Exogamein

Romeo and Juliet is a touchstone for the complications of marrying outside the tribe, a tragedy especially moving because of the ludicrous feud between two families that are "alike in dignity." Paris, a neutral party, tries to point out this irony to Capulet, saying "of honorable reckoning are you both/And pity it is you have lived at odds so long." When Juliet warns Romeo of the danger he will face from her family, he responds, "With love's light wings did I o'erperch these walls/...therefore thy kinsmen are no stop to me." His declaration presents us with the image of transcendent love that does not wade into, but rises above the feud. Looking at the world through new eyes allows both teens the courage to marry outside the tribe.

In the Brian Friel play Translations, set in 1835 Ireland, the scholarly character of Jimmy Jack comments dispassionately on a similarly forbidden romance between the Irish Maire and the English officer Yolland. "Do you know the Greek word endogamein?" Jimmy asks. "It means to marry within the tribe. And the word exogamein means to marry outside the tribe. And you don't cross those borders casually--both sides get very angry." Yolland falls in love with both Maire and Irish culture and wants to learn Gaelic. In the course of his labors, however, his idealism begins to falter, and he frets aloud:

Even if I did speak Irish, I'd always be an outsider here wouldn't I? I may learn

the password but the language of the tribe will always elude me, won't it? The

The private core will always be...hermetic, won't it?

Owen's response is a shrugging and tepid "You can decode us."

The ensuing scene in which Maire and Yolland confess their feelings for each other shows that even though she knows no English and he knows no Gaelic, they understand each other perfectly, speaking, of course, the language of love. Yet the problem of a relationship with the Other does not go away. At the end of the play we face the possibility that Yolland has been killed by Irish rebels. Neither Maire's acceptance of him nor his desire to join the tribe is enough to overcome the circumscribed roles assigned to them.

I am reminded of the problem of marrying outside the tribe as my daughter gets ready to declare publicly her commitment to Pavel, who is Russian. "Pasha," as we know him, has been agile in his assimilation and is extremely fluent in English, but he still at times has to work past a "decoding" of both American culture and language. His empathy for others in this situation is such that a particular mission for him in hotel management is to make foreigners feel welcome. This theme further resonates with me as my nephew John is in August marrying an Asian woman of the Hmong culture, far afield from John's frankly "vanilla," Midwestern, All-American, baseball star background. In addition, I have friends who have married outside the tribe, and have listened to poignant stories of the difficulty in deciding where to put down roots when neither partner is entirely at home in the other's country.

An unlikely, and I am willing to admit, eccentric analogy to the problem of marrying outside the tribe is the centerpiece of the fantasy young adult novel series Twilight. In this saga by Stephanie Meyer, the teenaged protagonist Bella is faced with this conundrum. She is romantically linked with two handsome young men, Edward Cullen and Jacob Black, who, in contrast with the awkward and self-conscious Bella, have extraordinary, supernatural powers. She does not fit into either Edward's tribe of vampires or Jacob's Native Americans, who "phase"into wolves when angered. Both men competitively hover over her and battle dark forces to protect the seemingly hapless Bella.

In time, though, Bella makes her choice by accepting Edward's marriage proposal and making the brave decision to be "changed"with the vampire's venom, even as Edward agonizes over making her "a monster" and taking away her soul. However, Bella is aware that as a normal human she will age and die, and Edward will not. And as much as she wants to fit in with his vampire family, all of whom love her, as a human she can only decode them. She can never be a part of Edward's world as she is.

After she marries Edward, she is officially in his tribe yet physically outside of it, and Edward remains apprehensive about losing the human Bella. But the issue is forced when she becomes dangerously pregnant with a half-vampire child that exerts kicks so strong they bruise Bella's abdomen. It is both a sign that love finds a way--the pregnancy is a shock as it has been thought the two species could not breed--and evidence that maybe it shouldn't.

But it is at this point that Bella really begins to take charge of her life. Even though the baby's growth breaks a couple of ribs and Bella's pelvis, and it is believed by all that she will die in protecting the demi-vampire growing within her, Bella nevertheless refuses an abortion. In the end, she gets her wish to resign from the human race--Edward must inject her with vampire venom as the only way to save her life in childbirth.

The story in the end not only resonates with Romeo and Juliet, but it is also a retelling of The Ugly Duckling with a plot twist in which Beauty also becomes the Beast. Vampire Bella is graceful while human Bella is clumsy. The new Bella is breathtakingly beautiful whereas the old Bella is less radiant. She becomes super-human in physical strength, aggression, confidence, and, in a dramatic and symbolic turnabout, she becomes the protector, rather than the protected, of all in her new extended family. In short, she realizes her full potential only by becoming a vampire.

Granted,there are some problems with this turnabout in the telling. In vampire mythology, these beings live on human blood and are hence murderers, which Meyer circumvents by making the Cullens the vanguard of a kinder and gentler "vegetarian" race that hunts animals for blood. Still, the thirst does not disappear, and their self-control strains credibility. Also, the issue of "soulless" vampires is unconvincingly parsed in an effort to portray the vampires and the transmogrified Bella sympathetically.

But to set aside theses inconsistencies in favor of what the author seems to be saying in toto, it is clear that by marrying outside the tribe, Bella finds herself. From the outside, becoming a monster is horrifying to us. It is only when she crosses the border into Edward's world that she, and we through her narrative, go beyond decoding. With new eyes, Bella becomes what she is meant to be all along.

Bella's story is an uncharacteristically hopeful message for those who choose exogamein. Like Bella, those who dare can find fulfillment and joy through crossing into another's world, as personal growth happens in risking engagement with the unknown. Through Bella's fictive universe, her example writ large brings into sharp focus exactly the same courageous act that ordinary people choose in real life situations. Given that we do not choose whom we love, we do yet have some scope in love's nurturance and our commitment to it. Marrying outside the tribe can open both worlds, and as Romeo reminds us, "stony limits cannot hold love out,/And what love can do, that dares love attempt."