There is no need to sneer in any unsympathetic fashion at all the domestic institutions of Islam; the sexes are never quite so stupid as some feminists represent; and I dare say a woman often has her own way in a harem as well as in a household.
But the broad difference does remain.

And if there be one thing, I think, that can safely be said about all Asia and all oriental tribes, it is this; that if a married woman wears any distinctive mark, it is always meant to prevent her from receiving the admiration or even the notice of strange men.

Often it is only made to disguise her; sometimes it is made to disfigure her.

It may be the masking of the face as among the Moslems; it may be the shaving of the head as among the Jews; it may, I believe, be the blackening of the teeth and other queer expedients among the people of the Far East.
But is never meant to make her look magnificent in public; and the Bethlehem wife is made to look magnificent in public.

She not only shows all the beauty of her face; and she is often very beautiful.
She also wears a towering erection which is as unmistakably meant to give her consequence as the triple tiara of the Pope.
A woman wearing such a crown, and wearing it without a veil, does stand, and can only conceivably stand, for what we call the Western view of women, but should rather call the Christian view of women.
This is the sort of dignity which must of necessity come from some vague memory of chivalry.