Under these circumstances it might seem as though no breath of the West could yet have reached these jealously secluded creatures. Yet, as a matter of fact, Western influences have already profoundly affected the women of the upper classes, and female education, while far behind that of the males, has attained considerable proportions. In the more advanced parts of the Orient like Constantinople, Cairo, and the cities of India, distinctly "modern" types of women have appeared, the self-supporting, self-respecting--and respected--woman school-teacher being especially in evidence. The social consequences of this rising status of women, not only to women themselves but also to the community at large, are very important. In the East the harem is, as Vambery well says, the "bulwark of obscurantism."[254] Ignorant and fanatical herself, the harem woman implants her ignorance and fanaticism in her sons as well as in her daughters. What could be a worse handicap for the Eastern "intellectual" than his boyhood years spent "behind the veil"? No wonder that enlightened Oriental fathers have been in the habit of sending their boys to school at the earliest possible age in order to get them as soon as possible out of the stultifying atmosphere of harem life. Yet even this has proved merely a palliative. Childhood impressions are ever the most lasting, and so long as one-half of the Orient remained untouched by progressive influences Oriental progress had to be begun again _de novo_ with every succeeding generation. The increasing number of enlightened Oriental women is remedying this fatal defect. As a Western writer well says: "Give the mothers education and the whole situation is transformed. Girls who are learning other things than the unintelligible phrases of the Koran are certain to impart such knowledge, as daughters, sisters, and mothers, to their respective households. Women who learn housewifery, methods of modern cooking, sewing, and sanitation in the domestic-economy schools, are bound to cast about the home upon their return the atmosphere of a civilized community. The old-time picture of the Oriental woman spending her hours upon divans, eating sweetmeats, and indulging in petty and degrading gossip with the servants, or with women as ignorant as herself, will be changed. The new woman will be a companion rather than a slave or a toy of her husband. Marriage will advance from the stage of a paltry trade in bodies to something like a real union, involving respect towards the woman by both sons and fathers, while in a new pride of relationship the woman herself will be discovered."[255]