarchy"-African men backed by colonial officials-or surrendered themselves to this new power. "Girl Cases": Marriage and Colonialism in Gusiiland, Kenya 1890-1970 takes a new approach to the study of Gusii marriage customs and shows that Gusii women stayed in their homes to fight over the nature of marriage. Gusii women and their lovers remained committed to traditional bridewealth marriage, but they raised deeper questions over the relations between men and women.