The Indianapolis journal. [volume] (Indianapolis [Ind.]) 1867-1904, 1895-02-17
OLD MAIDS IN JAPAN.
An English Woman Finds interest
ing Liberties Granted Them.

Mary Basil Browne, in London Human
itarfan.
For about year l lived in Japan. quite
away a rule from other Westerns in
purely Japanese households often for
weeks seeing none but Japanese, and the
conclusion ! have come to. as the result
that they are happier in a high degree
than women are where Western ideas OBJ
whether there can possibly be any con-
nection between their domestic condition
and their even temper and content?
Who are the fretful and disconnected
among English women? They are the "old
maids" the wives whose husbands stray
away, the women who want to marry fand
In Japan all but every mature woman has
at least one child. Very often only one,
satisfaction. When a man i'll. japan has
more than one wife. some of them are
virtually discarded as wives after the birth
of the first child. They retain their posi-
ton az servants of the lady OF the house.
and they see their baby. the. idol OF its
father, the weil-cared-for and beloved of
the nominal mother-but theirs, their very
own to cuddle and caress-when they like.
But in England terrible crimes arise as the
consequence of maternity when 1t Is ir-
regular, terrible fears eat out the peace
of women who are not straight terrible
ehs To 1ne If an
ways an honor and a joy. Women hardly
ever live lives OF secret intrigue; there is
no need; lawful means of satisfying natur-
al desires are open to almost every woman
if my informalts spoke the truth. Even
the poor girls in the Yoshiwara may be
redeemed by honorable marriage. Is there
any connection between the frequent I'M
rest and unhappness of minated English
women and their lot I'm life?
OF course, nine-tenthS of the unhappy
among women do not recognize what ails
them. Science says that the female is con-
stituted for reproduction. Whatever else
she is not fitted for nature has generally
qualified her for this Office. Are there "old
maids among the trees? Do animals die
minated? Are any of these unchastey In
justice TO myself ] may here state that
am the happy wife of good man, and
can, for myself. conceive of no other life
than the ordinary married life Of the Chris
tian idea. / am close upon fifty years of
age; I married when well on in the thirties,
of the penalties OF some years of ''old
maidsm' SO called. / have both before and
since my marriage known many women
very intimately, notably single women,
widows and deserted women. / have con-
ferred a little with happily married women.
those who are not and may not be mothers.
l don't pretend to say that any possible
way out of the horrible state of things ex
lists. None has, even in the remotest notion
of glimnler, ever appeared 10 me- But
that our system is unnatural and therefore
wrong, the first cause OF innumerable crimes.
and of more miseries. ] am firmly
WINGED. I am not talking of young girls.
am talking of women between thirty and
forty say, women whose tempsa tions are
primarily from within, nos from without
Women whose chances of marriage are past
either as those who read such magazines
as the Humanitarian; but our dumb sisters,
whose lot costs them too often all happi-
ness and sometimes, alas. their reason.