"The Belly"

"Meantime another wizard exerts himself to attain the same end by means which we should regard as wholly irrational. He, in fact, pretends to be the expectant mother; a large stone attached to his stomach by a cloth wrapt round his body represents the child in the womb, and following the directions shouted to him by his colleague on the real scene of operations, he moves this make-believe baby about on his body in exact imitation of the movements of the real baby until the infant is born" -James G. Frazer, The Golden Bough, pg. 16


This passage is hilarious to me. It is one of the first passages I read in The Golden Bough and I never got around to posting about it. I love Frazer's hint of sarcasm throughout this section of the book as he obviously thinks it's all just a bit ridiculous. If I were having a child, I really don't think this would help me out, but would in fact probably distract me from the task at hand. I don't know actually...I have heard that particular task is pretty difficult to be distracted from. Having a doctor yell out the play-by-play on what the baby is doing might actually be helpful in some way, but probably more irritating than anything.

I like how the guy outside pretending to have a baby is a "colleague" of the doctor inside. Not that his job is not difficult, having a stone strapped to you and having to use your acting prowess to pretend it is an infant would be quite taxing, but I somehow think the "colleague" inside's job is a bit more important. The following picture depicts a person being forced to wear a fake "belly" because her father wants her to realize how much it would suck to be pregnant.


The movie that this is from, "10 Things I Hate About You" is actually a reimagining of "Taming of the Shrew" by Shakespeare so it somewhat fits into the mythological aspect of this blog.