The Chinese Women by Hattie Howell

Review and Herald Publishing Association · Washington, D.C. · Dec 10, 1903

The Chinese Women

By Hattie Howell

MRS. HATTIE HOWELL

The women of Asia are prisoners for life. Be they members of Mohammedan harems, of Indian zenanas, or of households in that still more remote Eastern country whose people number one third of the inhabitants of the globe, be they simply born in Asia, their only escape from sorrow and misery, loneliness and desolation, ignorance and narrow-mindedness, superstition and pollution, which the birthright of the Orient entails upon them, is through the sometimes early, but frequently too tardy, and often much-coveted and self-induced death. They are, one and all, captives of crushed and broken spirits.

That which every Eastern woman is taught to regard as the goal of her existence, is her wedding day, no less inevitable in China than in the remaining Asiatic countries.

Entering upon her married estate with a “certain fearful looking for” of the “afterward,” she finds the troubles of her girlhood aggravated by her new surroundings, which already begin to add their own burden of afflictions to her heart. A Chinese girl of twenty-one or twenty-two years, who is unmarried, is not only herself disgraced, but she is as well a disgrace to her father and mother; and after that, so questionable does her character become in the eyes of her countrymen, that it is with difficulty a husband may be secured for her. The girls of China are usually married before they are eighteen, to men, one, two, or three years their senior.

The age of their betrothal is variable. Among the poor, a baby girl one or two years, or even a few days, old is not uncommonly sold into the family of her future husband, where she is cared for until considered of a suitable age for marriage with one of the sons. In circles more well-to-do, little girls, though not bargained for and sold as a financial burden too heavy to be borne by the parents, are, if permitted to live, betrothed from one to twenty years before their marriage.

On the one hand, her parents want to be rid of her, and yet if possible, obtain a son-in-law of education and influence. On the other hand, the young man’s family select a wife who they think has capacity and training for work, in consequence of which it not infrequently happens that when a servant is wanted—for such does every daughter-in-law become—a buxom girl of twenty is married to a boy half her age.

Suicide among the young married women of China is so excessively frequent that it is scarcely a matter of remark. When the young wife is discovered,

and rescued from her suicidal attempts, she often meets the pitiful reproach from her mother, “Why didn’t you die when you had a chance?” Perhaps the daughter-in-law lives on till the day when she, too, may become a mother-in-law, her sons having grown up and brought home their wives; and thenceforth in the increasing household of children and grandchildren, her will is supreme. But have the sorrows and hardships allotted her by the unkindness and cruelty of her husband’s mother, softened and fitted her to mitigate the mental and physical sufferings of her daughters-in-law? How unvarying the law that the human heart does to others as it has been done by!

Now as best you can, picture to yourself our Chinese sister as she really is, or as circumstances make her. During the long months before her birth, it is hoped she is not “a girl.” When it is known that a little daughter is in the house, no loving hearts receive her. The father is disappointed or enraged, and the mother bemoans the birth of one whose lot must be so sorrowful. A daughter is rarely ever welcome in China. Infanticide in the past was so prevalent that in the homes of the poor only one or two girl babies were saved, the others being drowned, left to starve by the wayside, or thrown into the baby towers prepared for little foundlings. Wealthy families treat similarly the little girl who unfortunately comes to their home, and simply—because they do not want her. Many times rather than have the father take the child’s life (for it is he who commits the deed), the mother pleads that the child be sold as a slave. Poor little children! born without love—die without love. Many a Chinese woman can say at her death, “No one ever loved me.”

When only a few years old, the child’s mother inflicts upon her the most terrible torture, loosening, and wrenching, and twisting the ligaments of the baby feet, and crushing the bones into a stylish and beautiful stump, while she regards not the days and nights of shrieks and wails from the little one, which finally die away into a prolonged and breathless succession of groans.

From her infancy to her marriage, the little girl leads a shut-in life in the narrow confinement of her own home, though really there are few homes in China. The architecture of our houses does not enable us to conceive of the dinginess and cheerlessness of the ordinary Chinese house.

As every phase of life in China is closed about with ceremonies, forms, and customs, so the day of the maiden’s wedlock demands that she and her mother weep. But I am quite sure tears are seldom feigned on that occasion; no doubt they are usually the overflow of sad and trembling hearts.

One of our students was once telling us of the feastings and festivities connected with the marriage of his sister, when we inquired of the bride. “O, lief she lie on the bed and cry,” was the reply; and the story of her lying there in tears, for a week, was told by her own brother without the least sign of pity or sympathy.

The Chinese are characteristically insensible to the sufferings of others.

Among all classes of Chinese—high and low, rich and poor—the opium habit is making fast inroads. In the social life of the men, it holds about the same place as does wine in America. But among the women of China, the habit is acquired through its use to assuage their sufferings and beguile their sorrows, while not a few seek death by it. Thousands of Chinese children are being born slaves to the drug.

The rapidly wide-spreading use of opium, together with ancestor worship, are counted two of the most formidable obstacles to the spread of the gospel in the Chinese empire. And because of the latter of these hindrances, many think that the most successful efforts can be put forth for the women of China. She, the matron of her house, whose will is implicitly obeyed by her sons and daughters, is the one who instructs them in the religion of their fathers. By her, in the retirement of their own home, the children are taught to worship the dead, and to bow before the ancestral tablets. From earliest infancy they are not only steeped in the smoke of tobacco and opium, but also in the fumes of the incense burning before some household god, in his niche.

When the bastiles of the women of China are stormed by the missionary, there will, through his followers, be a literal fulfilment of Christ’s mission to earth; for it was foretold of him that he would “proclaim liberty to the captives, and the opening of the prison to them that are bound.” Isa. 61:1.

Thus far in the history of missions, work has been done almost exclusively for the poor; for the missionaries have been unable to break through the impenetrable barriers built about the Chinese ladies. Of course none but women can work for women, and it seems that the consecrated medical woman has the readiest access to the courts, and consequently to the hearts of the women. What the Christian physician discloses concerning the cruelties and barbarities inflicted upon the inmates of these homes is very little known in the outside world. The ailments of women and children in China are considered unworthy of notice, and are allowed to run on, until the maladies become chronic. In case of malignant and contagious diseases, nothing is done for the sick person, he being, in nine cases out of ten, shut up and locked within a room, with only a vessel of water by his side,—there to die. Occasionally his friends unbar the door enough to prod him with sticks, in order to ascertain whether he is alive,—all this because so great is their fear and dread of the tormenting devils, whom they are reported to hear muttering from every article of furniture in the sick room. Relying quite fully upon charms and superstitious customs for the relief of disease, as they do, it seems as if the message of Christ—“Daughter . . . be whole of thy plague”—has more of meaning for them than for us.

O my sisters in Christ, are not some of you longing to devote your lives to carry the news of redemption to some of these poor souls, who with us are “prisoners of hope”? See Zech. 9:12. Would it might be that “the women who publish the tidings are a host;” for unto the Chinese woman is the word: “Shake thyself from the dust; arise, and sit down, O Jerusalem: loose thyself from the bands of thy neck, O captive daughter of Zion.” “For the Lord hath called thee as a woman forsaken and grieved in spirit.” “In a little wrath I hid my face from thee for a moment; but with everlasting kindness will I have mercy on thee, saith the Lord thy Redeemer.” Isa. 52:2; 54:6, 8.