Gendered transactions: The white woman in colonial India, c.1820-1930

237 Pages·2017·1.205 MB·English

by  Indrani Sen

General editor: Andrew S. Thompson
Founding editor: John M. MacKenzie
When the ‘Studies in Imperialism’ series was founded more
than twenty-five years ago, emphasis was laid upon the
conviction that ‘imperialism as a cultural phenomenon
had as significant an effect on the dominant as on the
subordinate societies’. With well over a hundred titles now
published, this remains the prime concern of the series.
Cross-disciplinary work has indeed appeared covering the
full spectrum of cultural phenomena, as well as examining
aspects of gender and sex, frontiers and law, science and
the environment, language and literature, migration and
patriotic societies, and much else. Moreover, the series has
always wished to present comparative work on European
and American imperialism, and particularly welcomes the
submission of books in these areas. The fascination with
imperialism, in all its aspects, shows no sign of abating,
and this series will continue to lead the way in encouraging
the widest possible range of studies in the field. ‘Studies
in Imperialism’ is fully organic in its development, always
seeking to be at the cutting edge, responding to the latest
interests of scholars and the needs of this ever-expanding
area of scholarship.
Gendered transactions
SELECTED TITLES AVAILABLE IN THE SERIES
WRITING IMPERIAL HISTORIES
ed. Andrew S. Thompson
EMPIRE OF SCHOLARS
Tamson Pietsch
HISTORY, HERITAGE AND COLONIALISM
Kynan Gentry
COUNTRY HOUSES AND THE BRITISH EMPIRE
Stephanie Barczewski
THE RELIC STATE
Pamila Gupta
WE ARE NO LONGER IN FRANCE
Allison Drew
THE SUPPRESSION OF THE ATLANTIC SLAVE TRADE
ed. Robert Burroughs and Richard Huzzey
HEROIC IMPERIALISTS IN AFRICA
Berny Sèbe
Gendered
transactions
the white woman in colonial india,
c. 1820–1930
Indrani Sen
MANCHESTER
UNIVERSITY PRESS
Copyright © Indrani Sen 2017
The right of Indrani Sen to be identified as the author of this work has been asserted by
her in accordance with the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988.
Published by MANCHESTER UNIVERSITY PRESS
ALTRINCHAM STREET, MANCHESTER M1 7JA
www.manchesteruniversitypress.co.uk
British Library Cataloguing-in-Publication Data
A catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library
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ISBN 978 0 7190 8962 6 hardback
First published 2017
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CONTENTS
Acknowledgements—ix
Introduction 1
Part I The white woman and the ‘civilising mission’
1 The missionary ‘gaze’ and the ‘civilising mission’: zenana
encounters in nineteenth-century Bengal 23
2 Flora Annie Steel, social reform and female education in late
nineteenth-century Punjab 53
3 Returning the ‘gaze’: colonial encounters in Indian women’s
English writings in late nineteenth-century western India 82
Part II Colonial domesticity, white women’s health and
gender disadvantage
4 The ambivalences of power inside the colonial home:
memsahibs, ayahs and wet-nurses 113
5 Marginalising the memsahib: the white woman’s health
issues in colonial medical writings 144
6 The colonial ‘female malady’: European women’s mental
health and addiction in the late nineteenth century 172
Conclusion 204
Select bibliography—208
Index—223
[ vii ]

ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS
In many ways, this book is the outcome of years of researching and
writing on the subject of the white woman in colonial India. However,
this particular book was completed in a specifically challenging
context of setbacks, heavy teaching schedule and onerous administra-
tive responsibilities, which all seemed to come together. It is all the
more so that while completing it, I have incurred innumerable debts of
goodwill, help and support from friends and well-wishers.
My young friends, Manu, Samiksha and Saurabh, former students
who are young teachers themselves today, tracked down electronic
journals and read earlier drafts of chapters in the midst of their own
busy schedules. Without them this book just would not have fructi-
fied. To Waltraud, a warm thank you for her encouragement over
the years and especially for her support for this book. Thanks to
Ranjana for sharing rare research materials, and to Amar, Lata, Menka,
Parimala, Partho, Prasun, Shashank and Shilpi for sustaining me with
their friendship, help and interest in my work at different stages.
The genesis of this book lay in a Research Award Fellowship
awarded by the University Grants Commission which gave me the
opportunity to research and mull over fresh dimensions of gender and
colonial India, besides giving me leave from Sri Venkateswara College,
Delhi University. Various fellowships and grants at different junctures
over the years cumulatively contributed towards the shaping of this
book. They were crucial in enabling me to access primary materials
at that amazing repository, the British Library in London. I gratefully
acknowledge here a British Academy Visiting Fellowship, a Visiting
Fellowship at Oxford Brookes University, travel grants from the
Wellcome Trust and the Indian Council of Historical Research, as well
as two academic grants from the Charles Wallace India Trust. In addi-
tion, I wish to thank the staff of Sri Venkateswara College Library and
the Nehru Memorial Museum and Library at New Delhi, the National
Library at Kolkata, the University Library, Cambridge University, the
School of Oriental and African Studies library, as well as the Wellcome
Library at London.
At Manchester University Press, I am thankful to the series editors
for including this book in their Studies in Imperialism Series. I must
also express my gratitude to them and also to the anonymous readers
of the manuscript for their constructive suggestions and comments.
This book has turned out to be the better for them. I wish to extend
[ ix ]