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Elizabeth Cooper
The Harim and the Purdah: Studies of Oriental Women
Published by Good Press, 2021
EAN 4066338088840
Table of Contents
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“TWO WOMEN SHALL BE GRINDING AT THE MILL.”
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INTRODUCTION
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“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. It has helped to make her feminine, as it has naturally added to her inefficiency as far as any work is concerned that bears a similitude of masculine activity.