Marital harmony may be additionally fostered by customs that valorize the institution, restrict polygyny to the sororal form, or especially in matrilineal cultures support easy and recrimination-free divorce.
Sororal polygyny, in which the cowives are sisters, is often the preferred form because sisters are thought to be more mutually supportive and less argumentative than nonsiblings.
Both the sororate (marriage between a widower and his dead wife's sister) and the levirate (marriage between a widow and her dead husband's brother) were practiced, as were their logical extensions, sororal polygyny and fraternal polyandry.
It's part of the allure of LA sororal dynasties such as the Hiltons and the Kardashians, whose antics are never far from the TV screens and gutter press.
The sororal bond is the most intricate and delicate human relationship there is.
Once they professed final vows of poverty, chastity, and obedience (the first and last were open to sororal interpretation), choir nuns' chief responsibility was to sing the daily round of chapel services.
Monson, a musicologist and self-proclaimed "archive mouse," happily scurries into this forgotten repository, retrieving tales of sororal transgressions, which range from affairs to arson.
Egged on by the buoyant, sororal atmosphere of the place, cut only by a young man in a bow tie gyrating to New Order's "Bizarre Love Triangle," I plowed through a pile of clothing that included an A-line boldly printed cobalt dress that would've been appropriate on a Braniff stewardess ($395) and a tie-neck sweater whose generous contours reminded me that Milly is, in the end, a bit mall-y.
Her clear relish of the life she's living semi-vicariously makes her sister uneasy, and Ms. Metzler stirs up the sororal discord between them with her own relish in the play's sensationally funny first half-hour.
I was to discover that every detail of a hen do is like that perfectly packed suitcase: a statement of deep sororal love for the bride.
