Agnew, Éadaoin, Imperial Women Writers in Victorian India. Representing Colonial Life, 1850-1910

Palgrave Studies in Nineteenth-Century
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Éadaoin Agnew
Imperial Women
Writers in Victorian
India
Representing Colonial Life, 1850–1910
Éadaoin Agnew
Kingston University
Kingston-upon-Thames
United Kingdom
Palgrave Studies in Nineteenth-Century Writing and Culture

ISBN 978-3-319-33194-2 ISBN 978-3-319-33195-9 (eBook)
DOI 10.1007/978-3-319-33195-9
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ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS
Writing this book has been a journey in itself, one that started with my
own travels to India, and I would like to thank my uncle, Pat Kelly, for
helping me to make that first visit. Since then, India has been an enduring
feature of my academic work, and there are many people, and several
institutions, that have helped make that possible.
I would like to extend my gratitude to the staff at Queen’s University,
Belfast, who helped me through my postgraduate studies and guided my
formative work on nineteenth-century women travellers. I would espe-
cially like to thank Leon Litvack, Brian Caraher, Daniel Roberts, and
Caroline Sumpter, who provided invaluable advice and expertise. It was
also at Queen’s that I met fellow Victorianists Clare Clarke, Beth Rodgers,
and Clare Gill. I thank them for their enduring friendship and for reading
my work, listening to my papers, and sharing my passion for the over-
looked figures of the Victorian period.
I am extremely grateful to the Department of Education and Learning
for funding my PhD research, which consolidated my fascination for
Victorian India. I would also like to thank the staff at the Public Record
Office of Northern Ireland, Senate House Library, the National Archives,
and the British Library who helped me to uncover the many fascinating
women whose stories unfold throughout this book. And, I am extremely
thankful to Lola Armstrong, the archivist at Clandeboye, for persistently
indulging my enduring interest in Lady Dufferin.
I am utterly indebted to all my wonderful colleagues in the English
Department of Kingston University, London. In particular, I offer sincere
thanks to Jane Jordan, Sara Upstone, David Rogers, Patricia Phillippy, and
v
vi ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS
Selene Scarsi, who read drafts, offered advice, and provided a warm and
welcoming forum in which to discuss my work. I am also extremely
grateful to Heidi James-Dunbar who, although no longer a colleague,
has remained a friend and has been of great personal and professional
support.
I would like to thank everyone at Palgrave, especially Ben Doyle, Eva
Macmillan Hodgkin, Tomas René, and Joseph Bristow for all their hard
work and for ultimately making this book possible by bringing it to
publication.
And lastly, I thank my wonderful parents, my awesome siblings, and my
incredible girlfriends; they have all been with me throughout this journey
and never failed to believe that I could, or would, make it to the end of the
road. They have simply been the very best of travel companions.
CONTENTS
1 Introduction: Imperial Women Writers in Victorian India 1
2 There’s No Place Like Home: Homes and Gardens

in Victorian India 21
3 Good Housekeeping: Household Management

and Domestic Organization 51
4 Family Ties: Imperial Women as Wives and Mothers 75
5 Ladies of Leisure: Pastimes, Daily Routines,

and Philanthropic Duties 105
6 Hot Gossip: Sex and Sexuality in Victorian India 135
7 High Society: Hill Stations and Social Occasions 157
8 Epilogue 183
Bibliography 185
Index 195
vii
CHAPTER 1
Introduction: Imperial Women Writers

in Victorian India
More British than the British. (Flora Annie Steel, The Garden of Fidelity:
Being the Autobiography of Flora Annie Steel, 1847–1929, p. 156)
The cover of this book shows the imposing statue of a white marble angel
that stands in Cawnpore. It was realized by the sculptor Baron Carlo
Marochetti, after a design by Charlotte Canning, and erected at the well
where the Nana Sahib’s forces massacred around 200 women and children
during the 1857 Sepoy Rebellion.1 Hariot Dufferin saw it as an appro-
priately sombre, evocative image:
The Memorial Well in the centre of the Memorial Garden is, however, the
saddest spot of all. The well has been filled in, and is surrounded by an
ornamental wall, inside of which, in the centre, stands a white marble figure
of an Angel. She leans against a cross, and has long wings touching the
ground; her arms are crossed, and she holds a palm branch in each hand, and
her head is bent, with the eyes closed. We did not think her eyes beautiful
enough, but the whole thing suggests sorrow, silence and solemnity, and so
far is successful. No native is ever allowed to enter this enclosure, and they
have to get passes to come into the garden.2
The tragic events commemorated here occurred after the Indian army
employed a new rifle and apparently coated the new cartridges in pig and
© The Author(s) 2017 1

