CHILD WIVES
The Persian girls stay at home longer than the little apprentices, but
not so long as the richer schoolboys.
The usual age for a Muhammadan girl to marry is thirteen or fourteen,
but in many places they marry as early as eight or nine.
This perhaps explains why the girl is given no voice in the choice of a
husband, and all is left to the parents.
It perhaps partly explains too why Muhammadans are allowed to beat
their wives, though they will tell you, as a proof of their prophet’s
kindness to women, that he forbade them to do it with a chain. A little
girl who has not had time to grow up and learn to behave herself, will
often no doubt be difficult to control.
The young wife of a shoemaker one day lost her temper because her
husband said he could not afford to buy her something she wanted. She
proceeded to break all the ornaments in the house and to tear her best
_chādar_ to rags. Her husband, who was a Christian, went to the English
missionary to ask whether it would be allowable under the circumstances
to beat her.
Another girl refused to cook her husband any food when he came home
from his work, and would not even speak to him. She admitted that
he was very kind to her, and that she liked him better than her own
brothers, but still continued to sulk in this way. Her own relations
said a good beating was what she wanted, but her husband had scruples
about wife-beating, and would not do anything. But not many Persian
husbands are so forbearing.
Another necessary result of these early marriages is the custom of
living with the husband’s parents. A girl of even fourteen is not
fit to be given sole charge of a house. So the bridegroom takes his
bride home to his father’s house, and puts her under the charge of her
mother-in-law. When, however, the mother-in-law becomes a widow, she
has to take a secondary place, if her daughter-in-law is at all of an
age to manage her own affairs. Then the old lady often prefers to leave
her son’s house, and to go and live with a married daughter, and the
men are generally very good in taking in their mothers-in-law.
Poor little girl wives! They are taken away from home before they are
grown up, and although they are now married women they cannot help
behaving as children. There was one young wife of a Government official
who received her visitors with the utmost dignity and propriety, and
then could not resist the temptation to pinch the old black woman who
was handing the tea and make her jump.
And they hardly know what to do with their babies. They love to nurse
them and play with them, but they get very tired of them and are often
glad to hand them over to the grandmother. I went to condole with one
girl on the death of her dear little baby, and she said, “It was just
as well it died before the winter. It would have been such cold work
getting up in the night to look after it.”
Even when the children grow older their mothers, grown-up children
themselves, do not know how to manage them. What do you think of
mothers who lose their tempers with their children, and fly at them
and bite them? And they are not ashamed of it, and their neighbours do
not seem surprised or horrified. One woman bit her little boy’s hand,
till it bled badly. He was about seven, and had cried to have his best
coat on when he went to see the missionary. Another woman bit the cheek
of a poor little consumptive girl of eight or nine, so that there was
a great bruise, and the skin was broken. She told a neighbour, with a
laugh, that she had got angry with the child because she was tiresome
about taking her medicine, which was very nasty.
There is no command in the Quran that girls should be married so
young, but the mothers declare that it was the command of Muhammad,
and certainly he himself set the example by marrying a girl of nine.
So when a mother thinks her girl is getting old enough to marry she
begins to look out for a suitable husband, and talks things over with
the mother or sister of any man she thinks likely. The man’s mother is
allowed to see the girl, but not the man himself, so you see even the
men cannot choose their own wives. Then the money matters are arranged.
It is settled how much the girl’s father will give her, and how much
her husband will settle on her, and there is often a great deal of
haggling over this.
If a girl has a cousin who is the son of her father’s brother, he is
considered the most appropriate husband for her, and it is considered
an act of merit for him to marry her.
If a girl has a large dowry she can generally get a good husband as
husbands go out there. If she is poor she has more difficulty, but a
capable, industrious girl may do fairly well. But a penniless girl with
nothing to recommend her fares badly indeed. When her mother fails to
get any husband who is at all desirable instead of letting her girl
remain single, she marries her to a madman or a drunkard or a deformed
man, or someone utterly undesirable.
The engagement is celebrated by a formal sweet-eating to which the
friends on both sides are invited.
The bride and her family prepare her trousseau, and she also has to
make a complete suit of clothes for the bridegroom. In one town now it
is customary for every well-to-do bride to have one European dress in
her trousseau, and for her father to give her a table and chairs.
The wedding itself is a great affair, lasting a week, if the bride’s
father can afford it, but only a day or part of a day in the case of
poor people. The little bride in her finest clothes, of which she is
very proud, looks very disconsolate and cries a great deal. No doubt
the tears are sometimes genuine enough, for the child is leaving her
home and going to people she knows little of, but even if she feels
inclined to laugh and smile she must not do anything so improper.
After the wedding she must not leave her husband’s house for a year,
but she may receive visitors.
As we have seen the marriage and wedding are arranged by the women,
but generally the bridegroom has more say in the matter than one young
man I knew. He had been engaged for some time, and on going home
from work one evening found his wedding prepared without his having
been consulted, and had to be married then and there. He was fond of
children, and quickly won the heart of his little wife, who cried when
he had to go back to his work.
We do sometimes find happy family parties in Persia, the husbands
treating their wives with consideration, and the wives being very fond
of their husbands. One old lady told me, with tears in her eyes, how
good her husband always was to her, and how he always got up and made
a cup of tea for her in the morning if she was not well. But this is
the exception and not the rule. There does not generally seem to be any
great affection between husband and wife. The husband expects implicit
obedience from his wife, and is prepared to enforce it. On the other
hand she has certain privileges. She generally has the best courtyard
in the house, to which no men are admitted but near relations, and the
smaller courtyard is given up to her husband to receive his guests in.
Except in the highest classes Persian women go about a good deal, but
always have to wear a veil in the street or draw the _chādar_ over
their faces.
The man is absolute master in his own house, and unless his wife has
powerful relations he may do what he likes to her and her children, and
no one will take any notice.
I knew one woman whose husband treated her like a slave. He forced her
not only to do all the work of the house, but the work of the stable
too, for he was well enough off to keep a horse. He killed one child
in her arms, and twice stole another away from her, sending it once
to a town a week’s journey off, and once to another part of the town.
Finally he divorced her, without giving any reason, and left her ill
and destitute. And she had at no time any redress.
Certainly Muhammadanism does not tend to make good husbands, nor
perhaps good wives either. The Persians are many of them kindly people,
however, and treat their wives better than Muhammad taught them to
do. Otherwise the lot of women in Persia would be harder than it is.
One great evil they are spared, for the widows are not despised and
ill-treated as the Hindu widows are, but are allowed to marry again,
and generally do so if they are of a suitable age.
Still the condition of girls in Persia is not a happy one, and I think
that all of you who have Christian mothers, and know what the love of
such a mother can be, will have something to pray about, when you think
of mothers and their children in Persia.