A Fifth Analysis of the Star Husband Tale

Abstract

could be married to stars that they see one night while sleeping in the open. In various ways, depending upon the version, they ascend to the sky world where they marry stars. Often a child is born. Many events occur in the sky world, and among other things the girl?the story often continues with only one?is warned against digging, but she disobeys and makes a hole in the sky through which she sees her home below. She is seized with the desire to return and does so by means of a rope. Depending on the help she receives and the hostility of her husband, she may or may not succeed in reaching home. Many versions end with the death of the woman, but fre? quently the son is saved. There is a long tradition of utilizing this tale. We are indebted to Stith Thompson (1953, reprinted 1965) for assembling and abstracting the 86 known versions of the tale and for his detailed analysis, exemplifying a historic-geographic approach. His was the second analysis of this tale; the first was that of Gladys Reichard (1921), although she drew on preliminary studies by others, especially Boas (1891). In 1964, Alan Dundes applied his structural approach to the Star Husband materials, and a treat? ment by Levi-Strauss (1968) followed shortly thereafter. The actual num? ber of analyses does not matter; what is important is that this particular corpus of folktales has been the object of analytic attention from several different theoretical perspectives, all of which differ from the approach proposed in this paper. Not unexpectedly, several analysts have come to different conclusions about the materials, despite the fact that the ma? terials themselves remain the same. This circumstance invites a comparison of the different frames of reference, and it also poses a clear intellectual challenge for succeeding interpretations. It may be an accident that five anthropologists have turned their atten? tion to this particular group of tales. What is not accidental is the continuing fascination of social scientists with the problem of how to make sense out of these text-communications. That is, taking the transcripts of folktales, myths, stories, speeches, etc. as the direct expression of social organization, and not as statements about such groups, how can they be