The Harim and the Purdah: Studies of Oriental Women

by Elizabeth Cooper

A young Hindu boy is not supposed to chew betel-nut nor put flowers in his hair until he is married. On the fourth day of the marriage festivities the groom is given his first betel-nut by his brother-in-law, and his head is wreathed with flowers. In a few castes the bride has her left nostril bored on the fifth day of the marriage and an ornament placed therein. After marriage in some parts of India the woman wears a streak of red powder in the parting of her hair, and in practically all provinces she wears the little round mark of wifehood between the eyes, which, as age comes, is elongated, until gradually, by the time that children and grandchildren cluster around her knee, the little red mark has grown into a straight line, losing itself in the whitening locks. In Mysore and in some of the southern provinces a woman does not tuck up her dress in the back until she is married. Then an end of the long sari, which is twisted several times around the body, is brought from the front to the back and tucked into a belt, forming a sort of trousers, and incidentally exposing more brown leg than we women of the Western world think consistent with modesty.

At the final feast the bride and groom eat together from the same leaf to show their complete union. This is the first and last time that the wife will eat in company with her husband, if he is an orthodox Hindu and not imbued with the new Western ideas. Always, in the future, she will serve him his meal, and after he has finished she will eat with the other women of the household and the smaller children, using the same leaf which has done service for her lord and master.

When all the religious rites are finished and the festivities have come to an end, there is a final procession, when the wife and husband, gorgeously arrayed in all their jewellery, are carried round the town to the accompaniment of music, the explosion of fire crackers, the shooting of rockets, and the shouting of friends. Then, if the bride is still a child, she returns home with her parents, who keep her secluded until the time arrives for her to return to her husband’s home and fulfil the duties of a wife. The day the husband and mother-in-law come to take the wife to their home is made another time of rejoicing. She remains with them for a month when she revisits her old home, and often for the first few years, or until she has children, she lives alternately in her husband’s house and in that of her parents. If she finds herself ill-treated by her husband and tormented by her mother-in-law, the young girl often seeks her father’s home for shelter and protection, and remains with them until the husband or his mother come in person to persuade her to return home. Nearly always her family add their persuasions, if not their force, to compel the wife to return to her husband’s roof, as it is a great disgrace to all concerned to have a wife leave her husband. After the children come, the wife rarely leaves her house and devotes her time and energies to the rearing of the little ones that fill all homes, from the mansions of the rich to the huts of the poor peasants. There seem to be more little brown bodies in India than in any place I have visited, unless I except China, where the staple articles are rice and babies.

The new wife has to accommodate herself to the customs of her husband’s family, and much of her future happiness depends upon the women members of the household. If it is a very aristocratic family, she may have all the luxuries of life, beautiful gold-embroidered saris, jewels, servants, and slaves, but very little liberty. There is a saying that you can tell the degree of a family’s aristocracy by the height of the windows in the home. The higher the rank, the smaller and higher are the windows and the more secluded the women. An ordinary lady may walk in the garden and hear the birds sing and see the flowers. A higher grade lady may only look at them from her windows, and if she is a very great lady indeed, this even is forbidden her, as the windows are high up near the ceiling, merely slits in the wall for the lighting and ventilation of the room.

There are many rules of etiquette prescribed for the young girl-wife if she would show that she has been properly trained by her parents. For example, she must never speak of her husband by name, nor may she use a word with the same syllable as her husband’s first name. A friend of mine has a husband whose name begins with the same syllable as that used in the word sugar. She always speaks of sugar as “the substance you put in your tea,” and she generally refers to her husband as “he.” Nor would the man say “my wife,” but “my house,” or some word denoting the home. A man in Hyderabad met his doctor on the street and said, “I wish you would come and see me. My house has a boil on its neck.”

This same wife would not sit in the presence of her mother-in-law or her husband if others were present. It would show extreme lack of respect; nor would she speak if her husband were in the room. We called upon the wife of a high official of Bangalore, who came into the room with her daughter-in-law and her young daughter, an extremely pretty girl. The daughter-in-law would not sit down in the presence of her husband’s mother, nor did she speak, and looked extremely awkward and self-conscious, as she stood with her sari drawn across her mouth and watched us with her big black eyes. The little daughter played the veena, the national instrument, and as she sat upon the rug, gorgeously arrayed in an elaborate red and gold sari, with jewellery on arms, neck, ankles, toes, and with diamonds in each tiny nostril, she made a picture never to be forgotten.

In some of the big households where the sons bring their wives to live beneath the family roof-tree, the married quarters are not large enough to allow a separate room for each couple, and the women sleep in one room and the men in another. The mother has the right of assigning the couples who are to inhabit the married quarters for the week. But even the eagle eye of the mother-in-law cannot always watch the young people, and many a girl-wife steals across the courtyard to find her husband, who is waiting for her in the shadows. A crowd of young men in a school were asked to give their idea of what was the most beautiful music in the world. One answered, “The song of the bul-bul,” another, “The plaintive strains of the zither,” a third, “The cry of the night bird,” but a young bridegroom said, “The music of my wife’s anklets as she tries to suppress their sound when she steals to meet me in the moonlight.”

One is amazed at the amount of jewellery worn by the Indian women, yet this vanity is not confined solely to the women, as in some of the provinces nearly every man has a jewel in his ear, and many of them wear most expensive finger-rings. The women excel in the artistic use of jewellery that on other people would seem tawdry and barbaric, but on these dainty little women is most becoming to their rich, dark beauty. Jewellery is not only worn by the lady, but women of every class are covered with it. The village woman will have perhaps but one cotton sari, and her home would be merely a mud hovel, but she will clink as she walks, and you know she wears silver anklets, and as she moves her sari to peep at you, you see the glisten of a bracelet. It may be of brass or it may be of silver, or, if she be very poor, coloured glass bangles will satisfy her cravings for the beautiful, and her arms will be covered with these ornaments from the wrist to the elbow.

At a railway-station near Baroda I saw women whose legs to the knee were covered with huge brass bands that must have been most inconvenient and heavy to carry. In Poona we stopped to watch a merchant of toe-rings place his wares upon his patron’s toes which were held out to him for the purpose. The rings were so tight that soap had to be used to force them over the twinging toes. The operation was most painful to vanity, judging from the faces of the victims, but evidently the sight of the shining ring as they trudged down the dusty road repaid them for the suffering they had undergone. In this same market were innumerable booths for the sale of the glass bracelets that are worn by all the women of India, with the exception of widows. I watched an old woman in the bangle bazaar working them over the hands of the women who sat on the ground in front of her, prepared to spend unlimited time in acquiring these articles of adornment. The purchaser made her choice from the green or gold or red bangles piled carelessly upon the trays in front of her, then the bangle-seller squeezed and manipulated the hand, slowly working, pushing, coaxing the bangle over the hand, until finally it was on the arm, where evidently it would remain.

My husband and I dined with a Mohammedan who, after dinner, asked me into the zenana to meet his wife. The bareness of my arms shocked her, and she insisted upon presenting me with three bracelets for each arm, working them on so skilfully that it did not pain me, but on arriving at the hotel I found I could not remove them. I tried to persuade the Indian servant to break them for me, but he was horrified and said it would bring me very bad luck, as only widows had them broken on the arm. I feared I would be compelled to wear them all my life as my husband would not break them, having overheard the remarks about the widow. Finally I broke them myself, much to the detriment of my arms, which carried the scars for many days.