Bitter Bonds: A Colonial Divorce Drama of the Seventeenth Century
by Leonard Blussé
Category: Drama

In 17th-century Batavia, Cornelia van Nijenroode, the daughter of a geisha and a Dutch merchant in Japan, was known as "Otemba" (meaning "untamable"), which made her a heroine to modern Japanese feminists. A wealthy widow and enterprising businesswoman who had married an unsuccessful Dutch lawyer for social reasons, she discovered that just after her wedding, she and her husband were at each other's throats. Cornelia.