“What thou biddest Unargued I obey. So God ordains; God is thy law, thou mine: to know no more Is woman’s happiest knowledge, and her praise.” This is the creed of the woman of the East to-day. It is the same as it has been for centuries; it will continue the same for centuries to come. Indeed, it is a question whether the Oriental woman, with all her intellectual and social advance which is already beginning, will be able ever to free herself from those traditional and inherent influences which have been wrought into the very warp and woof of Eastern humanity. The Eastern woman is primarily a traditionalist. She is more closely bound by hereditary tendency than the woman of the West. One of her outstanding characteristics has lain for years in her dependency and passive reliance upon her husband for economic support and protection. Her very seclusion means to her, not that which the word would connote to the Westerner, slavery or imprisonment; to her it is rather the mantle of protective care and interest thrown over her by her lord and master. With the exception of the Burmese woman, and to an appreciable and growing extent the women of Japan, the Oriental woman has been influenced and moulded by her economic necessities. The Eastern attitude toward woman, which in general has been to keep her ignorant and to consider that her charms other than those relating to her physical attractions are minute, has brought about a feminine type peculiar to itself. The result is a woman who outside of the home has no power of gaining a livelihood, and who as a natural consequence has turned her whole thought, emotion, and imagination upon her domestic affairs. Furthermore, we find in such countries of the Orient as Burmah and Japan, where women are solving the problem of self-support, that they have also been able, not only to have greater freedom, but also, to a certain extent, they have demanded the right to choose their own mates and regulate the laws concerning their home life. For instance, in each of these countries the wife has the right of divorcing her husband—a right denied the woman of other Oriental lands. The property rights of women in these lands, where women are just beginning to be wage-earners, are also clearly set forth in their civil codes, giving justice to the women. The Eastern woman is honoured by the honour of her household. It is her business to make it possible for her husband and her sons to advance, and she shines in the reflected light of their achievements. She has not been taught, neither has she any suspicion of the Western ambition to make name and fame for herself. There is a certain delight and satisfaction in living behind the veil which one can hardly appreciate from the Western point of view. That this Eastern feminine regards her success as domestic rather than social is abundantly proved to any one who lives intimately in touch with the women of these countries. The one great cry which goes up from the This devotion to the purely domestic realm has left the woman a victim to ignorance, superstition, and the many evils that follow in their train. One finds the same superstition working in the minds of the women in Cairo, in Calcutta, and in Peking. The Egyptian mother dresses her boy in rags to guard him from the baneful influence of the “evil eye,” while the woman of China pierces her son’s ears and places a ring therein, to deceive the gods and make them think he is a girl. The woman of Algiers will buy charms and magic symbols to bring her the blessing of motherhood, while the woman of Japan visits shrines and holy places, where her faith and superstition are traded upon by those who understand the weakness of their womenkind. She has so long been accustomed During long ages Eastern women have been denied the right to think for themselves and have been compelled to feel their way emotionally, and their power to feel thus has become abnormally developed at the expense of their power to judge or reason. The woman of the Orient is a woman swayed by emotions, by the heart instead of by the intellect. There is a logical line of connection to be traced among the modern women of the East. Her phases of development have been the inevitable outcome of influences to which she has been taught to submit as a duty. Her religious sense—the strong spiritual craving that is deep within the heart of all women—has been utilized as a means of influencing her to yield implicit obedience to her mankind, whether he be father, brother, or husband. She has made him, in a certain sense, her god, and in yielding all to him she has ceased to think in the terms of her own individuality, accepting the common Can the woman of the East be awakened to an advanced development without harm to herself? Within her is found an enormous amount of suppressed capacity for good and evil. This suppression, which has been her cue for generations, possesses great dynamic power. Force becomes dangerous when confined; it should be directed, and unless properly guided and controlled, when it does burst forth, as it is bound to do with these women who are becoming educated and learning their power, it is likely to riot widely, with havoc for its effect. The Eastern woman who has traded upon her emotional nature for her livelihood, who has used these same emotions to keep her husband in a land where divorce is easy and where polygamy is practised by many, may be guided by her feelings rather than her intellect, using her new-found freedom to bring her lasting unhappiness instead of the joy which she now believes is lying just outside her doors. In India advance has come too rapidly at times, and the woman in her desire to slavishly imitate The woman of the Orient is awakening and is setting herself the task to consider what is best to be done. How can she remedy the deficiency of the social life of her land? The case is not a hopeless one by any means, even though her capacities and wonderful possibilities have lain dormant for so long. Many of these women now see the things that are wrong; they see the iniquity of a system in which they are not allowed to choose their own mate; they see the crying wrongs of their antiquated marriage and divorce laws, made for another period than the twentieth century—laws which do not fit the present conditions, however successful they may have been in other times. These women are learning to respect themselves and their position, learning to appreciate and value the weight of their majorities, and some are having the courage to speak out. These bolder ones are being punished for their intrepidity; but it does not check them. The cause for which they are working is gradually becoming more and more possible with the In all this change, will the Oriental woman remain the same as regards the deepest things in her nature? Will she keep her innate sense of modesty, her womanliness, her love of home and children, her feminine qualities which seem to us of the Western world almost a weakness, but which comprise her appealing charm? We cannot but feel that although the woman of the East may change radically in the outward expression If the Western woman comes to the Oriental bringing in her hands the fair gifts of intellectual advancement and broadened life, her Eastern sister will not be her debtor if she, by example, presents in return the even more precious charms of obedience, modesty, and loyalty which fundamentally are the priceless jewels in the crown of the world’s womanhood. EGYPTIAN WOMAN OF THE LOWER CLASS. |