And what is more significant, she has become supremely contented with the narrow sphere which man has grudgingly given her. And, for this very reason, she combats every endeavour, on the part of her friends, to release her from her bondage and to increase her opportunities and blessings in life. The old triple slander perpetrated upon India, to the effect that “it is a country in which the women never laugh, the birds never sing and the flowers have no fragrance,” is a falsehood in all its details. Hindu women have as merry a laugh as their sisters in any other land. They have learned to make the best of their lot and to rejoice in it.
Since the time of the Mohammedan conquest, and probably long before, the higher class of women have mostly led a life of seclusion. This is preëminently true of the northern parts of the country where Mohammedan influence was strongest and the Hindu had carefully to protect his wife and daughters from the coarse Mussulman. In South India this seclusion is very rare and observed only among the most aristocratic. The common woman of India finds ample freedom of intercourse in her town and village, and figures conspicuously at the great religious festivals of her land.
Generally speaking, woman is the redeeming feature of India. She is the ideal home-keeper and housekeeper. Usually, she is devoted to her husband, a passionate lover of her children, the conserver of society, the true devotee in religion. Her lord and husband has been taught, from time immemorial, to [pg 152] keep her in obscurity and to surround her with the screen of ignorance and narrow sympathies; but she has magnified the work assigned to her; her excellence has shown far beyond his; and, in her bondage, she has built her throne from which she has wielded her sceptre of love and goodness over him.
She has never aspired to realms not granted to her by her lawgivers. The modern aspiration of the “new woman” of the West does not appeal to her. She asks only to be let alone in her narrow but, to her, all-sufficient sphere.
2. But, after all we have said, or can say, of the power of woman in India, it still remains that, in no other land, has she suffered such marked disability and deeper injustice. If her goodness has shone out of her darkness, it has only served to reveal the more the sadness of her position. She bears in her condition the signs of her bondage and humiliation. The evils of the land have been attributed to her; and man too often ascribes his own degradation and sin to the curse breathed upon him by woman.
The proverbs of a country are the truest test of its sentiments. What have these to say of the woman of India today?
“What poison is that which appears like nectar? Woman.”
“What is the chief gate to hell? Woman.”
“What is cruel? The heart of a viper. What is more cruel? The heart of a woman. What is the most cruel of all? The heart of a soulless, penniless widow.”
“He is a fool who considers his wife as his friend.”