É. Agnew, Imperial Women Writers in Victorian India,
Palgrave Studies in Nineteenth-Century Writing and Culture,
DOI 10.1007/978-3-319-33195-9_1
2 1 INTRODUCTION: IMPERIAL WOMEN WRITERS IN VICTORIAN INDIA
cow grease. Hindu and Muslim soldiers had to open these cartridges with
their teeth, an order that caused great religious offence and meant break-
ing caste. Consequently, in the following months, Indian Sepoys rebelled
against the British authorities and war broke out across the subcontinent.3
The British press seized upon this incident, which obscured the multi-
farious reasons for the First War of Indian Independence, and reduced the
rising to a single catalyst. By doing so, they cast the Indians’ behaviour as a
violent overreaction and encouraged a reductive reading of the events.
The Rebellion was seen by many Victorians as a simple story of good
versus evil, as Patrick Brantlinger explains in his analysis of colonial literature:
In the basic fantasy repeated endlessly in novels, plays, poems, and histories,
the imperialist dominators became victims and the dominated, villains.
Imagining the mutiny in this way totally displaced guilt and projected
repressed, sadistic impulses onto demonicized Indian characters. Most
Victorian accounts insistently mystify the causes of the mutiny, treating the
motives of the rebels as wholly irrational, at once childish and diabolical.4
The Cawnpore Memorial contributed to this mystification by visually

embodying this basic narrative. Its Christian symbolism ensured that many
nineteenth-century travel guides and colonial memoirs focused on the reli-
gious aspects of the statue, rather than attending to the political motivations
for the Rebellion. For example, A Handbook for Travellers in India, Burma,
and Ceylon Including the Provinces of Bengal, Bombay, and Madras (1911)
described the figure as an ‘Angel of the Resurrection’, standing with ‘arms
crossed on her breast, as if resigned to the Almighty Will, each hand holding
a palm, the emblem of peace’.5 Such responses invoked thoughts of Christ
rising from the dead. Furthermore, because Christianity uses palms as a
symbol for its martyrs, the statue, emerging from the well, acted as a symbol
of hope; it denoted simultaneously the triumph of a Christian Empire and a
belief in life after death for those killed at the site.
While the religious connotations of the angelic figure have been fre-
quently discussed, critics have consistently overlooked its invocation of
Victorian femininity, as epitomized by Coventry Patmore’s iconic poem
The Angel in the House (1854). Like Patmore’s narrative, the statue idealizes
pure, passive, and selfless femininity. By commemorating the massacre at
Cawnpore in this manner, the British transformed the women who died
during the First War of Indian Independence into selfless martyrs, who
made a virtuous sacrifice for the greater good of the British colonial mission.
INTRODUCTION: IMPERIAL WOMEN WRITERS IN VICTORIAN INDIA 3
The Sepoy Rebellion was the first conflict in which British women died
in the service of their nation. Yet, the popular British press was not content
with merely reporting their violent deaths; it also circulated stories of
sexual violence and bodily mutilation, desecrating the ‘Angels of Albion’
for the purposes of nationalist myth-making.6 The British women became
seraphic symbols, in contrast to demonic Indian Sepoys. Such narratives
ensured that the Rebellion generated an extraordinary level of public
attention in Britain. Horrific stories gained momentum and spread widely
despite the fact that Lady Canning, along with her husband, investigated
and subsequently rejected accusations of rape and mutilation.7 We now
generally accept that the persistent dissemination of such stories took place
to justify vicious retaliations and feed an imperial discourse of racial
superiority.
It was in this context that the Memorial Well became a focal point for
fervent English nationalism in India. The monument was especially pop-
ular among British women, who travelled to Cawnpore specifically to see it
for themselves. It appears to be the most visited of all the 1857 sites; it is
undoubtedly the most frequently mentioned in imperial women’s writing.
We can perhaps best understand their fascination with this particular
monument through Benedict Anderson’s analysis of nationalism and
national identity. He argues, in Imagined Communities: Reflections on
the Origin and Spread of Nationalism (1983), that ‘No more arresting
emblems of the modern culture of nationalism exist than cenotaphs and
tombs of Unknown Soldiers’.8 The veneration of these shrines, Anderson
explains, comes about because of the collective anonymity of those they
commemorate; this allows for ‘ghostly national imaginings’.9 The Angel
at Cawnpore works in the same way as these war memorials. But interest-
ingly, and unusually, the focus of nationalist sympathy in this instance is a
female figure; even so, it too had the ability to bring people together
through shared, non-specific, patriotic feelings. In the late-nineteenth
century, it helped to create a unified focus for British women in India,
an otherwise relatively unconnected group of people living at a distance
from their home culture. Furthermore, like monuments erected in the
West after the two world wars, the statue’s preoccupation with death and
immortality had a powerful influence on those who saw it, making it
possible, in Anderson’s words, ‘for so many millions of people, not so
much to kill, as willingly to die for such limited imaginings’.10 It surely
served as a potent reminder of all those British women who lost their lives
in the colonial conflict of 1857.
Anderson’s discussion of the origins and power of nationalism in mod-

