Raden Ajeng Kartini

Who is Raden Ajeng Kartini?

Raden Ajeng Kartini was a Javanese noblewoman and a pioneering advocate for women's education and emancipation in the Dutch East Indies. Born into an aristocratic family in Jepara, Central Java, she received a Dutch-language education until, at age twelve, she was subjected to the customary period of seclusion for young noblewomen. Confined at home, she read widely in Dutch and corresponded with progressive friends in the Netherlands about the oppression of Indonesian women, arranged marriage, and the need for female education. She dreamed of becoming a teacher and opened a small school for girls at her home. Kartini died at only twenty-five, shortly after childbirth. Her collected letters were published posthumously in 1911 as 'Door Duisternis tot Licht' (Out of Darkness Comes Light), later translated into Indonesian as 'Habis Gelap Terbitlah Terang.' She is celebrated as a national hero, and her birthday, 21 April, is observed as Kartini Day.

Sources: R.A. Kartini, Door Duisternis tot Licht (Letters, published 1911) · Kartini, Letters of a Javanese Princess (English translation by Agnes L. Symmers, 1920)