The death of Kartini: Facing up to history

Terence H. Hull, Professor, Demography Program, Australian National University, Canberra

For the last 100 years the story of Raden Ajeng Kartini has inspired generations of school children. Her achievements in opening schools for young girls have been commemorated in numerous ways. She is a popular, though frequently misunderstood, hero. She is regarded both as a hero of education, and a symbol for women's roles as housewives and mothers. What is less obvious is the fact that she is a potent symbol of the reproductive health challenges facing Indonesian women.

September 17 will mark one century since Kartini died, leaving a four-day-old baby.

On July 8, 2003 I found myself visiting the Kartini museum in Rembang where efforts have been made to preserve the elaborately carved screen that her parents constructed to separate their adolescent daughters from visitors -- particularly males. The small holes in the screen allowed the girls to peek at the guests in the large reception hall, and hear the discussions of political plans, economic conditions and the relations between the colonial officials and the district administration that their father headed in Jepara.

From behind that screen three precocious girls plotted ways to achieve dreams of study, travel and social service. One was quickly married off, but Kartini and her sister Roekmini continued their efforts to obtain education in the Netherlands, or at least in Jakarta. They were supported by progressive European friends who helped them make contacts with influential government officials.

But on July 8, 1903, her father sent a telegram accepting a marriage proposal from the Bupati of Rembang District, without consulting his daughter. Kartini's shock at her father's abrupt decision was turned to despair when one day later a letter arrived from Jakarta with an offer of a scholarship. She pleaded with her father and with her suitor to give her a year or two to undertake her schooling. Her father's pride prevented him from accepting his 24-year-old daughter's arguments.

Her widowed, polygamous suitor urgently needed a highborn wife to care for his household. He had not only lost his previous senior wife, but the children she left and the children of his commoner secondary wives needed an educated guardian. He wanted someone like Kartini, who could teach the children about the modern world from books, while maintaining an appreciation of the traditions of their courtly world. Kartini was caught in the tight grip of family responsibility and social pressure and was forced to relent on her strongly held personal ambitions to meet the needs and expectations of two insistent men.

Four months later, she was married in Jepara, and set off for Rembang. A month later she found herself pregnant. Over the next nine months she worked to set up a school for her stepchildren, to care for the many household members who fell ill with fevers and colds, and to care for herself through bouts of fatigue, fevers, and the swelling of her hands and feet during a difficult pregnancy.

Much of this experience is recorded in the letters she and her sisters wrote to friends, but sometimes the months slipped by unrecorded, as if the burden was too much even for such an energetic person as Kartini. The birth of her son on Sept. 13, 1904 must have been a relief.

A little while after her death the Rembang regent married a princess of Solo, who took up the task of raising the children of the household, including Kartini's son. A few years later the princess also died in childbirth, with both mother and baby succumbing to unknown causes.

In the eyes of a foreigner, the events in Rembang 100 years ago are almost unimaginably tragic, and filled with relevance for the thousands of young women who live in the district today. The culture of north Central Java stopped Kartini's formal schooling at the time of her first menses, justified her father's insistence on an arranged marriage, legitimated the polygamous union that she found herself bound to, and accepted her death as a determination of God rather than a failure of men.

Elements of that culture remain unchallenged, and in some ways strongly supported, even today. What makes Kartini's experience so important is that she spent her short life struggling against the inequities and iniquities of that culture, and she set out the arguments for alternative positions for women and responsibilities for men.

Today, her letters and articles are seldom read with any interpretation that they speak to the needs of reproductive health policies. The museum displays the screen that set Kartini and her sisters apart from a modern world they craved to enter, but it does not explain the meaning of her last two years of life when she experienced so many of the problems that still affect women throughout Indonesia. She is, after all, the most potent symbol of how social systems fail Indonesian women; she is a reproductive health martyr.

Her successor in the District of Rembang, the wife of the current Bupati, knows little about exactly what happened to Kartini, but she does have a strong commitment to reduce maternal mortality and improve adolescent reproductive health. Working in partnership with her husband, she campaigns for improvements in birthing services. Three years ago 23 Rembang women died in childbirth, in 2002 this had been reduced to 13. In the first six months of 2003 six women have died. The regent's staff now investigates each death to try to determine how to prevent similar deaths in future.

The government is working to ensure that a blood donor is identified for each newly pregnant woman, so care can be given quickly in cases of hemorrhage. Iron tablets are distributed widely. The commitment of the government is high -- after all, the formidable team of Bupati and wife have a strong motivation, their own newlywed daughter is pregnant.

But this is not a selfish commitment on their part. The most recent maternal death occurred in an isolated village far from the main town. The woman died as villagers struggled across the steep, winding track that took them through the territory of a neighboring district which had little interest in maintaining the road.

The Bupati declared the woman a martyr and demanded that a direct road be immediately constructed to the village to prevent a repeat of such an incident. The reason no road was there already was because a large plantation owned the land between the village and the main centers of population.

No matter, declared the Bupati, the land must be given over to a road and the plantation must support efforts to reduce maternal deaths. Perhaps this is only one case, but probably Kartini would have approved of the motivations and the sense of urgency displayed in Rembang in 2003. On Sept. 17, 2004 we should remember Kartini, and all the other women of Indonesia who die tragically because of society's failure to guarantee their reproductive health.