ern society defines national identity as a construct based upon an identifi-
able set of cultural markers that connect a group of people through action
and iteration. He goes on to explain that this idea of a cohesive national
identity ‘is imagined because the members of even the smallest nation will
never know most of their fellow members, meet them or even hear of
them, yet in the minds of each lives the image of their communion’.11
Consequently, Anderson explains, the printed word is particularly impor-
tant in terms of its ability to disseminate and consolidate these cultural
associations. Certainly, as will be seen throughout this book, imperial
women writers played an important part in the propagation of a particular
set of mores and values that would come to define Victorian femininity as
integral to English national identity in India.
In the early decades of the nineteenth century, colonial women’s stories
were seen as an adjunct to masculine imperial narratives. However, the Sepoy
Rebellion enabled women to own their own colonial accounts and a plethora
of female-authored memoirs emerged.12 Numerous women wrote about
their endurance of arduous trials and tribulations.13 They told exciting stories
of kidnappings, sieges, starvation, degradation, deprivation, and despair; such
narratives inspired a voyeuristic interest in their experiences as well as an
indignant desire for revenge and a national pride in their dignified conduct.
From this point forward, women’s lives became part of a wider colonial
discourse based on racial segregation and cultural superiority. Thus, this
book argues, the First War of Indian Independence moved women to the
centre of the imperial stage and ultimately shifted the focus of the British
Empire. In this new situation, British women’s actions in India assumed
greater significance. In particular, the wives of colonial employees were
recruited as evidence of Britain’s imperial superiority; every aspect of their
lives became a matter of public and political concern. As such, the British
Empire disrupted for them, actually and ideologically, a clear demarcation
between the public and private spheres. I am interested in how this ambiva-
lence gave women an opportunity to gain a degree of power and authority
through the writing of imperial narratives, which simultaneously shaped a
growing feminist movement in Britain in the latter decades of the nineteenth
century; these texts are the predominant focus of this study.
After the First Indian War of Independence, as fears of displacement
increased, the British colonisers re-examined their ruling policies. They re-
evaluated their earlier efforts to create a middle class of Indian men to imitate
and absorb the colonizing culture, as proposed by Thomas Babington
Macaulay in his infamous Minute on Indian Education (1835). They had

believed this body of people could disseminate English culture to the indi-
genous masses and would act as a civilizing force. But, over time, these
individuals, now known as the ‘mimic men’, came to be seen as ambivalent
characters and eventually they were held up as figures of fun in literary
parodies by English colonial writers. This trajectory is outlined by David
Spurr in his analysis of colonial discourse: ‘a colonised people is held in
contempt for their lack of civility, loved for their willingness to acquire it
and ridiculed when they have acquired too much’.14 Homi K. Bhabha
understands the reason for this ridicule lies in fear. He argues that, once
the Indians were successfully anglicized, they were perceived as dangerous,
due to their potential to disrupt the imperial order.15 This process is further
elucidated by Indira Ghose:
A goal of the civilising mission was to reform native populations into mimic
Englishmen, a strategy that served the function of colonial regulation and
discipline. However, the very product of this strategy posed a threat to
colonial authority by exposing the contradictions and hypocrisies it was
grounded on: while endowing the colonial subject with the Enlightenment
ideas of liberty, for instance, the structure of colonial rule was based on a
denial of the very liberties of the colonial other.16
This threat to colonial authority was acknowledged by Robert Bulwer-

