Letters of a Javanese Princess

by Raden Adjeng Kartini

God has created woman as the companion of man and the calling of woman is marriage. Good! it is not to be denied, and I gladly acknowledge that the highest happiness for a woman is, and shall be centuries after us, a harmonious union with the man of her choice.

But how can one speak of a harmonious union as our marriage laws are now? I have tried to picture them to you. Must I not for myself, hate the idea of marriage, scorn it, when by it the woman is so cruelly wronged? No, fortunately every Mohammedan has not four wives or more, but every married woman in our world knows that she is not the only one, and that any day the man's fancy can bring a companion home, who will have just as much right to him as she. According to the Mohammedan law she is also his wife. In the Government[2] countries, the women have not such a hard time as their sisters in those ruled by the princes, as in Soerakarta and Djokjakarta. Here the women are fortunate with only one, two, three or four co-wives. There, in the princes' countries, the women would call that child's play. One finds there hardly a single man with but one wife. Among the nobility, especially in the circle surrounding the emperor, the men have usually twenty-six women.

Shall these conditions endure, Stella?

Our people have grown so accustomed to them, and moreover they see no other way in which every woman would be provided for. But in her heart almost every woman that I know curses this right of the man. But curses never help; something must be done.

Come, women, girls, stand up; let us reach our hands to one another, and let us work together to change this unbearable situation.

Yes, Stella, I know it; in Europe, too, the state of morality among men is tragic. I say with you, teach the young men to turn their backs upon temptation and deplorable, half-acknowledged customs, and to feel disgraced at the existence of those short-sighted girls who follow men not ignorantly into the places where life is sordid. Yes certainly the young mothers could do most there, I have already maintained that to my sisters.

I should so love to have children, boys and girls to nourish and to form after my own heart. But above all things I should never follow the unhappy custom of putting boys before girls. We have no right to be surprised at the egoism of men when we consider how as children they are placed above the girls, their sisters. Even as a child a man is taught to despise girls. Have I not many times heard mothers say to their boys when they would fall and cry: "Fie, a boy cry just like a girl!"

I should teach my children, boys and girls, to regard one another as equal human beings and give them always the same education; of course following the natural disposition of each.

I should not allow my girl, although I wished to make a new woman of her, to study as though she had no other desire in life; nor would I cut her off in anything so that her brother could have more. Never!

And then I should let down the bars which have been so foolishly erected between the two sexes. I am convinced that when this is done much good will come of it, especially to the men. I shall never believe that educated and cultivated men designedly avoid the society of women who are their equals in education and enlightenment, to throw themselves deliberately into the arms of disreputable women. While many men seek the society where cultivated ladies are to be found, there is a vast army who cannot take the slightest interest in a girl without thinking of sex. Now all this will disappear when men and women can mingle freely together from childhood.