WOMEN UNDER POLYGAMY
The life behind the purdah, the thick curtain that conceals the women of the zenana from the gaze of strangers, seems to Western eyes oppressive, even degrading. A man-doctor, who calls professionally upon a lady of the zenana, feels her pulse and questions her through the curtain.
Is this imprisonment? Indian women in the mass do not think so. The rights to which religion and law entitle them are accorded duly behind the purdah. They are queens of the home, not active competitors with men in the scramble for existence. Their greatest ambition is to be women, and that ideal connotes much that the woman of the West is discarding in scornful rebellion. Spinsterhood, and "the right to live one's own life,"—the supreme consummation of a large number of revolutionary British women—make no appeal to an Indian woman. Her strongest impulses are to fulfil her womanhood, to experience love, and to bear children. That is her vocation, her ambition, and her joy.
I have repeated the testimony of English women, who discern, in the home-life of India, a perfect adjustment of the functions and responsibilities of both sexes. But there are critics, Indian as well as foreign; and we must listen to them. It is, of course, incredible that there are no malcontents among the Hindu women.
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