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The white women of colonial India wrote extensively during their years of residence in India. This anthology brings together a fascinating collection of such European women's narratives. Mapped along the historical shifts that took place over the hundred-year period, the book captures the many facets and nuances of gender relations across racial divide. Imaginatively organised around key sites of contact, the narratives are arranged in fourteen thematic clusters. This book will appeal to readers interested in gender and colonialism and the writings of the Raj.
This exciting anthology provides the best of travel writing by the memsahibs of the Raj who were anxious to see `the real India'. The book salvages long-forgotten writings by Englishwomen travelling in India. These historically valuable writings are perceptive and amusing, and have long been out of print. It also contains biographical notes on the travellers.
Drawing Upon A Wide Range And Variety Of Literary And Non-Literary Sources Of Nineteenth Century British India, Woman And Empire Examines Perceptions Of Gender Over The 1858 1900 Period. The Book Focuses On Representations Of White And Indian Women, In Addition To Women Of Mixed Races, In Fiction As Well As In Colonial Newspapers And Journals.
Thousands of British women lived in India during Victorian times. They first went out as wives, mothers, sisters; others followed as teachers, doctors, missionaries. What they did and how they responded to their strange environment were seldom thought worthy of record, and writers have handed down to us a fictional image of the typical 'memsahib' as a frivolous, snobbish and selfish creature flitting from bridge to tennis parties 'in the hills'. For the most part, these clichés bear little resemblance to the truth; many women loyally and stoically accepted their share of the responsibility with endurance, courage and resilience. This story is developed around a number of women who wrote in an entertaining and intelligent fashion about their Indian experiences, starting with the arrival on the scene of one of the wittiest and cleverest of them all - Emily Eden, sister of Lord Auckland who was Governor-General from 1836 to 1842. It ends with Maud Diver, who maintained that the random assertion made by Kipling about the 'lower tone of social morality' in India was unjust and untrue. The dramatis personae of the book include Vicereines, wives of Civil Servants and missionaries struggling to break down the subservience of women throughout the vast sub-continent. Through women's eyes we witness the principal historic events at the time - the Afghan conflicts, the Mutiny - as well as the daily routines in very different cantonments and some of the British personalities who made their mark on nineteenth-century India - Honoria Lawrence, Flora Steel, Lady Sale. In this vivid account, Pat Barr evokes the sights and smells of Victorian India, its teeming masses, its problems so impossible, it seemed, for Englishwomen to solve.
For young Englishwomen stepping off the steamer, the sights and sounds of humid colonial India were like nothing they’d ever experienced. For many, this was the ultimate destination to find a perfect civil servant husband. For still more, however, India offered a chance to fling off the shackles of Victorian social mores. The word ‘memsahib’ conjures up visions of silly aristocrats, well-staffed bungalows and languorous days at the club. Yet these women had sought out the uncertainties of life in Britain’s largest, busiest colony. Memsahibs introduces readers to the likes of Flora Annie Steel, Fanny Parks and Emily Eden, accompanying their husbands on expeditions, travelling solo across dangerous terrain, engaging with political questions, and recording their experiences. Yet the Raj was not all adventure. There was disease, and great risk to young women travelling alone; for colonial wives in far-flung outposts, there was little access to ‘society’. Cut off from modernity and the Western world, many women suffered terrible trauma and depression. From the hill-stations to the capital, this is a sweeping, vividly written anthology of colonial women’s lives across British India. Their honesty and bravery, in their actions and their writings, shine fresh light on this historical world.
Indian Memsahib: The untold story of a bureaucrat's wife is an unconventional look into the world of Indian bureaucracy and its fascinating order. The book is a subtle attempt at showing how bureaucracy works in certain ways and brings out the conflict between popularity and credibility. Indian Memsahib traces Sunaina's journey from being an ambitious girl who wants to live life on her own terms to an 'outsider' bahu in a traditional family setup fighting her lone battle to the trials and tribulations of becoming the wife of Raghu, an upright and honest IAS officer.
