Articles by Initial Letters

Courtship customs in three Transylvanian communities: Udvarfalva/Curteni, Szék/Sic, Inaktelke/Inucu. Excerpts from a 1989 book on peasant morals and social rules for behavior. We read here about more recent trends in courtship and socializing in the village of Udvarfalva on the outskirts of the city of Marosvásárhely/Târgu Mureș. The information is from interviews with a generation of women born in the 1950s. Young people travelled in to the city (Márosvasárhely) to work where they were no longer under the constant surveillance of the village eyes. Formerly there were strict rules for courtship, "now, every family has it’s own rules". "The wise mother realizes she can only protect her children when they’re at home,…we cannot accompany them into the city where there are infinite possibilities for young people to be together,…and naturally everything can happen between them." But… "It was clear to every young person that they couldn’t just marry anyone. It was also clear that their future mate should be of the proper status in the village." Excerpts here also include traditional expectations for a girl in Szék: she should be capable of humbly, quietly seeing to ALL the family’s needs around the house, in the garden and barnyard. She must be strong, not frail. In the Kalotaszeg village of Inaktelke a girl was promised for marriage to a boy of her family’s choosing – of the proper social class and family. They married when the girl turned sixteen. By ethnographer Nagy Olga: A törvény szorításában – Paraszti értekrend és magatartásformák – 1989.