Lytton, Viceroy of India (1876–80). He supposed that by enlightening
the Indian people the British would become somewhat liable for their own
downfall, referring to the Indian middle classes as ‘baboos whom we have
educated to write semi-seditious articles in the native Press’.17 Ultimately,
Lord Lytton assumed that the indigenous people’s imitation of British
behaviour would create an opportunity for the formulation of indepen-
dent thought, which would subsequently lead to further rebukes and
rebellions. For many British people, this was a particularly acute fear
after the events of 1857.
Popular opinion in Britain held the ‘mimic men’ somewhat responsible
for many aspects of the Sepoy Rebellion. Imperial narratives depicted these
figures as all the more threatening. The notorious Nana Sahib, for example,
was described by Lady Canning as ‘a small Rajah who used to pretend and
delight in everything English and used to entertain the officers and go out
shooting with them’. Yet, such apparent anglicization had not prevented
him partaking in the Rebellion, as Lady Canning went on to say: ‘The
horrors committed by this man are too dreadful to relate’.18 In fact, it

seemed that their acquisition of British qualities had enabled them to coor-
dinate the attacks against their rulers. Certainly, the actions of indigenous
individuals like Nana Sahib suggested that efforts to anglicize the Indian
people did not overcome their apparent instincts. Subsequently, the colonial
rulers consolidated efforts to impose physical and ideological distances
between the two opposing nations.
In the early decades of the nineteenth century, there had been increasing
calls for racial segregation; and, after the Rebellion, the drive to create an
entirely separate, and superior, colonial community in India gathered
force. Consequently, there was a call for more and more British women
to travel to India, alongside their husbands, as part of the Raj. First and
foremost, their being there facilitated the growing desire for racial purity by
reducing the potential for interracial relations. But, because race itself did
not provide a cohesive national identity and did not sufficiently distinguish
between the two cultures, colonial wives were also expected to exemplify
British superiority through a visible and verifiable assertion of Victorian
femininity. These women lived in India for an extended period of time as
members of the colonial community; more often than not, they remained
there for the duration of their husbands’ careers. They were tasked with
transporting British culture and society to the subcontinent and were
renowned for the ways in which they espoused English values, cooked
English food, raised English children, and cultivated English homes during
their time in India. A number of these women recorded their efforts as a
way of consolidating these contributions to the colonial mission and as a
means of forging an authoritative and autonomous female identity. This
book focuses on a selection of these women writers, such as Hariot
Dufferin, Anne C. Wilson, Maud Diver, Georgiana Theodosia Paget,
Florence Marryat, Edith Lytton, Mary Caroline Minto, Flora Annie Steel,
and Grace Gardiner, who documented extensively life in the Indian sub-
continent. Most of these women travelled to India to fulfil their duties as
colonial wives. While each writer had a range of unique experiences, their
narratives also have a lot in common. According to their records, their lives
generally revolved around familiar feminine spheres. Apparently, they spent
their time decorating their homes, managing their servants, looking after
their families, partaking in appropriate pastimes, socializing with one
another, and organizing entertainments. These are, overwhelmingly, the
subjects that filled their narratives. As such, recuperative studies generally
overlook these conservative writers in favour of the experiences of
adventurous and eccentric figures. There was an assumption that the more
typically feminine travel writing had little to offer feminist or imperial
histories. But, Imperial Women Writers seeks to overturn this perspective
by building up an overview of colonial life for women in Victorian India
and by showing how the writing of this life had political import.
Throughout the nineteenth century, cultural commentators continually
reiterated the idealized notion of there being two separate spheres for men
and women. In 1839, Sarah Stickney Ellis famously outlined the very specific,
auxiliary position allocated to women in English society. According to Ellis,
women were not suited to politics or business; nor were they fit for travel.
Instead, she decreed that women were suited to a domestic and familial life.
She accepted the fact of women authors, so long as they focused on those
subjects that were apparently of interest to other women:
[W]hen it is considered that the appropriate business of men is to direct, and

expatiate upon, those expansive and important measures for which their cap-
abilities are more peculiarly adapted, and that to women belongs the minute
and particular observance of all those trifles which fill up the sum of human
happiness or misery, it may surely be deemed pardonable for a woman to solicit
the serious attention of her own sex, while she endeavours to prove that it is the
minor morals of domestic life which give the tone to English character, and
that over this sphere of duty it is her peculiar province to preside.19
For Ellis, female power existed so long as it was mystified by the appropriate
rhetorics of home, hearth, and heart. Many women seemed comfortable
with these narrative limits – they wrote about the self and other ‘trifles’ –
because, as Ellis noted, the female sphere also shaped the ‘tone of English
character’. Indeed, as this book illustrates, for British women in India,
domestic writing was part of a wider discourse of national identity. I
adopt Sara Mills’s position that the tendency of women travel writers to
focus upon the self, to write about the so-called private rather than the
public, was the result of their efforts to negotiate nineteenth-century gender
ideals as opposed to a biological essentialism.20 At the same time, I suggest,
the very act of travel extended the discursive power of the private sphere.
Travel away from the constraints of the home culture was often a trans-
formative experience for Victorian women, as Susan Bassnett elucidates:
[T]he gap between their achievements overseas and their expectations and
lives at home is enormous. Travel in many cases appears to have provided the
space necessary for them to assert themselves, a space denied to them within
the conventions of their upbringing in British society.21
Indeed, Victorian women travellers are fascinating for their ability to