The Simple Adventures of a Memsahib by Sara Jeannette Duncan Pdf
DigiCat Publishing presents to you this special edition of "The Simple Adventures of a Memsahib" by Sara Jeannette Duncan. DigiCat Publishing considers every written word to be a legacy of humankind. Every DigiCat book has been carefully reproduced for republishing in a new modern format. The books are available in print, as well as ebooks. DigiCat hopes you will treat this work with the acknowledgment and passion it deserves as a classic of world literature.
Diversity and Change in Early Canadian Women’s Writing by Jennifer Chambers Pdf
Diversity and Change in Early Canadian Women’s Writing is a collection of nine essays, thematically arranged, dedicated to the works of women writing between 1828 and 1914. It is for all those readers who were certain that there had to be diverse, interesting, socially relevant voices in early Canadian women’s writing. It is, equally, for sceptics, who will find that early Canada is not bereft of women writers, or of writing of substance. When Lorraine McMullen published the collection of essays Re(dis)covering Our Foremothers in 1990, she considered the field in its infancy. As keen as literary historians and critics have been to assess the contributions of women to Canada’s early cultural scene, this collection moves beyond listing which women were writing in early Canada, and brings together a study of their journalistic and literary works. For a nation caught up in projects to enhance nation-building, and concerned with the development of its national literature, the essays reconnect with early literary works by women. Eighteen years after McMullen’s, this collection shows the progression along the path that hers initiated. Working with theories of genre, gender, socio-politics, literature, history, and drama, the essayists make cases not only for the women writing, but also for the literary voices they created to work for diversity and social change in Canada.
The Male Empire Under the Female Gaze by Susmita Roye,Mittapalli Rajeshwar Pdf
In trying to detect and analyze this female gaze on the male empire, this volume delves into memsahibs' literature. After all, besides their service to the empire, women's literature in/about the Empire, though often neglected, is considerably large. In India's case, women writers like Flora Annie Steel, Maud Diver, and Bithia Mary Croker narrate fictional tales colored by their firsthand experience of Indian life and life in India. They use their creative imagination to present India as they see and also as they want to see India. The female gaze has thus for a long time contributed to and shaped imperial discourse and knowledge of the East. Through their letters, diaries, memoirs, stories, novels, poems, paintings, and travel writings, women have often provided invaluable information about the empire and added to the fascination of the West with the specters and picturesqueness of the East. Their writings recurrently serve as the tool of their propaganda, the vehicle of their message, the inscription of their gaze and the blueprint of their politics of representation. This book argues that although the memsahib's female gaze has been spoken of, it has not been adequately emphasized and examined. In comparison, white female sexuality, the figure of Raj Woman, and the idea of "recasting women" or portrayal of the memsahib have received far more attention. Particularly, memsahibs' writings have been widely anthologized but these have not critically evaluated to a sufficient extent. Aiming at filling that gap by uncovering the world of British India as seen and shown by white women in colonial as well as postcolonial literatures, this compilation brings together scholarly essays on memsahibs' literature and Raj writings, including men's writings about memsahibs, spanning from before India's independence (like works of Alice Perrin and Rudyard Kipling) to the post-independence period (like works of Ruth Prawer Jhabvala and Ruskin Bond). This volume looks at the significant multidimensional defiant "female gaze"--be it of the authors or of the characters in their works, regardless of whether their writings were critical or supportive of the empire. Subverting the structure of male looking/female to be looked at, this collection of essays explores the "female gaze" on the Empire (i.e., female looking/ male to be looked at). This book reiterates that the "female" element in the process cannot and should not be disregarded. Therefore, taking into consideration (real or fictional) memsahibs, this volume reminds us of the presence and role of white women in British India and the consequent intricate matrix of gender, class, race, and sexuality issues. In addition to offering critical analysis and in-depth study of memsahibs' writings, this book digresses from the well-trodden track of how memsahibs are portrayed to the near-virgin arena of how they are shown to see the Raj world. This volume asserts that the female gaze that looks upon the male empire is not merely a space constructed for the female but one fashioned by women themselves. This is an important book for South Asian literary studies, women's studies, as well as colonial and postcolonial studies on British India.
