Page:Letters of a Javanese princess, by Raden Adjeng Kartini, 1921.djvu/16

INTRODUCTION Javanese. Not the material freedom for which during the three hundred years of Dutch rule the Javanese of the past had sometimes waged a bloody warfare, but the greater freedom of the mind and of the spirit.

The Dutch rule had become enlightened. In local affairs the Javanese had self-government under their own officials. But they were bowed down by superstition and under the sway of tradition. The "adat," or law which cannot be changed, was fostered by religion. They were imbued with all the fatalism of the Mohammedan, the future belonged to "Tekdir" or Fate and it was vain to rebel against its decrees. But Kartini rebelled against "Tekdir." She refused to believe in the righteousness of the ancient law that a girl must marry, or breaking that law, bring everlasting disgrace upon her family.

She realized that the freedom of woman could only come through economic independence. And personally she said that she had rather be a kitchen maid, than be forced to marry a strange and unknown man. For in well-bred Javanese circles girls were brought up according to the most rigid Mohammedan canons and closely guarded from the eyes of men.

Dr. Abendanon, the compiler of Kartini's letters, says that although he had lived for twenty-five years in Java, she and her sisters were the first young girls of noble birth that he had ever seen.

Kartini wanted to go to Holland to study, to return home when she had gained a broader knowledge and experience, equipped for teaching the daughters of her own people. She wished to help them through education, to break with the stultifying traditions of the past. Although always a Mohammedan, marriage with more than one wife was abhorrent to her. True progress seemed impossible in a polygamous society for men or for women. Furthermore polygamy was not commanded or —xii—