break free of certain gender constraints. Nonetheless, we must be care-
ful not to fall back on recuperative, celebratory readings, by the likes of
Mary Russell (1986) and Margaret MacMillan (1998), that uncritically
champion these women as inspirational proto-feminists.22 While we are
aware that women travellers challenged aspects of Victorian patriarchy,
we must also be cognizant of the fact that British women’s power
in empire was the consequence of a belief in imperial superiority. As
Mills acknowledges, these competing ideologies converged in women’s
travel writing:
Women travel writers constructed their texts within a range of power

nexuses: the power of patriarchy which acted upon them as middle class
women, through discourses of femininity; and the power of colonialism
which acted upon them in relation to people of the countries they
describe in their books. It is the convergence and conflict of these two
power structures which determines the styles and content of their
books.23
These power structures manifested themselves in a variety of ways and

women occupied a number of positions throughout the British Empire.
Indeed, as Alison Blunt argues, British women often played ambivalent
roles as both domestic and imperial subjects.24 Accordingly, it is impos-
sible to reduce their lives and their writing to a single, unified narrative. It
is possible, however, to identify a body of women in the second half of the
nineteenth century who participated in the imperial process through their
writing of colonial life and its attendant cultural values.
There were a number of British women writers who perceived that,
through their depiction of Victorian femininity, they could become key
players in the cohesion of the Empire and the success of the Raj. These
writers worked hard to cultivate a coherent set of ideological symbols and
social codes which, being predominantly middle-class in nature, created a
familiar and attainable identity for disparate female readers within the
colonial community. They adhered to the separate spheres ideology but,
as this book argues, they wrote about the so-called private sphere precisely
because it was public and political. In the colonies, as Mills explains, the
divisions between male and female spaces were disrupted:
[C]olonial space troubles some of the simple binary oppositions of public

and private spheres since some of the values circulating within the colonised
countries are profoundly at odds with the values of the imperial culture. . . .
British women’s travel writing in colonised countries, together with the
accounts of British women in outpost situations, by their very presence
alone in the public sphere, destabilise notions of a clear female-private/
male-public sphere, divide.25
The exemplification of Victorian femininity, alongside the material differ-

