R. A. Kartini and the 'Clover Leaf'

Raden Adjeng Kartini (1879-1904) remains a dangerous woman, and perhaps that is why hardly anyone outside Indonesia has even heard of her, let alone read the collection of letters she wrote in Dutch between 1899 and 1904. Today, the revolutionary richness of emotion, experience and intelligence expressed in her correspondence confounds any stereotype of what might have been on the mind of a young Javanese woman at that place and time. But perhaps there were many just like her, then and now, who were silenced or not heard because of the threat they posed to vested self interests in their respective societies.