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In Leptis, a city of Africa, it is an inherited custom 1 for the bride, on
the day after her marriage, to send to the mother of the bridegroom and ask
for a pot. The latter does not give it, and also declares that she has none,
her purpose being that the bride may from the outset realize the
stepmother's attitude in her mother-in-law, and, in the event of some
harsher incident later on, may not feel indignant or resentful. A wife ought
to take cognizance of this hostility, and try to cure the cause of it, which
is the mother's jealousy of the bride as the object of her son's affection.
The one way to cure this trouble is to create an affection for herself
personally on the part of her husband, and at the same time not to divert or
lessen his affection for his mother.
[p. 327]
1 Hieronymus, Adversus Iovinianum, i. chap. xlviii. (vol. ii. p. 292 of Migne's edition), amplifies this by a reference to Terence, Hecyra, ii. l. 4: ‘All mothers-in-law hate their daughters-in-law.’
Plutarch. Moralia. with an English Translation by. Frank Cole Babbitt. Cambridge, MA. Harvard University Press. London. William Heinemann Ltd. 1928. 2.
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