The older, conservative women are very tyrannical, and try their best to combat the newer ideas brought to the zenanas by their sons and daughters. Many of the younger generation are trying to break from the patriarchal custom of all the family living under one roof. They say it is very fine in theory, and has worked with good results in the villages, but that it has many bad points, the chief of which is that it allows no expression of individuality. The personality must be sunk in the family. When all the men will work and become producers and contributors to the family fund, it makes for harmony in the home, but when some are drones and live on the toil of others, it makes the burden too heavy for the few and causes quarrels and dissensions.
Women are helpless in India in the earning of a living for themselves, and if widowhood comes they must depend for support on some male relative of their own or of the family of their deceased husband. I know a boy of eighteen who is the only support of his wife, his aunt, a widow, his widowed mother, and his young sister. He was compelled to leave school and take a position in an office in order to take care of all these women, as he was the responsible head of the family. It is hard for a boy who is ambitious and anxious to obtain an education, when there are many women in his household, as they care more for the immediate necessities than for a prospective successful future. They feel that his father and his father’s father were able to provide for the wants of the family, so why should the boys of to-day spend years in studying books when they might be adding to the family exchequer?
It is the women who are compelling the younger boys and girls to conform to the old usages and traditions in regard to marriage. Many a boy leaves school and would like a chance to find a place for himself in life before burdening himself with a wife. But this he is not allowed to do. His mother believes that all boys should be married early in life, consequently the boy is saddled with a family at about the age when the American boy is taking his first shy look at the girl across the aisle in the schoolroom. These modern young men would also like to have a voice in the selection of their wives, but that also is denied them. They must conform to the traditions of their caste and the customs of their family. I know a boy who was compelled to marry his niece, although his education had taught him that these intermarriages were not for the good of his race; still, he was helpless, and could not successfully oppose the combined wishes of the women of his family.
Side by side with these Indian women who guard jealously the customs and traditions of other days are the Westernized society women, who seem to share with their husbands in the spirit of imitation that has entered into the very soul of the Indian people who have come into contact with the English. The Indian gentleman feels that he must talk “sport,” the schoolboy prides himself upon the knowledge of cricket and football and talks the jargon of Eton and Rugby. Because the meat-eating Englishmen from cold, dreary England must exercise in order to live, the Indian also devotes himself to a strenuous regime that is absolutely alien to his habits and the requirements of his climate. The Indian lady, with her exaggerated English accent, and her costume that is neither of the East nor of the West, is a paradox. She may well be zealous in borrowing what she needs from the English, but it seems hard for her to assimilate what she takes and make it a part of herself. The affectations which she uses to show her cosmopolitanism are palpably grafted upon her tree of knowledge, and we who wish to see the real India are only consoled in the thought that these unusual conditions which prevail in the large cities are only the graftings, and that the tree itself is not affected by them. The real woman of India is bound to grow in knowledge brought by education and experience, but deep down in her heart she will be essentially the same for years to come. She will not try to exchange her personality for another’s, even in outward appearance.
The dawn of consciousness that has been preceded by long twilight is now awakening in the soul of the Eastern woman, and she will see by its light that she has a strength and individuality of her own and that she need not mortgage her birthright to borrow alien charms from the women of other lands.
CHAPTER VII
MARRIAGE—THE GOAL OF WOMAN
There are three great events in a Hindu woman’s life: first, her marriage; second, the birth of her son; and third, if she should be so unfortunate, her widowhood.
These three events are of immense importance to all women, but as a woman of the Far East is supposed to be created for one purpose only, the rearing of sons to her husband’s house, marriage and birth of children assume a larger place in her life than in the life of the Western woman, where these two events are often merely incidents. Also when a Hindu woman marries she expects to stay married, as she cannot divorce her husband, and he can only divorce her for infidelity. Even death will not open for her the doorway to remarriage, because if her husband should die before her, she must remain true to his memory for life.
The woman’s inclinations are seldom consulted in regard to the choice of a husband, because, quite likely, when she is not much more than a child, her parents begin to look around for a suitable alliance for her. Their choice must fall upon a man of the same caste, a relative if possible. The prospective bridegroom may be a young boy, or he may be an old man, a widower. The girl must be married. There are no reasons in the Hindu philosophy which allow a girl to pass the marriageable age without a husband being chosen for her. Men may become “sanyassis,” that is, renounce the world and remain bachelors, but this is not allowed women under any circumstances, as they must fulfil their destiny, which is to be the mothers of men.
If a girl passes the marriageable age, if she should be twelve or thirteen without being settled in life, her family would feel that they were disgraced, and she would have slight opportunity for marriage in any respectable family. Therefore, it is incumbent upon her parents to find for her a husband as soon as possible, which leads to one of the greatest crimes against Indian womanhood—child marriages.