CURRENT LITERATURE.
TYLE POSITION OF WOMEN IN INDIAN LIFE.
us that when considering the differences between the position of women in English and in Indian public life the following questions have presented themselves to her : " What can be the reason for this great difference ? Should the Indian woman continue to be isolated from all public affairs P What is the remedy and how is it to be applied ? I often wondered," she continues, "whether I could do anything to awaken my Indian sisters from their lethargy of ages to enable them to take their proper place in Indian public life. I therefore tried to learn what I could from the Western systems—British, Continental, and American—which came under my observation, feeling strongly that I owed it to my sisters in India to give them the benefit of the impressions gathered during my travels on matters peculiarly affecting the position of women." So this book was written, in collaboration with Mr. S. M. Mitre, a student of Western sociology, " and it is now being published in the hope that additional contributions and opinions from all parts of India may be collected and carefully edited, with the object of deciding what practical form women's organization should take there." English readers will be specially interested in the first chapter, which gives a sketch of women in all countries, from the earliest times to the present day, as it appears to cultivated Eastern minds. The twentieth-century "movement" will no doubt be remembered as having raised the study of domestic science to a university standard, thereby adding to the efficiency of produc- tion and the lessening of the waste of that complicated machine the household, without which we could not now live. "India," say our authors, "with her long centuries of philosophic teaching may find her methods somewhat prone to abstractions but she should remember that pure intellect is not all. The education that unfits a girl for the practical duties of the home is a progression on totally wrong lines, since the majority of women will always be called upon to direct household tasks. Beware of too literary an education?' Women "should abandon the old idea -of following men along the beaten tracks marked out in the past, and they should try to devise occupations in which their own peculiar excellences may have full scope for exercise." The main part of the book is concerned with practical information on the careers that are open to women in the West, together with carefully considered advice and suggestions as to the ways of adapting them to the needs of the East. The last chapter is on Japan, of which the Maharani says : " My visit to that country convinced me that Japanese women have not made progress in comparison with the advance of their men."_ After describing the establishment, after much opposition, of a regular service of women Red Cross nurses, and the good work they have done, she says: "In con- nexion with the adaptation of foreign institutions in India it should lie noticed that Japan owes the system practised by this organization to Germany. It is not the development of a Japanese idea. Its marked success proves once more the efficacy of adapt- ing Western institutions to suit Eastern environments." We cannot leave this book without reference to the frontispiece, which, may we be allowed t' say, endows it with a charming touch of personality.
Previous page
