CHAPTER XI
ORIENTAL NUPTIALS
Burmese Bridals
In Burmah, marriage is not a failure; it is a stupendous success. The Burmese women are sweetly pretty. They have dainty ways and happy faces. It would be very ungrateful of them to be less than happy, for they hold a position unique among the women of the East. I know of but one other race of women who are upon so entire an equality, socially, legally, and financially, with men as are the Burmese women,—the American woman is as free as the Burmese woman, but no more so,—the best type of the most typically American women I mean. The women who are only half American, the women in whose families old European customs are family law, are not nearly so free as the pretty women-folk of Burmah.
There is no religious ceremony connected with a Burmese marriage. The Burmese do not—in theory at least—regard marriage as a blessing; and yet I know no other country in the world in which so overwhelming a proportion of marriages are extremely happy. I never knew a Burmese husband and wife to quarrel, and Europeans who have spent many years among the Burmese tell me that such quarrels are almost unknown. This may be, in part, because the Burmese are dowered with kind, easy-going, affectionate, faithful temperaments.
The Burmese are tenderly devoted to their children. A common love of little children cements many a broken marriage, strengthens many a real love—the world over. But I believe that the reason of reasons for the universality of happy marriages in Burmah is the sensible way in which marriage is undertaken and the just way in which it is carried out. We women of Europe cry out for enfranchisement—cry with shrill, sharp voices; and I fancy that the more liberty we get the more unfeminine we grow. In America, we are sadly spoiled, I fear. We have grown fond of cushions and of sweetmeats. The Burmese women teach an invaluable lesson—if the women of America and the women of Europe would learn it. They are on as absolute an equality with men as nature will permit. All the equality that man can give woman he has given her in Burmah; the women of Europe can not well ask for more. But if the women of Europe get all the equality that they want, will they wear it as delicately and with as much dignity as do the heathen women of Burmah? I fear not. The Burmese women are as graceful as the women of Japan; as gentle, as lovable as the women of Denmark; as vivacious as the women of France; as capable as the women of America, and as feminine as the women of England at their best: the women who do not aspire to do man’s work and neglect their own. The women of Burmah accept gracefully the limitations of nature,—that is the great, great lesson they can teach the women of England. The limitless consideration of the Burmese men for the Burmese women has not enervated the women of Burmah. The Burmese women, though they never bustle, are never loud-mouthed, are never slovenly, yet are—within reasonable, intelligent limits—the most energetic, the most industrious women in the world. Petting has not spoiled the women of Burmah. That is the great, great lesson they have for the women of America.
BURMESE MOTHER AND CHILD. Page 94.
The marriage yoke rests as easily upon the Burmese necks as a wreath of roses—for the man and wife pull equally, pull together. Each does his or her fair part. Each remembers always the rights of the other. Courtesy and justice are big ingredients in Burmese married life. Small wonder that in Burmah marriage is a big success.
If the position of the Burmese women is unique, the position of the Burmese children is unparalleled and almost indescribable. Filial piety is almost as much a matter of religion in Burmah as in China. On the other hand, parental coercion is more unknown in Burmah than in the United States. Burmese children never disobey, but Burmese parents almost never command; family affection is very strong in Burmah. But the law of love is the only law known in the home circle. When a girl reaches a marriageable age—when she has reached young-womanhood and feels inclined for the greater womanhood of marriage—she very simply places a light in her own particular casement; then the would-be Benedicts gather about her. Night after night they “call.” Night after night she and her parents receive them. The Burmese women are always most careful in their toilets; but at this period their care becomes superlative. The Burmese women are always pretty; their taste in dress is exquisite; and when a Burmese maiden lights the invitational lamp and sits down to await her suitors, she makes a picture of pretty humanity, of which we women of Europe may well be envious.
“Better fifty years of Europe than a cycle of Cathay.” I wonder if that is true. It is musical, it is big with poetry. It pointed a great truth as Tennyson wrote it. It fell from his pen a truth. But take it alone, tear it from its high place in English literature; of itself, by itself, is it true? I have doubts, petty perhaps, but forcibly pertinacious. The marriage question—that El Dorado of the farthing-a-liners—Ah! there is no marriage question in Cathay. The women of the East are married, and they find their happiness in marriage—they never analyse it. They know as little of elective affinities and of natural selection as do the perfumed flowers of the Orient. Perhaps they know as much. It is a very fine thing to discuss marriage in all its imperfections, it is far finer to experience it in all its perfection. And the women of the Orient, who never talk of marriage because they are not enough advanced, experience it and seem to find it rather perfect. What has the world given women, what has civilisation, education, given them; what can life give them better than marriage? Nothing! The past gave us nothing, the present gives us nothing, and in the mysterious bosom of the future lies for us no greater benison than marriage. Sneer senseless men and unsexed women, but that is truth, Nature’s greatest truth!
