Page:Letters of a Javanese princess, by Raden Adjeng Kartini, 1921.djvu/77

 It is the history of three brown girls, children of the sunny East; born blind, but whose eyes have been opened so that they can see the beautiful, noble things in life. And now, that their eyes have grown accustomed to the light, now that they have learned to love the sun and everything that is in the brilliant world; they are about to have the blinders pressed back against their eyes, and to be plunged into the darkness from which they had come, and in which each and every one of their grandmothers back through the ages had lived.

It is said that books full of "nonsense" came from the distant West and penetrated the heart of the "Binnenland," that quiet peaceful place on Java's ever green coast, where the sisters dwelt, that these rebellious ones were unwilling to bear the yoke which had been borne meekly and patiently by all women before them, and which now hangs suspended above them, so that any second it may be dropped upon their unwilling shoulders.

People are wrong. It is not only the books that have made them rebellious, conditions have done that, conditions that have existed from time immemorial, and which are a curse, a curse—to every one who happens to be born a woman or a girl.

Already in her earliest youth when emancipation was for her an unknown word, and when books and other writings which spoke of it, were far beyond her reach, in one of the three sisters was born the desire to open the door of life.

It was recreation hour at the European school at Japara. Under the yellow blossoming waroe trees in the schoolyard, big and little girls were grouped in happy disorder. It was so warm that no one cared to play.

"Shut your book, Letsy, I have something to tell you," pleaded a brown girl, whose costume and head-dress betrayed the Javanese. —55—