Art and Handcraft in the Woman's Building
of the World's Columbian Exposition

GREECE. SCARCELY sixty years have passed since Greece regained her liberty. During the servile period of her history the status of women was alike precarious and miserable. Man was indeed a slave; but woman was the slave of a slave. So ancient tradition decreed, which even to-day underlies the manners of the Greeks, strengthened by Mussulman influences which have left their impress upon the subjugated generations. Even now, in the country and the smaller provincial towns, woman is regarded as an inferior being. In the enumeration of his children, the father ignores the females. Women are not privi- leged to sit at meat with guests, while in the rural districts they are subjected to the severest labors, cultivating the soil and bowing beneath the weight of grievous burdens of wood and water, brought from a distance. In the villages they remain in-doors, and are seldom seen abroad. In the evening they sit upon their balconies, and on. Sunday they offer their prayers within the space reserved for them in the sanctuary. An active participation in affairs is the prerogative of men only, who read the papers, learn the condition of the markets, and make all the purchases for the household. This rigor is somewhat relaxed in the larger cities, where greater liberty and consideration are accorded to women. Yet even liere their tasks are limited to the education of children and the management of domestic affairs. They have no special occu- pation, no industry to follow, unless it be that of a servant or gov- erness, or perhaps occasionally the trade of a seamstress or modiste, or an operative in one of the few cotton or silk factories. This degraded condition of Greek women is readily understood, since Greece, during the centuries preceding her proclamation of independence, subject to Turkish rule, and, as it were, isolated from the rest of the world, failed to participate in the great move- ment of the Renaissance which awakened the civilization of Europe. Roused by her heroic struggle for liberty, she at last recovered the position, lost in submission to the yoke of foreign invasion; yet rising from the ruins of her glory, it was necessary, before (271)