WOMEN UNDER POLYGAMY
scarcely touches on the ethics of child-marriage in "The Web of Indian Life."
No choice in love is permitted to a Hindu maiden. Apologists for the marriage of arrangement explain that courtship begins after union, and that wooing usually ends with wedlock in the Western nations. This may be true in part; but the risk of incompatability, or of sheer maladaptation, is very great when no selection whatever has been exercised by the contracting partners in conjugality.
In the case of a girl of nine years, taken as a wife, and kept by the bridegroom's mother until the nubile age, there is a chance of opportunities for learning something of a husband's character before the physical consummation. That is the only kind of courtship before wedlock.
In Bengal conjugal union with quite young children is still practised. Manu directs that girls of eight may be married, and that is the earliest age permissible. It is the usual custom to defer actual marriage until the bride has reached the period of puberty, which is usually supposed to occur at an earlier age in the East than in the West. There are, however, recorded cases of the marriage of girls under ten.
In 1890, fifty-five lady doctors petitioned the Vice-
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