Remembrance of Things Present

Many years ago, perhaps when I was in Class 4 or 5, I happened to be at a commemoration service of a literary figure in Assam. Speaking on the occasion, his daughter made a comment to this effect : 'When I got married, my father called me over to his side and said, 'Dearest, I am not giving you just this boy, I am also giving you his entire family.''

I distinctly remember the feeling of uneasiness that crept over me when I heard those words, and telling myself that if this was what marriage entailed, I had to keep it at an arm's length from myself. Over the years, of course, that feeling has hardened into a fanatical conviction and the distance multiplied into several thousand light years' length.

A similar sensation of queasiness came over me when I read these words some weeks ago :

'The ideal woman in India is the mother, the mother first, and the mother last. The word woman calls up to the mind of the Hindu, motherhood; and God is called Mother ... In the West, the woman is wife. The idea of womanhood is concentrated there --- as the wife. To the ordinary man in India, the whole force of womanhood is concentrated in motherhood. In the Western home, the wife rules. In an Indian home, the mother rules.'

'Even I, who never maried, belonging to an Order that never married, would be disgusted if my wife, supposing I had married, dared to displease my mother. I would be disgusted. Why? Do I not worship my mother? Why should not her daughter-in-law? Whom I worship, why not she? She has to wait till her womanhood is fulfilled; and the one thing that fulfills womanhood, that is womanliness in woman, is motherhood ... That, according to the Hindu mind, is the great mission of woman --- to become a mother'.

The writer, or rather the speaker, was Swami Vivekananda : this was at a speech in Pasadena, California on January 18, 1900.