The Harim and the Purdah: Studies of Oriental WomenCooper, Elizabeth
Religion
The Harim and the Purdah: Studies of Oriental Women
Cooper, Elizabeth
East Asia -- Social life and customs; Women -- East Asia
The Eastern woman is primarily a traditionalist. She is more closely
bound by hereditary tendency than the woman of the West. One of her
outstanding characteristics has lain for years in her dependency and
passive reliance upon her husband for economic support and protection.
Her very seclusion means to her, not that which the word would connote
to the Westerner, slavery or imprisonment; to her it is rather the
mantle of protective care and interest thrown over her by her lord and
master. It has helped to make her feminine, as it has naturally added to
her inefficiency as far as any work is concerned that bears a similitude
of masculine activity.
With the exception of the Burmese woman, and to an appreciable and
growing extent the women of Japan, the Oriental woman has been
influenced and moulded by her economic necessities. The Eastern attitude
toward woman, which in general has been to keep her ignorant and to
consider that her charms other than those relating to her physical
attractions are minute, has brought about a feminine type peculiar to
itself. The result is a woman who outside of the home has no power of
gaining a livelihood, and who as a natural consequence has turned her
whole thought, emotion, and imagination upon her domestic affairs.
Furthermore, we find in such countries of the Orient as Burmah and
Japan, where women are solving the problem of self-support, that they
have also been able, not only to have greater freedom, but also, to a
certain extent, they have demanded the right to choose their own mates
and regulate the laws concerning their home life. For instance, in each
of these countries the wife has the right of divorcing her husband—a
right denied the woman of other Oriental lands. The property rights of
women in these lands, where women are just beginning to be wage-earners,
are also clearly set forth in their civil codes, giving justice to the
women.
The realm of the Eastern woman is primarily the realm of the home. She
has the true spirit of the bee; she considers the collective good of the
household before her own. Her great vocation is to be a wife and mother.
She attends personally to her household duties, and domestic service is
to her not a disgrace. Her children are to her a veritable life-work.
She looks after them personally, superintends their every act, and
watches closely their development. Even the high lady of the East does
not consider it demeaning to cook with her own hands that which she
knows will appeal to the taste of her family. Cooking, indeed, is
regarded as a fine art in the East, and recipes are handed down like
heirlooms from mother to daughter along with the family jewels.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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