Between the Twilights/Chapter 5
V
THE SETTER-FAR OF IGNORANCE
I have tried to indicate the women’s attitude towards the man in India. His towards her is more difficult to determine—partly because she is not his whole existence, as he is hers; she is his occasional amusement, and always his slave and the physical element in the eventual saving of his soul, that complicated machinery which necessitates a son who will pay your material and spiritual debts. Comradeship, as we have seen, there can be little between orthodox Hindu husband and wife. Love we will not deny—these things are between soul and soul; show of affection would be insult in the presence of third persons; courtesy, in the thousand little ways required in the West, is shown rather by the woman to the man than by him to her. And, indeed, the very fact that he allows all this is proof of respect. To accept service is the compliment—and he respects her after his kind. But certainly he respects her. Does he not arrange that himself shall be her chief interest in life and her chief care and memory in death? Is she not allowed to be at once his “parasite and his chalice.” But certainly he respects her. Her name may not be in the mouth of a man, even in the form of polite inquiry after her health: no strange man may see her face, and often he may not even hear her voice. Is it not her husband who guards her from contact with the outer world, from sight of God’s most beautiful creation, from knowledge of the way he lives his life, or works, or plays?
But certainly he respects her. He eats the food she cooks for him, he gives her complete control of his household, and he sees that she lives up to his ideal of her place in the scheme of life.
She, too, has her ideal—the worship and service of her husband, and if he gives her opportunity to realize this, what more will she ask? When she is the mother of a son greater respect is hers, from the other women in the Zenana, and greater love and respect no doubt from her lord. Men do not like to be connected with a failure, and she has been successful, has justified her existence. The self-respect it gives the woman herself is most marked. She still is faithful slave to her husband, but she is an entity, a person, so far as that is possible in a Hindu Zenana; she can lift her head above the woman who taunted her, her heart above the fear of a rival. I have seen her parallel in the ugly duckling of the family who suddenly develops to the recognition of the outer world an unsuspected talent. We all know how she seems mysteriously and instantly to grow taller, smarter, more dignified; how she knows her own mind and has an opinion even in the regions remote from her special subject—whereas hitherto all had been vague discontent and vacillation. Both women are saying unconsciously in their hearts—“I am of use in the world,” only I doubt whether, causes reversed, either would say it as triumphantly.
And, for a Hindu woman, “the best is yet to be.” When she arrives at the dignity of Grandmother, ruling a household of daughters-in-law, she has indeed entered upon her kingdom. The son, who as infant first added to her stature, lavishes upon her in old age respect and affection which any woman might envy. Indeed, the relation of mother and son, even of widowed mother and son in India now, when her life is near its close, is the most beautiful perhaps of all Indian family relationships. She is respefted, almost worshipped, as the Life-Bringer, and when she holds her grandson in her arms she is forgiven for the widowhood which for so long has been counted against her. At last she is loved as only those women are loved who have given, and given, and given all their lives seeking nothing in return.
I remember an old gray-headed Hindu saying to me, when we were discussing Gurus, “After all the true Guru in every house is the Mother; and are there not only three important things in the world—God, the Word of God, and the Guru, he who brings the Word?” …
Of the intellectual capacity of a woman a Hindu has a very poor opinion; but he will yield to, and even refer to, her about all matters of religion and—the kitchen.
It is the masculine attitude the world over. And sometimes he will consult her about things she cannot possibly understand, from a superstitious belief that her virtue may give her insight. She is his toss of a penny.
It has often amused me to compare the men’s and women’s versions of some old-world story. It is extraordinarily enlightening. Once, in order to get a little nearer to the man’s conception of a woman, I entrapped an orthodox friend of mine into telling me the story of the Ten-handed Durga. My friend was chewing betel-nut, which meant that he had dined, and was in genial mood, and clean white draperies. He sat cross-legged on a mat in a room all delicious cool open spaces. He leaned his elbow on a great white bolster. There were other bolsters and mats about the room, for it was his wont to sit here of an afternoon and receive visitors. It was his “Setting-far-ignorance” time, as he explained to me. One or two women sat beyond the mats; they were disciples of holy men, and allowed therefore to gather up the crumbs which fell from the table of the great philosopher. The scene pleased me. Every face in the room was worth study; some for the hall-mark of sainthood, many for the evidence of self-restraint and meditation; a few for an exactly contrary reason—the possibilities of a certain unholy strength, the best degraded to the worst.
There was a storm without, but the Setter-far of Ignorance heeded it not, even so much as to shut the windows, and the rain splashed in, and the lightning caught now one face, now another, now the pink garb of an ascetic, now the veiled form of a woman. … The thunder crashed, and ceased but to let in the noise of the street, with the tram of English civilization running under the windows.
My question about Durga set the heads wagging. It was close upon Durga Pooja time, and every Hindu would be provisioning his kitchen against guests, and adding to the house of Gods that image which presently he would carry down to the waters of forgetfulness. The question was popular.
“There are many versions of the story,” said my friend. “You will have heard what the women say; the true tale is this. Not all the Gods could prevail against the powers of evil, so they united their several wills and energies, and the union of strength produced Durga. She is energy or will—the beautiful Ten-handed—and she undertook to fight the demons.
“They came just in the form of beasts, and then of men; but both she slew. There lay at her feet the buffalo, typical of all that is coarse, and the lion, typical of all that is best in the animal world; and out of the slain beasts rose one in the likeness of a man, and him also she slew—victorious. It is in this form that the instructed worship her at Durga Pooja time.”
Then I: “Expound the parable.” And he: “See you not, the spiritual conquers the bestial and animal, thus gaining strength to conquer the human also. God conquers evil. And yes, I own it, the ultimate conquest of evil is by the agency of a woman, for the Creator so ordained it; she alone is capable of conquest for others—but they were the Gods and not the Goddesses who gave her the power to conquer. The Great God but accepted the service, the devotion in this matter of the woman, and so, has he not honoured her for all Eternity?”
“She alone is capable of conquest for others”; “To accept service and devotion of any is the highest honour you can pay her.” With that for key-note how many things are capable of understanding in the relation of Hindu man to Hindu woman!
“I see more still in your story,” said one who sat by. “Does it mean also, perhaps, that only when we have renounced our wills can they be effectual for conquest, that when we give the best of ourselves to others, they afterwards, by these very means, bring back and lay at our feet that very thing we would ourselves have conquered and mastered?”
For of course the Gods had their part in Durga’s victory. The Hindu remembers only that conquest, salvation may be bought for him by another. Suppose now the Hindu Mother to teach her son recognition of his part in that parable—that it is he who must cultivate the will and energy wherewith to gift the woman for conquest, possess himself of something worth giving—what a nation we should have!
But “Everything is in being through ignorance—when we are awake our dreams are false,” was the only remark made by my friend to these heroics: and he yawned politely, and seemed to have lost all interest in the Ten-handed.