“You may marry her,” had said the King, her father, to the suitor, “if you can bring me a white peacock.”
He had not known that such things were, and when the expectant prince produced a spotless ghost-bird, the King, for the sake of his word, had to give him his daughter.
She was very happy in her new home; as it chanced, she was a unit, and not one of a group. She had her own gorgeous apartments and waiting-women. All day she turned over her pretty trinkets and possessions, or made charms against the evil eye, or listened to endless stories from the Court gossip; and at nightfall she played hide-and-seek on the roof overlooking that garden where the peacock had his place of honour.
Sometimes her husband would pay her a visit of ceremony, when she would sit, eyes cast down, to answer his questions in monosyllables. Sometimes she herself would visit her mother-in-law, falling at the great lady’s feet in graceful salutation. I have known her very merry when this formality was overpast. These visits were her only interludes in monotony. Yet she was not unhappy. She had expected nothing else, and more light and air fell to her lot than to that of many.
Seclusion is sometimes so rigid that it has been little better than intermural imprisonment from one year’s end to another; no garden to stroll in, no chance of ventilation of any kind or sort; no outside interests or companionship. Nor would the women themselves thank you for suggesting innovation. “Did our great-grandmothers live otherwise?” they would ask.
The question now is, how far should the enlightened members of the community strive to better the Purdahnashin custom? In the days when it came to stay in India there were alleviations. You have but to look at the architecture of the older towns, of Agra, of Jaipur, to prove the fact. Every courtyard had its marble lattices, from behind which the ladies of the house, securely screened, might watch the bear and tiger-baiting, the wrestling, the ancient games. They had their private gardens and their baths.
The long pilgrimages in palanquins made change and movement in their lives. The system was less injurious to health than it is now. In a town like Jaipur the whole city is one running commentary in rubric on such alleviations. For the secluded lady there were perpetual peep-holes on to the life of the street, with its daily pageantry and frequent carnivals. The more modern house-holder builds blind walls in his jealous passion of keeping.
Is it any wonder that the race grows degenerate?
Thrown back upon herself, robbed of air for mind and body, marvel is the Purdahnashin is as nice as we know her.
Take for instance one trait, the loyalty of wives to their husbands. All who know the orthodox Hindu Zenana will have pathetic instances in mind of a loyalty which dignifies all womanhood. Nor often however, I hope, is loyalty put to such severe test as with the little lady whom I found imprisoned in a fortress in Northern India.