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FRAGMENTS OF A PRISONER'S DIARY
life"-moved by the vulgar materialistic considerations of their age. The conditions of the time compelled women to accept the position assigned to them. They had no alternative. In a society based upon patriarchal family, man is the lord and master. Deprived of all economic rights, the worean has to submit. Then, there was propaganda, in the form of religion, mythology and romantic literature, for justifying the economic subjugation of women, and glorifying their status of domestic chattel and breeding machines. Under those circumstances, women could be easily persuaded to believe in the ideals set before them. In course of time, their subordination to man, their expropriation, their social disfranchisement, their domestic slavery, their concubinage, assumed the appearance of voluntary self-abnegation, inspired by some mystic ideal of womanhood. The glittering gilt of their chains made the slaves happy in their servitude.
That was the Golden Age-of domestic harmony and social concord when there were no perverse women to demand economic freedom, to complain of being a toy, a breeding machine. Deluded by the legends of Sitas and Savitris, they all faithfully and efficiently performed their natural" profession-to be religious (according to the dogmas of orthodoxy), to keep house and to procreate at the pleasure of man.
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But that Golden Age is a thing of the past.
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