She did not live to see the work that has been accomplished in her name during the last ten years. Today there are "Kartini Schools" in all parts of Java. The influence of her life and teachings is perhaps greater than that of any other woman of modern times because it reaches all of the thirty-eight millions of Javanese and extends to some extent throughout the entire East.
She did not desire to make of her people pseudo-Europeans but better Javanese. Not the material freedom for which during the three hundred years of Dutch rule the Javanese of the past had sometimes waged a bloody warfare, but the greater freedom of the mind and of the spirit.
The Dutch rule had become enlightened. In local affairs the Javanese had self-government under their own officials. But they were bowed down by superstition and under the sway of tradition. The "adat," or law which cannot be changed, was fostered by religion. They were imbued with all the fatalism of the Mohammedan, the future belonged to "Tekdir" or Fate and it was vain to rebel against its decrees. But Kartini rebelled against "Tekdir." She refused to believe in the righteousness of the ancient law that a girl must marry, or breaking that law, bring everlasting disgrace upon her family.
She realized that the freedom of woman could only come through economic independence. And personally she said that she had rather be a kitchen maid, than be forced to marry a strange and unknown man. For in well-bred Javanese circles girls were brought up according to the most rigid Mohammedan canons and closely guarded from the eyes of men.
Dr. Abendanon, the compiler of Kartini's letters, says that although he had lived for twenty-five years in Java, she and her sisters were the first young girls of noble birth that he had ever seen.
Kartini wanted to go to Holland to study, to return home when she had gained a broader knowledge and experience, equipped for teaching the daughters of her own people. She wished to help them through education, to break with the stultifying traditions of the past. Although always a Mohammedan, marriage with more than one wife was abhorrent to her. True progress seemed impossible in a polygamous society for men or for women. Furthermore polygamy was not commanded or even approved of by Mohammed himself; it had been merely permitted.
After years of conflict between her affection for her family and the principles in which she believed, Kartini won the entire confidence both of her father and of her mother. Her mother was an exponent of the best ideals of Oriental womanhood, excelling in care of the home and filled with love and sympathy for her husband and children.
Kartini was an innovator who sought to break new paths for her people, but in reaching out for the new and untried she gained rather than lost in respect for the old fashioned virtues of her kind. Her interests were human, and not merely feministic—which cannot always be said of our own feminism.
Kartini's biography is brief, and her life almost uneventful so far as outward happenings go.
She was born on the 21st of April, 1879, the daughter of Raden Mas Adipati Sosroningrat, Regent of Japara. His father, the Regent of Demak, Pangèran Ario Tjondronegoro, was an enlightened man who had given European educations to all of his sons and who is described by his grand-daughter Kartini as—"the first regent of middle Java to unlatch his door to that guest from over the sea—Western civilization."