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Carbelide Nelicanya Sectory 18
Page 05
Chapman was indeed a man to be pitied. He had now more than his head and hands full of trouble. The care it was now necessary to bestow on his wife (for she was above all else in his mind) in a great measure relieved him of the excitement caused by his great financial misfortunes. When, then, Mattie entered the parlor and found him comparatively calm, she fancied her mother had swooned from over-exertion on her behalf. Taking a seat beside her mother, she kissed and kissed her cheek, and proceeded to bestow upon her those attentions her case demanded, and in so kind and gentle a manner as to show how deep and true was the love she bore her.
Gerard Terburg, whose pictures now have an enormous value, had two sisters, Maria and Gezina, whose genre pictures were not unworthy of comparison with the works of their famous brother. Gottfried Schalken, remarkable for his skill in the representation of scenes by candle light, was scarcely more famous than his sister Maria. Eglon van der Neer is famous for his pictures of elegant women in marvellous satin gowns. He married Adriana Spilberg, a favorite portrait painter. The daughters of the eminent engraver Cornelius Visscher, Anna and Maria, were celebrated for their fine etching on glass, and by reason of their poems and their scholarly acquirements they were called the "Dutch Muses," and were associated with the learned men of their day. This list, though incomplete, suggests that the co-education of artists bore good fruit in their co-operation in their profession.
A third feature of former times is the condition of women during those ages. Eulogizers of Old Japan not only seem to forget that working classes existed then, but also that women, constituting half the population, were essential to the existence of the nation. Though allowing more freedom than was given to women in other Oriental nations, Japan did not grant such liberty as is essential to the full development of her powers. "Woman is a man's plaything" expresses a view still held in Japan. "Woman's sole duty is the bearing and rearing of children for her husband" is the dominant idea that has determined her place in the family and in the state for hundreds of years. That she has any independent interest or value as a human being has not entered into national conception. "The way in which they are treated by the men has hitherto been such as might cause a pang to any generous European heart.... A woman's lot is summed up in what is termed 'the three obediences,' obedience, while yet unmarried, to a father; obedience, when married, to a husband; obedience, when widowed, to a son. At the present moment the greatest duchess or marchioness in the land is still her husband's drudge. She fetches and carries for him, bows down humbly in the hall when my lord sallies forth on his good pleasure."[C] "The Greater Learning for Women," by Ekken Kaibara (1630-1714), an eminent Japanese moralist, is the name of a treatise on woman's duties which sums up the ideas common in Japan upon this subject. For two hundred years or more it has been used as a text-book in the training of girls. It enjoins such abject submission of the wife to her husband, to her parents-in-law, and to her other kindred by marriage, as no self-respecting woman of Western lands could for a moment endure. Let me prove this through a few quotations.
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