" "The glories of eternity," says the Koran,
"will be eclipsed by the resplendent 'women of paradise,' created 'not
of clay, as mortal women are, but of pure musk, and free from all
natural impurities, defects, and inconveniencies incident to the sex;
... secluded from public view in pavilions of hollow pearl.'"[C]
A distinguished European writer observes: "The Hindoos seem to have
legislated with the greatest care and detail concerning women. Yet by no
people, legally speaking, is her individuality more entirely ignored;
and in no country is the slavery in which she lives, at once so
systematic, refined, and complete as it is in India, where the lawgiver
and the priest are one. The oppressive custom of life-long guardianship
is expressly ordained. By a girl, or by a woman advanced in years,
nothing must be done, even in her own dwelling-place, according to her
mere pleasure. In childhood must a female be dependent on her father, in
youth on her husband; her lord being dead, on her sons; if she have no
sons, on the near kinsman of her husband; if he left no kinsman, on
those of her father; if she have no parental kinsman, on the sovereign.
A woman must never seek independence."[D] Not permitted to have any
discretionary power over her own actions at any period of her life, but
held in every respect subject to the will of her husband, or some other
male guardian, she is nevertheless to be unswervingly faithful to her
lord while he lives; and no matter how cruelly he may have treated her,
she is loaded with contumely, reproach, and scorn, if she refuses to lay
herself upon the funeral pile, and in the flames pass into another state
of being, to do honor to him who through life had been an unrelenting
tyrant.
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