“During the long period of my observation of them and their habits, I am not sure that I have ever seen two Hindu marriages that closely united the hearts by a true and inviolable attachment.”

The husband thinks his wife “entitled to no attentions, and never pays her any, even in familiar intercourse.”  He looks on her “merely as his servant, and never as his companion.”  “We have said enough of women in a country where they are considered as scarcely forming a part of the human species.”  And Ramabai herself confesses (44) that at home “men and women have almost nothing in common.”  “The women’s court is situated at the back of the houses, where darkness reigns perpetually.”  Even after the second ceremony the young couple seldom meet and talk.

“Being cut off from the chief means of forming attachment, the young couple are almost strangers, and in many cases ... a feeling kindred to hatred takes root between them.”  There is “no such thing as the family having pleasant times together.”

Dr. Ryder thinks that for “one kind husband there are one hundred thousand cruel ones,” and she gives the following illustration among others: 

“A rich husband (merchant caste) brought his wife to me for treatment.  He said she was sixteen, and they had been married eight years.  ’She was good wife, do everything he want, wait on him and eight brothers, carry water up three flights of stairs on her head; now, what will you cure her for?  She suffer much.  I not pay too much money.  When it cost too much I let her die.  I don’t care.  I got plenty wives.  When you cure her for ten shilling I get her done, but I not pay more.’  I explained to him that her medicines would cost more than that amount, and he left, saying, ’I don’t care.  Let her die.  I can have plenty wives.  I like better a new wife.’"[267]

Though the lawgiver Manu wrote “where women are honored there the gods are pleased,” he was one of the hundreds of Sanscrit writers, who, as Ramabai Sarasvati relates, “have done their best to make woman a hateful being in the world’s eye.”  Manu speaks of their “natural heartlessness,” their “impure desires, wrath, dishonesty, malice, and bad conduct.”  Though mothers are more honored than other women, yet even they are declared to be “as impure as falsehood itself.”

“I have never read any sacred book in Sanscrit literature without meeting this kind of hateful sentiment about women....  Profane literature is by no means less severe or more respectful toward women.”

The wife is the husband’s property and classed by Manu with “cows, mares, female camels, slave girls, buffalo cows, she goats, and ewes.”  A man may abandon his wife if he finds her blemished or diseased, while she must not even show disrespect to a husband who is diseased, addicted to evil passions, or a drunkard.  If she does she shall be deserted for three months and deprived of her ornaments and