ences of life in India and the demands of imperial discourse, altered and
subverted the distinctions between the public and private spheres. There
emerged, in India, an ambivalent space where home and world overlapped;
as Bhabha states, in the colonial environment ‘the borders between home
and world become confused; and, uncannily, the private and the public
become part of each other’.26 This ambiguity was tolerated, to an extent,
because of women’s important contribution to Britain’s imperial identity
but, over time, as they became more and more visible, they contributed to a
growing feminist movement and there was increasing cause for concern.
Unsurprisingly then, British women, like the mimic men, became the subject
of much derision.
Critics perceived the ambivalence of Victorian India as a threat. They
ridiculed imperial women as a means of undermining their potential for
subversion, representing them as out-of-step stereotypes and figures of fun
in popular texts, such as those by George Francklin Atkinson (‘Curry &
Rice’: The Ingredients of Social Life at ‘Our Station’ in India, 1859) and
Rudyard Kipling (Plain Tales from the Hills, 1888). Colonial wives
emerged, time after time, as prudish memsahibs totally disconnected
from the historical and political situation. Somewhat surprisingly, this
view persisted until relatively recently, as outlined by Mona Macmillan:
The memsahibs of India are conventionally blamed for their artificiality, for
taking no interest in Indian culture and for being obsessed with the ritual of
tea parties and dances, protocol and status. But they were there in a sense to
recreate their home community, although being separated from it, they no
doubt often represented it in an exaggerated and archaic way.27
While I agree with much of what Macmillan says here – without question,
the relocation of the home culture was flawed – I take issue with her
suggestion that this old-fashioned Victorianism was somehow the preserve
of unwitting, apolitical memsahibs. In reality, many of these women were
consciously disseminating a femininity, forged through a very particular
version of Victorian Englishness, as part of Britain’s national identity.
Thus, it is more useful to consider their enactment of colonial life in
India through Bhabha’s theory of mimicry.
The British in India, like the colonized peoples described by Bhabha,
found their identities constructed on their behalf. Undoubtedly, the con-
scious enactment of these identities, in a colonial context, sometimes led
to exaggerated and distorted versions of the original. As Bhabha has
taught us, in the process of performance, the force of imitation contam-
inates everything and leads to a flawed colonial mimesis in which ‘to be
Anglicised is emphatically not to be English’.28 In India, towards the end
of the nineteenth century, this mimesis was particularly troubling.
Indigenous uprisings and the formation of the Indian National Congress
threatened English imperial ideals and the stability of colonial life. At the
same time, in Britain, campaigns for women’s rights challenged patriarchal
power and increased fears about the authority of the white middle-class
male. In this context, the ‘mimicry’ of British culture, especially in its
exemplification of Victorian femininity, was referred to derogatorily as
Anglo-Indian, a moniker which was no doubt intended to reflect hybridity
and the imperfection of Englishness in India.29
Undoubtedly, place and space shape the individual and I refer to Mary
Louise Pratt’s analysis of the ‘contact zone’ to suggest that, in the social
spaces of the Empire, the forces of imperialism transformed both the
colonized and the colonizer.30 Thus, while imperial women writers con-
tinually attested to the successful transportation of the home culture, they
also acknowledged that being located outside the metropole meant being
subject to a different set of circumstances. Their writing reveals their
awareness that, despite their best efforts to relocate metropolitan culture
to India, they were never able to transform wholly the colonial spaces of
the subcontinent. This book therefore demonstrates that the enactment of
Englishness in India was wholly inaccurate, that life in India bore little
resemblance to life in Britain, and that the acclaimed recreation of the
home culture was largely an ideological construct iterated by imperial
writers. Consequently, in women’s imperial writing, the Indian subconti-
nent and the colonizing people emerge ambivalently, belonging to neither
one culture nor the other. As Bhabha explains, ‘the colonial presence is
always ambivalent, split between its appearance as original and authorita-
tive and its articulation as repetition and difference’.31 Furthermore, he
suggests that the act of repetition always imposes a difference that results
in ‘a mutation, a hybrid’.32 This difference was explicitly acknowledged by
the dissenting voice of Florence Marryat (1833–99), who stated that the
domiciled areas of the subcontinent were ‘English, and yet not English,
Indian, and yet not Indian’.33 She recognized the extent to which the
Indian outpost was an interstitial space where her life was materially and
ideologically different.
One of the most significant changes to British women’s lives in
India, as traced by this book, was the fact that they were more visible,
a difference that both constrained and liberated them. In the aftermath
of the Sepoy Rebellion, they were constantly in the public eye. In this
prominent position, it was imperative to remain attentive to revered
gender ideologies; yet, at the same time, the disruption to the separa-
tion of spheres allowed them to gain access to discourses of power and
enabled them to move through public spaces. Consequently, women
travellers in India grew in confidence, and began to challenge imperial
ideals.
Imperial writers are the focus of this book, but they were not the only
British women traversing the vast landscapes of the Indian subcontinent in
the latter half of the nineteenth century. There were also a number of single
female travel writers who journeyed to India under various guises: there
were missionaries, governesses, philanthropists, reformers, medical practi-
tioners, artists, and explorers. For many of these women, India, and the
Empire more generally, was a space where they could evade the constraints
of Victorian domesticity. Marianne North (1830–90), for example, ven-
tured out, on her own, to explore the flora and fauna of the world. She was
in the relatively unusual position of being financially independent and
without familial obligations. She took advantage of this situation to pursue
her desire to educate the people of Britain about the natural history of the
world. She travelled far and wide, collected unfamiliar species, painted
indigenous landscapes, and built a gallery in Kew Gardens to house her
work. Her ‘discovery’ of five new species gave her credence in the scientific
community, and aligned her with certain aspects of the colonial mission.34
At the same time, she was rather critical of the colonial community in India;
she was particularly scathing of the exemplification of Victorian femininity
in this environment and distanced herself from the colonial wives she
encountered. Similarly, Constance Gordon Cumming (1827–1924)

