48 THE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY. 



grades, both, male and female, dependent chiefly upon age and dis- 

 tance by blood from the head of the family ; and as everybody is 

 married in India as soon as the time for it comes, the chances are 

 that the last-made bride is, in the nature of things, in the very 

 lowest place. 



In the average Indian family the strictest domestic economy 

 is the rule of life, and the household work is done by the women 

 of the household, not, as with us, by paid servants. Servants there 

 are, of course, in all Indian families, but they are, as a rule, on a 

 totally different footing from the European domestic, being for 

 the most part independent persons with a clientele, for whom they 

 perform certain customary services for a customary wage. The 

 distribution of the daily work, down to that of the most menial 

 kind, lies with the materfamilias, who may be best described as 

 the oldest woman in the family proper under cover^,ure, for wid- 

 ows can have no authority. The cooking, as the work of honor, 

 she keeps to herself, but the house-cleaning, the washing, the care 

 of the children, the drawing of the water, the making of the beds, 

 and so on, is done by the less dignified members of the household, 

 as she directs ; and whatever is most menial, most disagreeable, 

 and the hardest work, is thrust upon the bride. She is the serv- 

 ant of the very servants, and must obey everybody. It is hardly, 

 therefore, to be wondered at that, after her previous training, it is 

 by no means an uncommon occurrence that she has to be forcibly 

 broken into her new way of life, that she is for ever sighing after 

 the flesh-pots of her father's house, that there are various " cus- 

 toms " which enable her to revisit it at stated times after the mar- 

 riage, and that the law is often invoked to oblige brides to return 

 to their husbands' families after the customary term of such vis- 

 its has expired. 



Not only is our bride thus turned into a drudge, often unmerci- 

 fully overworked, but from the day she gives up her childhood to 

 the day of her death — it may be for sixty years — she is secluded, 

 and sees nothing of the world outside the walls of her family inclos- 

 ure. It should always, therefore, be borne in mind, when trying 

 to realize Indian female life, what a very important thing the do- 

 mestic economy is to a woman ; how largely the petty affairs of 

 the household loom upon her horizon. Her happiness or misery, 

 indeed, entirely depend on the manner in which the affairs of the 

 family are conducted. Now, considering that the female mind 

 has for centuries been mainly directed to this all-important mat- 

 ter, it is not astonishing to find that such questions as the proper 

 method of eating and drinking, and of domestic propriety gener- 

 ally — the intercourse, that is, which is permissible and right be- 

 tween the various members of the household, male and female — 

 have long been regulated with the utmost minuteness. To us 



