Let it be ceded here, however, that there is another sketch possible of that “England-returned” one. Some diversity of interests cannot be avoided; but I have known a few little wives whose Anglicized husbands did their best to educate them, led them painfully through the new ideas, brought them somewhat into the “reformed” life.
To myself the attempt has often seemed pathetic, trying “to walk with one foot,” to “clap with one hand”; but our little lady is painted this time in a glad luminosity of gratitude that, having seen the world, he should still deign to care.
But sometimes the woman, too, has had chance of Western education. I have known one or two of her kind in Bengal and Madras, more in Bombay. Perhaps she passed through the stage transitional herself once; at any rate, she has arrived all safely, keeping her pretty national dress, keeping also her vernacular. A great part of her day must be re-made for the ceremonies of orthodox Hinduism which she has discarded; yet, something solid she has in its stead, since no influence will ever make a Hindu woman irreligious, thank God.
She will talk to you of the struggles of the great Indian reformers, of Ram Mohan Roy, of Chaitanya. She will separate for you, with true discrimination, the symbol from the spirit in ancient Hindu philosophy. I have even found her reading Jowett’s Plato, Emerson, Browning. “My husband recommended these,” she explains. Him she companions as sufficiently as does any woman of the West her husband, walks with him, drives with him, and is not watched with hungry, jealous eyes, as are the newly “emancipated” women of other Indian communities, whom some of us have seen abroad for the first time in mixed assemblages of men and women.
Perhaps she is not as good a head domestic as her great-grandmother; but service is merchantable, and, at any rate, she takes an intelligent interest in the education of her children.
This much has Brahmoism (i.e., Hindu Theism) done at its best; and, mistakes apart, it is not a bad “best” for a nation in transition.
The recoil from a too servile imitation of the West is bringing about a wise admixture that may eventually prove really useful to the progress of the nation.
Not yet have I touched upon the strictly veiled woman—the Hindu woman in palaces or of certain parts of India, and the Mahommedan woman.
As queen, she is multiple; subtle tones of colour here, the peculiar living tincture of great joys, great sorrows. I have known her bitter with the consciousness of growing years and barrenness, lording her seniority over her young and beautiful rivals—a shrew for whom surely there is much excuse; and I have known her gentle to her co-wives as to much-loved sisters, admiring of their graces, living with them in kindly, humorous companionship. Nay, I have known better. I have known her at so great a height of saintliness that, her own arms empty, she will pray the gods to grant her rival the gift of motherhood.
Sometimes she is very young. I recall a pretty child of seventeen who came to this particular queendom because her husband was successful in procuring a white peacock!