The Correspondence of Kartini's Sisters : Annotations on the Indonesian Nationalist Movement, 1905-1925 - article ; n°1 ; vol.55, pg 61-82

Joost Coté

Description

Archipel - Année 1998 - Volume 55 - Numéro 1 - Pages 61-82
Joost Coté
This article surveys the unpublished correspondence of the four sisters of Kartini, Roekmini, Kardinah, Kartinah and Soematrie, written to Rosa Abendanon-Mandri, in the period 1905 to 1925. The period covered by this correspondence throws some light on the life of women from this stratum of society in Java at the time. At the same time it contributes to a more adequate contextualisation of the life and correspondence of Raden Ajeng Kartini herself, whose correspondence has been the subject of attention for most of this century. Together the correspondence by the five sisters forms a continuous archive of private correspondence, amounting to almost three hundred letters, stretching over a quarter of a century which is probably unique in Indonesian history. Carefully considered, this represents a significant source for the historical investigation of the 'inner domain' of this stratum of Javanese society.
The article represents a preview of the letters currently being translated for publication. The writer argues that these can be read as indicative of an emerging culture of modernity amongst an educated and modernist generation of Javanese elite. The correspondence shows how the strands of feminism and nationalism, apparent in Kartini's writing, are extended in the context of a rapidly changing Java, and how the emerging debates about Indonesian national identity impinged directly on the nascent feminist discourse. While the claims made for the value of this correspondence are modest, and attention is drawn to their focus on continuing the relationship established by Kartini and Roekmini with Rosa Abendanon, the Javanese women writers are shown to inhabit a rapidly changing world within which they continued to negotiate a feminist agenda. At the same time, intrusions into the correspondence by their husbands make clear how an emerging Indonesian nationalism incorporated within it a new patriarchy which demanded that women safeguard the inner domain of the cultural identity upon which the nationalist project was based.
22 pages
Source : Persée ; Ministère de la jeunesse, de l’éducation nationale et de la recherche, Direction de l’enseignement supérieur, Sous-direction des bibliothèques et de la documentation.

Informations

• Publié par: ARCHIPEL0
• Publié le: 01 janvier 1998
• Nombre de lectures: 17
• Langue: English
• Poids de l'ouvrage: 1 Mo

