Page:The further side of silence (IA furthersideofsil00clifiala).pdf/217

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appetities, against whom her puny efforts to resist could avail nothing. All women who are wives by contract, rather than by inclination, experience some- thing of this paralysis of fear when first they find Themselves at the mercy of a man; but for the girls of a Muhammadan population this instinctive terror of the husband has a tenfold force. During all the days of her life a daughter of the Muhammadaus has seen the power and authority of man undisputed and unchecked by the female members of his house- hold. She has seen, perhaps, her own mother put. away, after many years of faithfulness and love, be- cause her charms have faded and her husband has grown weary of her; she has seen the married women about her cowed by a word, or even a look, from the man who holds in his hands an absolute right to lispose of his wife's destiny; she has watched the men eating their meals apart-alone if no other member of the masculine sex chanced to be present-because women are not deemed worthy to partake of food in the company of their superiors; and as a result of all These things, the daughter of the Muhammadans has learned to believe from her heart that man is indeed. Tashioned in a mould more honourable than that in which the folk of her own sex are cast. She sub- scribes generally to the Malay theory that "it is not filting that women should question the doings of men, and she has no share in the quasi maternal, very tolerant, yet half-contemptuous attitude which wo- men in Europe are apt to assume toward the wen whom they love but are accustomed to regard in the