ASIATIC QUEENS.
WE are often asked to explain how it happens that in a country like China, where women are hardly regarded as human beings, and where the dynasty formally accepted a Salic law, a woman has been able to possess herself of absolute power. The Dowager-Empress of China, of whom an inter- esting biography appears in this month's Blackwood, was only the concubine or "secondary wife" of the Emperor Hsien-feng who was in 1860 defeated by the Anglo-French army of invasion, and as the true wife was Regent, held power during her son's minority rather on sufferance than of right. Yet she governed the Empire with absolute authority, rid herself of her rival the Regent, resumed power after her son's brief and nominal possession of the sole authority, reigned again during the minority of her nephew the present Emperor, and is now for the third time Empress-Regent of China with despotic power. She even ventures to sign decrees in her own name alone, and if the Emperor dies, as is expected, will at sixty-one either place a baby on the throne, or if she selects a man, make of him an instrument of her will. She is not saintly even according to Chinese ideas, she is alleged to be accessible to bribes—a most unusual fault in a Sovereign— and she has not secured the attachment of any known force within the Empire, yet she rules and will rule, the most dreaded person among a fourth of the human race. It seems inexplicable, but it is not. A similar phenomenon has ap- peared repeatedly at intervals in the history of Asia. We do not suppose that the fierce soldiers of Assyria held women in any high respect, yet, if tradition may be trusted, Semiramis ruled as absolutely as her husband Ninus. the con- quering Sovereign whom she murdered. Zenobia was Bedouin by descent, and had, probably, as a woman no legal rights,
yet she shook the Roman power, and was dreaded by a fierce soldier like Aurelian. Cleopatra had birth indeed, but the legal sovereignty belonged to her brother-husband, yet she stamped the impression of her greatness into two continents, and had her nerve not failed at Actium, might have founded a dynasty ruling the entire East. In modern times women among Hindoos hold theoretically a most subordinate position, yet the Ranee of Lahore was considered by Lord Dalhousie his most dangerous opponent, and the Ranee of Jhansee was the most formidable of the personages with whom we had to contend in the Mutiny; while though a Mussul- man woman is almost a slave, the one person who fought bravely against the deposition of the King of Oude was the Monarch's wife. The sister-wife of Theebaw of Burmah was the real mistress of his kingdom, and it is doubtful at this moment whether Menelek or his Queen has the greater authority in Abyssinia. The explanation is, we believe, a simple one. Neither sex, nor birth, nor character will ever prevent mankind from obeying in hours of crisis the person who, as they think, can bring them victory, secure them safety, or give them political success. The disqualifications, legal or social, which tell against a woman are nothing compared with those which in the judgment of Rome told against a slave, yet Diocletian, who revived the Roman Empire, was believed to have been slave-born. Freedmen were constantly rising to the control of the Roman Empire, and one or two at least of that great series of statesmen of whom the West knows so little, the Grand Viziers of Turkey, had actually been slaves. The truth is, the disabilities of women in Asia are habitually overrated. Their legal position as wives
and daughters is bad, but as mothers they are greatly reverenced, Asiatics being human beings, and even as wives and daughters they have brains and tongues. The man who finds that his wife's or daughter's counsel gives him success consults his wife or daughter, so tinder all manner of forms does the party behind him, and the trusted counsellor of the State becomes, with good luck, its ruler. If there are social ideas in the way, they are held in suspense, and if etiquettes, they are in some more or less decorous fashion brushed aside. The Dowager-Empress of China appears unveiled among the great Mandarins, as does the Begum of Bhopal among her counsellors. In the whole Palace the Empress has the most nerve, the most audacity, and the clearest idea of what is necessary in order to govern Chinamen, and accordingly she governs. We believe, without knowing, that it is often the same in private life in China ; and we know that it is often the same in India, a woman being the mainspring of the great Zeinindaree, or banking house, or family which rises to social power. She really selects its managers, settles its alliances, and accepts or rejects its projects of speculation. It is said she is rarely right in her judgment for very long, and cer- tainly that is true of the female rulers of Asia, among whom we cannot recall one who was permanently suc- cessful. They have been hampered, we fancy, as a rule, by original ignorance, which bides from them the stub- bornness of the rock they are attacking, and they are ex- posed to a mental danger, said by cynics not to be wholly unobservable among their sisters even in Europe. In pro- sperity they are apt to drive too hard, the "temperateness," as Tennyson called it, of our own Sovereign being among female Sovereigns almost unique, or displayed equally only by Maria Theresa. We have not yet seen the end of the Dowager-Empress of China, and are not entitled, therefore, to count her as among the few who have been uniformly successful. Hitherto, however, none have resisted her with- out suffering for their rashness, and there is probably not one among the great Mandarins who would contemplate resist- ance to her will without inner trepidation. Like all who have been like her, she is pitiless to thos3 who oppose, but it remains to be seen whether, unlike all Asiatic Queens, she can reckon up accurately the strength of the resisting forces. Zenobia, Cleopatra, the Ranee of Lahore, the Ranee of Jhansee, the Queen of Burmah all failed at that particular point, and the Dowager-Empress may fail too, her ability breaking as it were, against a rock like Russian guile, or British policy, or German ambition.
A great Asiatic Sovereign who sincerely wished to raise his whole people permanently in the scale of nations, as, for example, the rulers of Japan and of Siam certainly do wish, would probably do well to compel the education of the
women. That is the weak place of the sex in Asia, not the absence either of capacity, or force of character, or interest in the general affairs of life. Their general ignorance is phenomenal, and is the cause both of their abject superstition and of their habitual resistance to any kind of change. Everything new appears to them fraught with danger, and they contract a habit of mental indolence which renders instruction in mature life almost impossible. "I declare," once said to the writer a lady who had a per- fectly exceptional knowledge of Indian interiors, "the ladies are much cleverer than the men, but you might as well try to persuade babies in arms. They do not know their right hands from their left." The consequence, as the men slowly become more educated, is an extent of unhappiness of which the only illustration that will be intelligible to our readers is the want of mutual comprehension that often exists in the Latin nations between the believing wife and the unbelieving husband. They positively do not understand each other's ideas upon religion any more than if they spoke in different tongues ; indeed, they understand less, for they irritate or sadden each other. Extend that mutual want of compre- hension over the whole field of human thought, and you have the position in most advanced households all through Asia. The consequence is that the men are driven upon each other for society, that the children learn nothing till they cease to be children, and that the women develop in later life an obstinacy harder to penetrate than granite. What the remedy will be—for there must come a remedy some day—we cannot even guess, but it must be a remedy born of the soil. External influence will only affect individuals, bnt a native Queen or a great native teacher might create a belief that ignorance was immoral or exceedingly vulgar. A decree made all women in China bind their babies' feet, and a decree might make them send all the girls to female schools. It is not a probable decree, but if it ever became a fact the race which accepted it would receive a dead lift towards clear intelligence such as even in Europe it would be difficult to rival, for the women of Asia once taught, all their children would know something, as ours do, before they are ten years old. We do not recognise fully what we gain from learning so much as "tithes." The Asiatic, as a rule, learns nothing.
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