Historical ritual humiliation of Old Maids

[cclaun]

The village of Oakhaven pulsed with a joyous thrum, a collective breath held in anticipation of the day’s zenith. Sunlight, buttery and warm, spilled over cobblestone paths and thatched roofs, illuminating garlands of wildflowers strung between every dwelling. Margaret, Gwen’s younger sister, was to be wed, and for Oakhaven, this was more than a ceremony; it was a harvest festival, a communal celebration of life’s continuity. For Gwen, however, the merriment was a discordant clang. Margaret, radiant in white, was to marry Thomas, a man as fine as any could wish: prosperous, kind, and gentle. An ideal husband, by all accounts. Yet for Gwen, the very notion of a wedding night, even with such a partner, was not merely unappealing, but a cold, repulsive horror. She craved nothing more than the quiet solitude of her single state, if only they would, in fact, let her alone. But that, she knew, was not the way of things.
The wedding mass had concluded, a somber prelude quickly forgotten in the explosion of revelry that followed. The festival began with the dance of the newlywed couple. Margaret, a vision of youthful exuberance, spun about gracefully, her heavy, embroidered skirts flaring to reveal shapely legs encased in fine silk stockings. Her laughter, clear and bell-like, mingled with Thomas’s beaming smiles.
Following this traditional display of marital bliss, came another dance, one steeped in a darker, more ancient custom. A hush fell, quickly replaced by a murmur of eager anticipation. Gwen felt the blood drain from her face. It was her turn. A woman whose younger sister married before her was forced to endure a humiliating penance: to dance barefoot, a spectacle of her shameful unmarried state. Her eyes, swimming with unbidden tears, sought Margaret’s across the bustling square, a silent plea for release from the coming ordeal.
Margaret, fanning herself delicately with a lace fan, met her gaze. She offered no comfort, only a dismissive laugh. "Get on with it, Gwen. You know you owe this to the village. The spectacle of your dance will make the day so much sweeter for all of us."
Hands, not unkind but utterly unyielding, guided Gwen forward. She was compelled to remove her worn leather shoes, then her coarse wool stockings. The cool dampness of the earth seeped into her pale, tender soles. The maids of honor, anticipating her refusal to lift her own skirts in the dance, seized the hem of her simple gown, lifting it a full foot above her knobby knees, pinning it tautly in place. Exposed, vulnerable, she was then lifted, with surprising force, onto the massive barrel of wedding wine that stood at the center of the square.
She stood there, a figure of frozen misery. Her pale face, usually so composed, was flushed in a blotchy, uneven red. Her head remained bowed, her gaze fixed on her bare feet, her knees clamped together in a desperate attempt to shrink from every eye.
The music struck up – a lively, mocking jig. The crowd, now a single, baying entity, began to chant in time with the rhythm: "DANCE, DANCE, DANCE!"
Her rigid posture, stiff with fear and humiliation, would never be permitted. They would have her dance, willy-nilly. From the edges of the crowd, a group of young boys emerged, their faces alight with mischievous cruelty. Armed with thin leather thongs, they circled the barrel, snapping their whips in perfect time with the music. Each snap, sharp and precise, landed on her pale, stick-like legs, leaving a stinging red stripe across her skin.
She flinched. Her legs, against her will, began to move, a clumsy, stumbling shuffle that was anything but a dance. "STEP, STEP, STEP," the crowd chanted, their voices a relentless tide. It was a ludicrous, pathetic movement, far from the graceful, joyful dance the mob desired. The leather thongs cracked, now striking her flanks, forcing a grotesque sway in what, on any other woman, would be hips. The music, the chanting, and the snap of the leather increased in tempo, a frantic, escalating crescendo. Her desperate, stumbling movements drew gales of laughter and cruel jeers.
Gasping for breath, her scrawny chest heaving, she stumbled exhausted from the barrel, collapsing onto the cool, hard ground. The dance was finally over. The ordeal, for now, had ended. But as the villagers dispersed, their thirst for entertainment momentarily sated, Gwen knew, with crushing certainty, that this was only the first step. In the coming years, each of her remaining sisters would find a husband, and with each wedding, she would be compelled to endure this ritual again. This was the path that tradition, her very nature, and the unyielding currents of life had laid out for her.
Later, in the quiet solitude of the church, Gwen sometimes found herself staring at the frescoes that adorned the ancient stone walls. They depicted scenes of the torments of Hell, vivid and terrifying. Here, thieves were boiled in cauldrons, fornicators lashed by demons, blasphemers torn limb from limb – the just and eternal fate of all manner of sinners, lessons the priest used to instruct the village children in the paths of righteousness.
In one shadowed corner, however, was a tableau that held a particular, morbid fascination for the older lads. It depicted the fate of a woman who had failed to fulfill her sacred duty as a wife and bearer of children. She cowered, utterly naked, in the infernal flames of Hell, bound with thick chains to a tribe of great, hulking apes. The apes were undeniably male, their brutish forms unmistakably, repellently aroused. The priest, in his lessons, would clear his throat and tell the children, in a voice carefully devoid of inflection, that the apes were "DANCING" with the woman. But growing up amongst farm animals, the boys knew, with a primal certainty that bypassed euphemism, that this was not "DANCING" that the woman was condemned to partake in for all eternity.
As Gwen now recalled the lewd sniggers and knowing glances of the men during her own forced dance, a cold, horrifying truth solidified in her mind. She was certain that quite a few of those men, watching her barefoot humiliation, had been aroused not merely by her present predicament, but by the thought of her eternal afterlife. Not just barefoot, but naked. "DANCING" with the apes in Hell. Their own vision of heaven, she realized with a shudder, made all the sweeter by the thought that they might, for their own pleasure, look down from on high at the goings on below.