ORIENTAL NUPTIALS
_Burmese Bridals_
IN Burmah, marriage is not a failure; it is a stupendous success. The
Burmese women are sweetly pretty. They have dainty ways and happy faces.
It would be very ungrateful of them to be less than happy, for they hold
a position unique among the women of the East. I know of but one other
race of women who are upon so entire an equality, socially, legally, and
financially, with men as are the Burmese women,—the American woman is
as free as the Burmese woman, but no more so,—the best type of the most
typically American women I mean. The women who are only half American,
the women in whose families old European customs are family law, are not
nearly so free as the pretty women-folk of Burmah.
There is no religious ceremony connected with a Burmese marriage. The
Burmese do not—in theory at least—regard marriage as a blessing; and
yet I know no other country in the world in which so overwhelming a
proportion of marriages are extremely happy. I never knew a Burmese
husband and wife to quarrel, and Europeans who have spent many years
among the Burmese tell me that such quarrels are almost unknown. This
may be, in part, because the Burmese are dowered with kind, easy-going,
affectionate, faithful temperaments.
The Burmese are tenderly devoted to their children. A common love of
little children cements many a broken marriage, strengthens many a real
love—the world over. But I believe that the reason of reasons for the
universality of happy marriages in Burmah is the sensible way in which
marriage is undertaken and the just way in which it is carried out. We
women of Europe cry out for enfranchisement—cry with shrill, sharp
voices; and I fancy that the more liberty we get the more unfeminine we
grow. In America, we are sadly spoiled, I fear. We have grown fond of
cushions and of sweetmeats. The Burmese women teach an invaluable
lesson—if the women of America and the women of Europe would learn it.
They are on as absolute an equality with men as nature will permit. All
the equality that man can give woman he has given her in Burmah; the
women of Europe can not well ask for more. But if the women of Europe
get all the equality that they want, will they wear it as delicately and
with as much dignity as do the heathen women of Burmah? I fear not. The
Burmese women are as graceful as the women of Japan; as gentle, as
lovable as the women of Denmark; as vivacious as the women of France; as
capable as the women of America, and as feminine as the women of England
at their best: the women who do not aspire to do man’s work and neglect
their own. The women of Burmah accept gracefully the limitations of
nature,—that is the great, great lesson they can teach the women of
England. The limitless consideration of the Burmese men for the Burmese
women has not enervated the women of Burmah. The Burmese women, though
they never bustle, are never loud-mouthed, are never slovenly, yet
are—within reasonable, intelligent limits—the most energetic, the most
industrious women in the world. Petting has not spoiled the women of
Burmah. That is the great, great lesson they have for the women of
America.
[Illustration: BURMESE MOTHER AND CHILD. _Page 94._]
The marriage yoke rests as easily upon the Burmese necks as a wreath of
roses—for the man and wife pull equally, pull together. Each does his
or her fair part. Each remembers always the rights of the other.
Courtesy and justice are big ingredients in Burmese married life. Small
wonder that in Burmah marriage is a big success.
If the position of the Burmese women is unique, the position of the
Burmese children is unparalleled and almost indescribable. Filial piety
is almost as much a matter of religion in Burmah as in China. On the
other hand, parental coercion is more unknown in Burmah than in the
United States. Burmese children never disobey, but Burmese parents
almost never command; family affection is very strong in Burmah. But the
law of love is the only law known in the home circle. When a girl
reaches a marriageable age—when she has reached young-womanhood and
feels inclined for the greater womanhood of marriage—she very simply
places a light in her own particular casement; then the would-be
Benedicts gather about her. Night after night they “call.” Night after
night she and her parents receive them. The Burmese women are always
most careful in their toilets; but at this period their care becomes
superlative. The Burmese women are always pretty; their taste in dress
is exquisite; and when a Burmese maiden lights the invitational lamp and
sits down to await her suitors, she makes a picture of pretty humanity,
of which we women of Europe may well be envious.
“Better fifty years of Europe than a cycle of Cathay.” I wonder if that
is true. It is musical, it is big with poetry. It pointed a great truth
as Tennyson wrote it. It fell from his pen a truth. But take it alone,
tear it from its high place in English literature; of itself, by itself,
is it true? I have doubts, petty perhaps, but forcibly pertinacious. The
marriage question—that El Dorado of the farthing-a-liners—Ah! there is
no marriage question in Cathay. The women of the East are married, and
they find their happiness in marriage—they never analyse it. They know
as little of elective affinities and of natural selection as do the
perfumed flowers of the Orient. Perhaps they know as much. It is a very
fine thing to discuss marriage in all its imperfections, it is far finer
to experience it in all its perfection. And the women of the Orient, who
never talk of marriage because they are not enough advanced, experience
it and seem to find it rather perfect. What has the world given women,
what has civilisation, education, given them; what can life give them
better than marriage? Nothing! The past gave us nothing, the present
gives us nothing, and in the mysterious bosom of the future lies for us
no greater benison than marriage. Sneer senseless men and unsexed women,
but that is truth, Nature’s greatest truth!