BURMESE MUSICIANS. Page 97.
The Burmese maiden who desires marriage, and tells it through her pretty lamp, is not over bold, nor does she seem so to her countrymen. The Burmese regard marriage as so much a woman’s greatest right—they so entirely believe it to be her highest and best career—that the girl who announces her readiness for marriage is neither ashamed nor shamed. Let us look at her for a moment as she sits quietly within her father’s doorway. Her lamp is lit. The suitors are coming. Yes, she is vastly pretty. Her long black hair is quaintly, carefully, but not grotesquely dressed; it is softly perfumed, and fresh, dewy flowers rest amid its silken coils. Every feature is pretty, but prettiest are her dainty ears and her small hands and feet. In her ears gleam twin pearls and rubies, and her little hands are heavy with the same gems. The people of the East are peculiarly fond of pearls. The fondness culminates in China. The pearls of the world are worn by the beauties of Canton and Pekin. The Burmese have all the fine tastes of the Chinese, and none of their personal ugliness. The women of Burmah wear pearls less profusely than do the women of China, but they become them more. Mah Me wears a petticoat, a graceful silken petticoat. It has been woven in a Burmese loom. The colours are bright and varied, but they are matchlessly blended, and the pattern is as exquisite as it is Oriental. An outer skirt (indeed it is a straight piece of soft silk) falls above the petticoat. It is a soft, bright pink, it is striped with dull, dark colours, and with gold and silver threads. It falls behind Mah Me in a pretty demi-train way. Under her arms is folded a broad band of red silk; it forms a pretty, simple, bodice and keeps in place the pretty, simple skirts. A sheer muslin jacket covers her shoulders and her upper arms. It is open from her bosom. She half wears, half carries, a blue and silver shawl. Her soft brown neck is modestly covered by chains of purest gold, in which glitter the gems of Burmah—gems dug from the invaluable mines for which we are so eagerly looking.
Mah Me is smoking a big Burmese cigar. The Burmese cigars look very formidable, but in reality they are the mildest of weeds. But the Burmans are devoted to them, and only cease to smoke when they sleep. To-night is her first night “at home to suitors.” A dozen or more will probably come. She will give them pickled tea, and they will chat and sing and play upon their tinkling native instruments. Every Burman is a musician, skilful and inveterate, if somewhat primitive. The Burmese, unlike the other Oriental peoples, do not drink tea, they eat it. I dislike tea as a beverage, but I liked it as a viand. The Burmese pickle it with oil and garlic. As rice is the staff of Burmese life, so is pickled tea the dish of Burmese ceremony; so Mah Me gives her suitors pickled tea. Night after night they come, until she smiles on one more than on his fellows, then their ranks thin; the favoured remains, the others go; the betrothal is accomplished; the mothers of the young couple confer; the bridegroom presents his bride with a dowry; the marriage is celebrated by a feast; the bride and bridegroom sit side by side and eat from one dish. No marriage ceremony could be simpler, none could be more significant. On the marriage night, the friends who have partaken of the marriage feast pelt the house with stones. This musicless serenade is kept up for an incredible time, but the silence and the dark come at last, and the young husband and wife drift quietly into the happiness of peaceful Burmese married life.
I have sometimes thought, when looking at the Burmese women, that perhaps one secret of the constant affection of the Burmese husbands was the constant neatness of the Burmese wives. No one, I believe, has ever seen a Burmese woman untidy; their persons and their garments are always fresh, bright, and spotless.
Some one asked me recently, “what about divorce in Burmah?” I never heard of divorce in Burmah. I am not, of course, prepared to say that there is no such thing; but certainly it is very rare. When it is necessary, I daresay they deal with it as simply and as sensibly as they do with marriage. But the only divorce of which they are very generally cognisant is the great divorce, the divorce decreed by death.
BHÂMO WOMEN. Page 99.
We have conquered the Burmese; true, but they have conquered the marriage question, they have solved it,—they have conquered it and solved it without knowing of its existence. They are heathens; true, but they are happy in their home lives. May they never learn the weird Western secret of marital misery. There is much for us to learn in the Orient, but none of it is more important than the beautiful lesson of married happiness that is taught by Burmah. There is much in Burmah that is most imperfect, but in the relative positions of the sexes it is ideal.