Page:The Feminist Movement - Snowden - 1912.djvu/58

 cruel practice, until quite recent times a matter of common occurrence, of throwing girl babies into rivers. It has also forbidden human sacrifices, either of human creatures to their deities or of widows on the funeral pyres of their husbands. The abolition of suttee has accomplished only half the work necessary for making life tolerable to the unhappy Indian widow. Child marriages are still universal, little girls of five and six being engaged by their parents to youths of like tender age or to grown men, as the case may be. English women physicians tell harrowing stories of these poor little child-wives and mothers, how they beg, with tears streaming from their eyes, that the good ladies will 'make them die.' The report they give is too horrible to read, but it makes the care of Indian women and children a burden upon the heart and conscience of every thinking woman of the governing nation.

Widows may not remarry, and as women are looked upon simply as adjuncts of their husbands, they have to excuse themselves continually for being alive. Only the birth of a son can give the wife any status in the eyes of family and community; then the sole joy that lies in front of her is in the prospect of some day being able to govern that son's house, and heap upon his wife, or wives, the suffering she herself has endured.