Page:Letters of a Javanese princess, by Raden Adjeng Kartini, 1921.djvu/91

LETTERS OF A JAVANESE PRINCESS The longing for work that we will love is what presses upon us so heavily. It is frightful to feel the power to work, and the will to work, and yet be condemned to idleness.

We will not believe that our whole lives to the very end will be monotonous, dull and commonplace. And yet we see no chance for a single one of all our beautiful dreams to ever become a reality. We do not know clearly what we shall do, but we are determined to follow only the voices of our own hearts.

"If we had been boys, our father could have brought us up to be fine fellows," we hear till we are weary. When it is certainly true that if the same material is in us out of which fine boys could be made, the same trouble could just as easily make fine women of us. Is it only fine men that have been of use hitherto? And are fine women of no value to civilization?

But we Javanese women must first of all be gentle and submissive; we must be as clay which one can mould into any form that he wishes. But why speak of this now? It is as though men on a sinking ship complained because they had not remained at home, investigated the cause of the misfortune, and punished those responsible for it. That would not prevent the ship from going down; they would be drowned just the same, and only the courage of the hand at the rudder, and pumping at the leak, could have saved them from destruction. —69—