Page:Letters of a Javanese princess, by Raden Adjeng Kartini, 1921.djvu/169

LETTERS OF A JAVANESE PRINCESS know. When she could think again, she was with her family and they told her that she had been ill for a long time.

Later, after she had recovered, she looked at the letter which she had forced from her husband on that terrible night, and saw that she was really not divorced at all. The letter merely contained her description and the information that she had run away from him.

He had no idea in the world of giving her back her freedom. Later she became reconciled to him. The other wife left the house and went to live in another dwelling, while she resumed her old rule of the house- hold. On that frightful night, she had sworn a solemn oath, she swallowed dust, and vowed never, never, to raise her hand to deprive another of her rights. She had done it herself ignorantly as a child; when she was fourteen years of age, her parents had married her to her husband. She did not know what she was doing, she belonged only to her parents, who used often to beat her at their pleasure. She knew now what a hell pain it was to be pressed from the side of a husband by another. She has remained true to her oath.

Not long ago her husband married a niece to some one who already had a wife; she defied the wrath of her husband and refused persistently to have anything to do with the wedding preparations, and the wedding was not held in her house.

We know her very well, and have great respect for her. She has made herself what she is by her own efforts, she has worked hard and improved herself, though she has never had an opportunity to study.

She has taught herself to read, and has worked her way through several books with profit.

We are sometimes astonished at her conversation, the result of deep thinking, and also of a sound understanding. She is truly an unusual woman (it would be well if there were more like her) who has had —147—