Page:Letters of a Javanese princess, by Raden Adjeng Kartini, 1921.djvu/140

LETTERS OF A JAVANESE PRINCESS The old traditions speak. Fatima's bridegroom takes a new wife and she is asked by the prophet what she feels: "Nothing, Father, nothing," she declared. And while saying this she leaned against a banana tree; the leaves, formerly fresh and green, withered, and the trunk against which her body rested shrivelled into ashes.

Again the Father asked her what she felt and she said, "Nothing, Father, nothing."

The Father gave her a raw egg and bade her hold it against her heart; he asked her to give it back to him, he broke it open and the egg was cooked.

The Eastern woman's heart has not changed. Many think it an honour to tolerate with unmoved countenances the one or more women their husbands have brought home, but do not ask what is hidden behind that iron mask, or what the walls of their dwellings could tell when the eyes of the world are removed. There are so many burning women's hearts, with poor, innocent, suffering, childlike souls.

And it was the misery that I saw, even in my childish years, that first awakened in me the desire to fight against these time-honoured customs, and substitute justice for old tradition.

Our work will have a two-fold aim, first to help to enlighten all our people, and secondly to raise up our sisters, so that they may live and be treated as human beings. To all of you who have sympathy for Java, and the Javanese, we send an urgent prayer—help us to realize our ideals; they mean so much to our people and to our sex.

Raise the Javanese woman, educate her heart and her understanding, and you will have splendid workers to co-operate with you in your noble work, your giant's work, the work of civilizing and enlightening a whole nation.

Teach her a trade, so that she will no longer be powerless when her —118—