How much are you worth?

Writer Patricia McGerr tells the story of a man named Johnny Lingo who lived on an island in the South Pacific. Johnny was a wealthy trader, respected for his ability to strike a hard bargain. Except when it came to securing his wife. In these islands a man bought his wife from her father by paying from one to six cows. Two or three cows would buy a fair-to-middling wife, four or five, a highly satisfactory one.
Johnny wanted to marry Sarita, a plain woman who lived on the island of Kiniwata and was scared of her own shadow. For her, Johnny offered the unheard-of sum of eight cows. The residents of Kiniwata smirked that such a successful businessman could pay such an outrageous price. They figured he was a sucker when it came to love.
The author decided to find out more about Johnny and his wife, so she sailed to the nearby island where Johnny lived and called on his home. When she met his wife, she was amazed to find the most beautiful woman she’d ever seen. When Patricia inquired about what happened, Johnny explained, “Do you ever think what it must mean to a woman to know that her husband has settled on the lowest price for which she can be bought? And then later, when the women talk, they boast of what their husbands paid for them. One says four cows, another maybe six. How does she feel, the woman who was sold for one or two? This could not happen to my Sarita.”
“Then you did this just to make your wife happy?” asked Patricia.
“I wanted Sarita to be happy, yes. But I wanted more than that. You say she is different. This is true. Many things can change a woman…But the thing that matters most is what she thinks about herself. In Kiniwata, Sarita believed she was worth nothing. Now she knows she is worth more than any other woman in the islands.”
-The Marriage Masterpiece-Al Janssen