"Once in her new house, the bride is treated ritually (mirrors are flashed, for example) to cleanse her of the evil adhering to her before she is led for the first time to her bedroom. It is clear that in the period from her dispatch to her reception she has undergone a radical transformation as a person and as a vehicle of social relationships. When her family send her off she becomes to them an outsider, moving from the status of cherished daughter to that of potential enemy: ritual acts are performed to prevent her taking away any of the property of her natal house, and behind her the doors are shut to insure that its fortune does not follow her. In the new house, by the time she has been stripped of the malignities she may have brought with her and made by rites to express her promise to produce peace, she is on the point of being bonded to her husband by their joint worship of Heaven and Earth, the ancestors of the house, and the Kitchen God."

Freedman 1970, 184


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