rejected the normal patterns of behaviour for women in colonial society.
She criticized the British community’s distinct disdain for anything Indian,
and placed this disregard in opposition to her own interest in indigenous
culture, thereby inscribing an important distinction between women tra-
vellers and women residents in India. Undoubtedly, North and Cumming,
by situating themselves on the fringes of the colonial community, were able
to pursue a more autonomous way of life in the Empire than the wives who
were bound to the Raj by the ties of marriage. They did not, however,
overtly conceive of this in feminist terms. In fact, North explicitly opposed
women’s suffrage.
At the same time, there were other single female travellers in India who
placed women’s rights at the forefront of their journeys. A number of proto-
feminists in Britain, motivated by the so-called plight of Indian women and
enabled by racial privilege, travelled to the subcontinent in the latter dec-
ades of the nineteenth century. Inspired and influenced by growing social
awareness and Britain’s civilizing mission, as well as by indigenous refor-
mers, British women established various philanthropic projects. They
focused mainly on female education, family values, and women’s health
care, issues that remained gender-specific and based on imperial narratives,
but that provided new and varied opportunities for travel.
Mary Carpenter (1807–77), for example, travelled to India after meet-
ing Raja Rammohun Roy, the founder of the Brahmo Samaj, and learning
about the situation of women in India.35 She sought to address the
question of Indian women’s education and challenge certain traditional
indigenous practices. There were also a number of women who were
drawn to India via missionary organizations. The Church Missionary
Society (CMS) and the Church of England Zenana Missionary Society
(CEZMS) recruited unmarried women in Britain to spread the word of
God throughout the British Empire. In addition to fulfilling a religious
vocation, many women, like Amy Carmichael (1867–1951), joined these
associations as a way of evading marriage and gaining access to the world
of work without alienating themselves from middle-class society. These
organizations were closely aligned with the Raj: their reform projects were
based on the idealization of Victorian femininity, which implicitly deni-
grated indigenous ways of life.
British women’s involvement in philanthropic projects and reform
activities brought them into contact with indigenous people. These
interactions occasionally led to conversations and exchanges between
women in the East and the West. Indian women like Pandita Ramabai
(1858–1922) worked with British and US philanthropists to offer alter-
natives to indigenous patriarchal constraints. Ramabai forged a path as a
social leader, despite being a woman and a widow. Indeed, it was her
knowledge of both these subjectivities, as well as her parents’ liberalism,
that prompted her to run charitable institutions for less fortunate
women in the subcontinent. Similarly, Krupabai Satthianadhan (1862–94),
who was educated by European and Indian missionaries, became
actively interested in the issues of Indian women’s education and female
independence. Her autobiographical novel Saguna, published in
English in 1895, made her one of the first Indian women to respond
to the colonizers in their own language. The novel’s heroine rejects
traditional gender roles as she comes to resemble the figure of the New
Woman. Thus, although Satthianadhan’s English was the product of a
civilizing mission in the latter decades of the nineteenth century, she
used the colonial language to forge a more autonomous identity for
herself and to encourage other women to do the same. She did not
wholly embrace the Victorian ideal of the ‘angel in the house’ that
British missionaries hoped to bestow upon her; instead, she appro-
priated elements of English culture and infused these with aspects of
her Indian identity to inscribe a new feminine ideal. In this way, she
encouraged the flow of ideas between England and India, a point made
by Mrs R. S. Benson: ‘It is hoped that the story of Saguna, will rouse
and sustain the interest and sympathy of English women in the women
in India, and lead those of us whose life is spent in India to a wider
interest in, and freer intercourse with, our Indian friends’.36 It would
appear that Western feminism heeded such assertions because, in the
early decades of the twentieth century, women like Margaret Nobel/
Sister Nivedita (1867–1911) and Annie Besant (1847–1933) evinced a
greater interest in developing transnational interactions. These cross-
cultural exchanges eventually led to more direct challenges to imperial
patriarchy.37 Besant separated from her husband so she could travel to
India as a relatively independent woman and support freely indigenous
women’s civil rights, which for her meant securing India’s self-govern-
ment. This book argues that this controversial stance may not have been
possible without the more tentative work of the imperial women writers
examined here.
Around the turn of the century, a number of factors came together
which enabled British women, both at home and abroad, to articulate
identities that sat in opposition to the gendered roles ascribed to them.

