'Oh yes,' the servant answered; 'many gentlemen came to call—the officers of the regiment and others. But I told them the thakin was out, and that the thakinma could not see anyone. I sent them all away.'
At the club that evening my friend was questioned as to why in his absence no one was allowed to see his wife. The whole station laughed at him, but I think he and his wife laughed most of all at the careful observances of Burmese etiquette by the servant; for it is the Burmese custom for a wife not to receive in her husband's absence. Anyone who wants to see her must stay outside or in the veranda, and she will come out and speak to him. It would be a grave breach of decorum to receive visitors while her husband is out.
So even a Burmese woman is not free from restrictions—restrictions which are merely rules founded upon experience. No woman, no man, can ever free herself or himself from the bonds that even a young civilization demands. A freedom from all restraint would be a return, not only to savagery, but to the condition of animals—nay, even animals are bound by certain conventions.
The higher a civilization, the more conventions are required; and freedom does not mean an absence of all rules, but that all rules should be founded on experience and common-sense.
There are certain restrictions on a woman's actions which must be observed as long as men are men and women women. That the Burmese woman never recognises them unless they are necessary, and then accepts the necessity as a necessity, is the fact wherein her freedom lies. If at any time she should recognise that a restriction was unnecessary, she would reject it. If experience told her further restrictions were required, she would accept them without a doubt.
CHAPTER XVI
WOMEN—III
'For women are very tender-hearted.'