i also am an enemy of formality!
“i also am an enemy of formality,” (kartini 31). i love this! i’ve always felt that a lot of little rules and conventions are pointless or silly. i sometimes forget that it’s rude to point...because i have never understood why it is rude. i don’t know why girls are brought up to sit with their knees together even if they always wear pants. and respecting my elders is difficult when my grandma is throwing a tantrum (it’s not alzheimer’s—she’s always been like that) and my 15-year-old sister takes her aside to calm her down. so kartini’s declaration really resonated with me. then i read her anecdotes. younger siblings crawling at your feet? using a language not spoken well by your “superior” because speaking his, which you speak just fine, is presumptuous and offensive? making a talented “native” the assistant of an incompetent european? ridiculous rules that have no function other than reinforcing relationships of inequality and keeping the “lesser” people in their place. i am *proud* of kartini for questioning—even rejecting!—this (as far as she could, i suppose). for doubting religion. for aspiring to things that formality forbids her. she was thinking for herself, which is so strongly discouraged in a young, colonized woman.
kartini was, however, using some language that is similar to that of sor juana, zayas, and pisan: overly complimentary to her addressee and somewhat depreciating of herself. is that a formality that women are taught? do you think that speaking in a humble, deferential manner is more common among women than men? is that something that many women have internalized, maybe something left over from our great (great great...) grandfathers trying to keep their women in their place?
another coincidence i noticed: both sor juana and kartini are speaking from warm, “exotic” places to women in cold, northern, european places. this reminds me of a talk given by a demographer (he had all these statistics about populations all over the world) a few years ago. he asked the audience to guess where the most prosperous populations were located. people were naming off different countries and he interrupted us, put his pen down horizontally on the map on his overhead projector, and informed us that most of the more prosperous populations were located north of his pen and the less prosperous south of his pen, which was, across the map, even with where the u.s.-mexico border is, roughly. (i have yet to come up with any explanation for what privileges the north.) this seems relevant to me, but i'm not convinced that it's not nonsense....