WOMEN WRITERS IN TAMIL 39 1869. He argued that women must be educated so that they can tread the right path and be able to seek God. What were the advantages of educating women? They will be ministers to men; secretaries at home; accountants at home, efficient watchmen, good cooks, good doctors and musicians; make conversation that would please men; guard men from going astray; and guard their chastity better. He allayed fears that educated women would disobey their husbands by saying that a bird however high it flew was confined to the sky, so also a woman to a man. She would combine the admirable qualities of a European lady with her own Indian qualities if she were educated. At any rate, her husband would be her only support and her wealth. She was like a lotus without the sun when the husband was not around. Vedan ay agam Pillai generously added that at times women could be ill-treated. Only God could help them then.4 To Vedan ay agam Pillai's credit it must be said that in a smaller booklet on the honour of women he spoke against ill-treatment of women and argued against child marriage. But this was overshadowed by the long poems of advice to women to be good, obedient and chaste. In one poem he maintained that beautifying an unchaste woman was like adorning a corpse. He warned women, among other things, not to cross the threshold of the house.5 Education/or Serviceability Thiru Vi Ka wrote his book in 1927. He pleaded for education of women on almost similar grounds. Women, according to him, should be the personification of discipline. The fact that she would be able to guard her chasitity more ably once she got educated was also mentioned by Thiru Vi Ka.6 It was stressed that she should be educated to serve others better, for a woman was born to serve. When one thinks of womanhood, Thiru Vi Ka said, one should picture motherhood and service. A woman was born, educated and married for service, and she existed only for that noble cause, he said.7 It would seem then that men who were being exposed to western literature and ideas began feeling that the traditional husband-worshipping Tamil woman had to be given a new dimension to be made more attractive and amenable. While retaining traditional qualities of docility, she should get an education to be more acceptable to men who were comin'g under the sway of westernization. Thus the edifice of women's education movement in the twenties was built on the twin-pillars of chastity and service. In the twenties, women who wrote on this subject voiced their fears and acceptance on a similar structure of analysis. Another variable that was added was the kind of education a woman should have so that it would automatically decide her role in society. Several factors had to be taken into consideration: Was a woman to be educated for a career? Was she to be educated to retain more efficiently her "femininity" or was she to abandon this image for another? Women who wrote on this subject had already been sold on the ideas of Thiru Vi Ka and Vedanayagam Pillai to such an