Behind the Veil.

New Zealand Mail, Issue 996, 3 April 1891, Page 5

Behind the Veil.

We are apt to have only one idea in reference to the ‘ zenana system ’ of the East that it is cruel tyranny, a horrid confinement, inflicted on the women by the men. We are not aware that the women themselves have a great pride and pleasure in it, regard it as an honour and a distinction, a mark of social position, of separation from the common herd, of delicaoy and refinement, of ladyhood. Great as the difference between the two may seem, there is no doubt that the taking the veil in the Catholic Church was derived from this domestic custom of the East—from the taking of the veil, the sitting behind the curtain, of the girls of the better class when they had passed out of ohildhood and arrived at their early womanhood —in both cases the veil is the symbol of superior purity, of segregation. To become purda nashin is an object of ambition, of choice. When a man has risen in the world his wife will set up her purdah, as with us in a similar case she would set up her carriage.