For of a Truth ..

For of a truth, in these days of independence, of pushing and striving among all ranks and sexes, the gracious old-world flower of gentleness runs risk of being trampled out of feminine character: the more so, because it is a common fallacy to confound gentleness with weakness; whereas true gentleness is the handmaid of strength though not of self-assertion. For strength has any forms of manifestation, and the ideal woman of the East is strong in self-repression, in cheerful subordination of the individual to the community: since an Indian household is still a community on the old patriarchial lines. She is the outcome of an ethical, if not a material civilization. Analysis of the seemingly arbitrary conventions that dominate her life reveals an underlying canon of stern self-control; just as analysis of her rigid religious observances reveals a faith permeated with the poetry of symbolism. 

Maud Diver, The Englishwoman in India, 1909

The more things change, the more they remain the same.