Extrait

Joost Coté
The Correspondence of Kartini's Sisters : Annotations on the
Indonesian Nationalist Movement, 1905-1925
In: Archipel. Volume 55, 1998. pp. 61-82.
Abstract
Joost Coté
This article surveys the unpublished correspondence of the four sisters of Kartini, Roekmini, Kardinah, Kartinah and Soematrie,
written to Rosa Abendanon-Mandri, in the period 1905 to 1925. The period covered by this correspondence throws some light on
the life of women from this stratum of society in Java at the time. At the same time it contributes to a more adequate
contextualisation of the life and correspondence of Raden Ajeng Kartini herself, whose has been the subject of
attention for most of this century. Together the correspondence by the five sisters forms a continuous archive of private
correspondence, amounting to almost three hundred letters, stretching over a quarter of a century which is probably unique in
Indonesian history. Carefully considered, this represents a significant source for the historical investigation of the 'inner domain' of
this stratum of Javanese society.
The article represents a preview of the letters currently being translated for publication. The writer argues that these can be read
as indicative of an emerging culture of modernity amongst an educated and modernist generation of Javanese elite. The
correspondence shows how the strands of feminism and nationalism, apparent in Kartini's writing, are extended in the context of
a rapidly changing Java, and how the emerging debates about Indonesian national identity impinged directly on the nascent
feminist discourse. While the claims made for the value of this correspondence are modest, and attention is drawn to their focus
on continuing the relationship established by Kartini and Roekmini with Rosa Abendanon, the Javanese women writers are
shown to inhabit a rapidly changing world within which they continued to negotiate a feminist agenda. At the same time,
intrusions into the correspondence by their husbands make clear how an emerging Indonesian nationalism incorporated within it
a new patriarchy which demanded that women safeguard the inner domain of the cultural identity upon which the nationalist
project was based.
Citer ce document / Cite this document :
Coté Joost. The Correspondence of Kartini's Sisters : Annotations on the Indonesian Nationalist Movement, 1905-1925. In:
Archipel. Volume 55, 1998. pp. 61-82.
doi : 10.3406/arch.1998.3442
http://www.persee.fr/web/revues/home/prescript/article/arch_0044-8613_1998_num_55_1_3442Joost COTE
The Correspondence of Kartini's Sisters :
Annotations on the Indonesian Nationalist
Movement, 1905 - 1925
Introduction
This paper 0) is based on an initial examination of the unpublished
correspondence of the four sisters of Raden Ajeng Kartini written to Mevrouw
Rosa Abendanon-Mandri between the time of Kartini's death and the death of
Jacques Abendanon in 1925. (2) Together with the copious extant writing of
Kartini herself from the period 1899 and 1904, this corpus of correspondence
produced by a family of Javanese priyayi women at the beginning of the
twentieth century provides a unique body of private writing produced during a
period of major social change in Java. While limited in their explicit reference
to contemporary events, the previously largely neglected correspondence is
noteworthy, apart from its intrinsic interest in extending our knowledge of
Kartini's family, for the light it sheds on the nature of the emerging culture of
modernity in Indonesia in the first decades of the century and in particular on
the role of women within it.
The unpublished correspondence, constrained as it is by the particular
relationship upon which it is based, focuses on the self-conscious attempt by
the sisters of Kartini to enact ideas about women's education and, more
broadly, the role of women in the modernisation of Javanese society to which
1. An earlier version of this paper was presented to the Women in Southeast Asia Workshop,
Monash University in July, 1996. The paper is based on the manuscript correspondence deposited
in the J.H. Abendanon archive, (H. 1200) held by the Koninklijk Instituut voor Taal-, Land- en
Volkenkunde, Leiden University, the friendly assistance of whom is warmly acknowledged.
2. The writer is currently preparing an annotated English translation of this correspondence for
publication.
Archipel 55, Paris, 1998, pp. 61-82 62 Joost Coté
the memory of Kartini, as it were, obligated them. This self-conscious project
takes place in the face of what the women recognise as several opposing
patriarchal constructions of nationalism which emerged in the first two
decades of the twentieth century : firstly, that proposed by Dutch colonial
"associationists", secondly, the "settler" nationalism defined by the Eurasian
population and thirdly, an emergent Indonesian nationalism. More
immediately, the correspondence shows the women as actors in the
multifaceted modernist context of late colonial urban Java. It is precisely this
late colonial urban culture wrought with tensions and ambiguities within
which Indonesian modernity developed which deserves a far more careful
investigation than it has hitherto received for establishing a rounded
understanding of the formative influences of this historical period and location
of the origins of Indonesian modernity.
The Correspondence of Kartini 's sisters : defining a legacy
As a result of an initial visit to Jepara and a return visit to Batavia in 1900,
the five younger daughters of R.M.A.A. Samingun Sosroningrat, Bupati of
Jepara (1880-1905) all participated in a correspondence with Rosa Abendanon-
Mandri, wife of the Dutch East Indies Director of Education, Industry and
Religion (1900-1905). Jacques Abendanon, a Suriname born, Dutch educated
lawyer of Portuguese-Brazilian and Jewish descent, had become responsible
for the bureaucracy charged with implementing policy for " native welfare " at
the moment when this was becoming a central issue in the discourse of
colonial and metropolitan progressivism. Rosa Manuela Mandri, of Puerto
Rican Spanish origins and English educational background, married
Abendanon in the Netherlands in 1883 after the death of his first wife, the
Indies born Anna Elisabeth de Lange the previous year. (3) After having raised
three young step children who at the time of her marriage were aged six, four
and three, Rosa, herself childless, appeared to have projected a particularly
powerful maternal aura onto the relationship with these Javanese young
women.
As the 1987 publication of the Kartini - Rosa Abendanon-Mandri
correspondence shows, all the sisters had written to Rosa Abendanon while
Kartini was still alive and from the beginning, Roekmini, second daughter of
Raden Ayu Moerjam, had been co-correspondent and co-worker on what the
young women had defined as "their cause ".(4) Thus Kartini' s death did not
3. H. van Miert, Bevlogenheid en Onvermogen : Mr J.H. Abendanon en de Ethische Richting in het
Nederlandse Kolonialisme , KILTV Uitgeverij, Leiden, 1991, p. 21. Van Miert notes that little
private documentation exists and no details are extant with regard to either wife.
4. Kardinah was the second daughter of Ibu Ngasirah, Sosroningrat's "isteri ampil" and Kartini's
natural sister, and two years younger than her. She had also participed in discussions on the status
of women and girls' education but, until the moment her marriage was mooted, not prominent as a
correspondent apart from a series of letters at the time of her marriage, after which she appeared
not to have written again until 1911. Roekmini' s letter writing style suggests a noticeably different
personality to her stepsister Kartini. Another European correspondent, Nicholas Adriani, who met
both women at the Abendanon's home in Batavia in 1900, found Roekmini a serious observer of
life with an independent outlook while Kartini he found a jolly companion. Adriani to Abendanon,
nd, Abendanon Archive, H1200, KILTV, Item 237.
Archipel 55, Paris, 1998 The Correspondence ofKartinïs Sisters 63
bring communications to an end and the flow of letters was continued by
Roekmini.(5) Nevertheless the special relationship between Kartini and Rosa is
obvious from the extant one-sided communication and when, after her death
the correspondence was continued, it was as much in memory of their sister's
friendship as on their own account after Abendanon retired and the couple left
Batavia to retire in the Netherlands. (6) Despite this, in each case issues
specific to their own lives and the changing circumstances of Java sustained
and invigorated the correspondence so that their' s too remained personally
significant and lively.
In the years before the first world war, Jacques Abendanon colonial official
pension and Conrad van Deventer, lawyer, writer and by then prominent
progressive liberal politician, were actively engaged in a polemic in which the
figure of Kartini was to represent a monument to "ethical" colonialism, a
project which envisaged a universal humanitarianism based on cultural
assimilation. In the absence of the other half of the correspondence, one c