[Illustration: BURMESE MUSICIANS. _Page 97._]
The Burmese maiden who desires marriage, and tells it through her pretty
lamp, is not over bold, nor does she seem so to her countrymen. The
Burmese regard marriage as so much a woman’s greatest right—they so
entirely believe it to be her highest and best career—that the girl who
announces her readiness for marriage is neither ashamed nor shamed. Let
us look at her for a moment as she sits quietly within her father’s
doorway. Her lamp is lit. The suitors are coming. Yes, she is vastly
pretty. Her long black hair is quaintly, carefully, but not grotesquely
dressed; it is softly perfumed, and fresh, dewy flowers rest amid its
silken coils. Every feature is pretty, but prettiest are her dainty ears
and her small hands and feet. In her ears gleam twin pearls and rubies,
and her little hands are heavy with the same gems. The people of the
East are peculiarly fond of pearls. The fondness culminates in China.
The pearls of the world are worn by the beauties of Canton and Pekin.
The Burmese have all the fine tastes of the Chinese, and none of their
personal ugliness. The women of Burmah wear pearls less profusely than
do the women of China, but they become them more. Mah Me wears a
petticoat, a graceful silken petticoat. It has been woven in a Burmese
loom. The colours are bright and varied, but they are matchlessly
blended, and the pattern is as exquisite as it is Oriental. An outer
skirt (indeed it is a straight piece of soft silk) falls above the
petticoat. It is a soft, bright pink, it is striped with dull, dark
colours, and with gold and silver threads. It falls behind Mah Me in a
pretty demi-train way. Under her arms is folded a broad band of red
silk; it forms a pretty, simple, bodice and keeps in place the pretty,
simple skirts. A sheer muslin jacket covers her shoulders and her upper
arms. It is open from her bosom. She half wears, half carries, a blue
and silver shawl. Her soft brown neck is modestly covered by chains of
purest gold, in which glitter the gems of Burmah—gems dug from the
invaluable mines for which we are so eagerly looking.
Mah Me is smoking a big Burmese cigar. The Burmese cigars look very
formidable, but in reality they are the mildest of weeds. But the
Burmans are devoted to them, and only cease to smoke when they sleep.
To-night is her first night “at home to suitors.” A dozen or more will
probably come. She will give them pickled tea, and they will chat and
sing and play upon their tinkling native instruments. Every Burman is a
musician, skilful and inveterate, if somewhat primitive. The Burmese,
unlike the other Oriental peoples, do not drink tea, they eat it. I
dislike tea as a beverage, but I liked it as a viand. The Burmese pickle
it with oil and garlic. As rice is the staff of Burmese life, so is
pickled tea the dish of Burmese ceremony; so Mah Me gives her suitors
pickled tea. Night after night they come, until she smiles on one more
than on his fellows, then their ranks thin; the favoured remains, the
others go; the betrothal is accomplished; the mothers of the young
couple confer; the bridegroom presents his bride with a dowry; the
marriage is celebrated by a feast; the bride and bridegroom sit side by
side and eat from one dish. No marriage ceremony could be simpler, none
could be more significant. On the marriage night, the friends who have
partaken of the marriage feast pelt the house with stones. This
musicless serenade is kept up for an incredible time, but the silence
and the dark come at last, and the young husband and wife drift quietly
into the happiness of peaceful Burmese married life.
I have sometimes thought, when looking at the Burmese women, that
perhaps one secret of the constant affection of the Burmese husbands was
the constant neatness of the Burmese wives. No one, I believe, has ever
seen a Burmese woman untidy; their persons and their garments are always
fresh, bright, and spotless.
Some one asked me recently, “what about divorce in Burmah?” I never
heard of divorce in Burmah. I am not, of course, prepared to say that
there is no such thing; but certainly it is very rare. When it is
necessary, I daresay they deal with it as simply and as sensibly as they
do with marriage. But the only divorce of which they are very generally
cognisant is the great divorce, the divorce decreed by death.
[Illustration: BHÂMO WOMEN. _Page 99._]
We have conquered the Burmese; true, but they have conquered the
marriage question, they have solved it,—they have conquered it and
solved it without knowing of its existence. They are heathens; true, but
they are happy in their home lives. May they never learn the weird
Western secret of marital misery. There is much for us to learn in the
Orient, but none of it is more important than the beautiful lesson of
married happiness that is taught by Burmah. There is much in Burmah that
is most imperfect, but in the relative positions of the sexes it is
ideal.