Imperial Women Writers charts this progression, showing how some
women utilized the material conditions of life in India and imperial
discourses, which made them more visible, to secure an authoritative
identity. It also seeks to reflect the issues that interested and affected
British women in India. Each chapter focuses on a particular aspect of
colonial life, as narrated by imperial women, and looks at how these
feminine spheres of experience allowed for a gradual progression into
the public sphere. Some women, such as Lady Dufferin, Lady Wilson,
Steel, Marryat, and Paget, wrote extensively about all areas of women’s
colonial life and the analysis of their work occurs throughout this book.
Other women, like Mrs John Gilpin or Mildred E. Staley, wrote about a
specific issue in India, such as housekeeping or hygiene; therefore, dis-
cussion of their work is limited to specific chapters. This approach seeks
to build up a picture of life in India for the individual women, while also
setting their work in wider contexts, showing how they were part of
overarching imperial discourses.
The critical studies of Mills, Bhabha, and Anderson have been crucial to
my understanding of how women’s writing contributed to colonial power
in the late nineteenth century, and they underpin the monograph as a
whole, even though detailed discussions of their work are limited to a few
key points. Furthermore, seminal texts, such as those by Nancy L. Paxton,
Anne McClintock, Elizabeth Langland, Philippa Levine, Mary A. Procida,
and Antoinette Burton, enabled me to extend my analysis beyond the
more familiar colonial histories and post-colonial critiques and to develop
what might be called a counter-recuperative approach.38 This term can be
understood as a desire to participate in an ongoing process of recognition
and recovery of women’s literary representations of India; but, rather than
conducting this through a positive gendered essentialism, Imperial
Women Writers suggests that women’s representations of colonial life
sought to actively engage with imperial ideologies.
Chapter 2 introduces the writing of imperial women by explaining how,
in the aftermath of the First Indian War of Independence, the increasing
presence of colonial wives and a change in imperial strategies brought
attention to Victorian India’s domestic spaces. Previously, it had been the
norm for houses in India to be rather stark. Most army officers lived only
with bare necessaries. Then, in the latter decades of the nineteenth cen-
tury, colonial wives were tasked with transforming these impersonal spaces
into national monuments of English domesticity. Perhaps the biggest
obstacle to this domestic conversion was the fact that Indian homes did
not, actually or ideologically, resemble those of Victorian Britain. Writers,
like Marryat and Jacob, showed how the physical properties of the Indian
bungalow resisted the conception of the home as somewhere safe and
secluded from the outside world. In response to this, imperial women, like
Lady Dufferin and Lady Wilson, sought to reclaim the domestic space as
unequivocally English. They reorganized and redecorated the home in
ways that would exemplify Victorian culture and assert a national identity.
Chapter 3 is also concerned with how women’s writing constructed
imperial identities within the private sphere. It moves beyond a concern
with the material conditions of the home and looks at how women’s domestic
behaviour contributed to the civilizing mission of late nineteenth-century
imperialism. In this chapter, I focus predominantly on The Complete Indian
Housekeeper and Cook (1888) by Steel and Gardiner, while referring to a
range of domestic primers and memoirs, to show how colonial wives repli-
cated colonial power structures on a day-to-day basis. Imperial women
inscribed English domestic practices as a universal standard against which
they measured the work, and worth, of their indigenous servants. They wrote
about their various attempts to improve domestic standards and housekeep-
ing practices, viewing their successes as a testament to their civilizing proper-
ties, and seeing their failures as evidence of the lowly nature of the Indian
races. As such, they reinforced ideas about British superiority. At the same
time, this body of writing registered a persistent indigenous presence within
the home and indicated, albeit indirectly, the colonizers’ constant fear of
Indian invasions and infiltrations. Indeed, despite attempts to disguise the
multiple disruptions to the manifestation of English life in India, women’s
imperial writing reveals an anxiety about the many differences they faced.
This tension also emerged in women’s writing about family life.
Chapter 4 looks at how imperial women writers, such as Lady Wilson
and Paget, extolled the virtues of the nuclear family as a unit of stability
and civility. At the same time, they acknowledged the long absences of
their husbands, due to work, and the common practice of using indi-
genous wet nurses, which disrupted ideas about racial segregation. It
was surely anxiety about the latter that was partly responsible for British
children being sent back to the metropole at the age of six; this was
perhaps a way to counter earlier indigenous influences. Nonetheless, as
a result of this practice, British women in India often found themselves
left alone, without their family or a clear sense of purpose. Eager to
maintain their imperial domestic identity, they dutifully extended their
‘natural’ maternal instincts to less fortunate indigenous women. By doing

so, they could continue to write about their commitment to familial duties
and feminine subjectivities while securing for themselves a position of
power. And, over time, their projects of progress and philanthropy paved
the way for women to participate actively in the new scripting of imperialism.
There is a large body of literature that outlines the extent of British
women’s philanthropic work in India. Chapter 5 focuses on the represen-
tation of a few key campaigns, such as the Countess of Dufferin Fund, to
show how reform work gave women in India an opportunity to be pro-
ductively engaged without negating their imperial femininity. Because
indigenous women were consistently characterized as idle and indolent,
imperialist women, such as Marryat and Diver, demonstrated a real anxiety
about not being sufficiently and appropriately engaged, especially given
the lack of normal family and domestic duties. To counter these apprehen-
sions, primers and memoirs outlined strict daily routines and an acceptable
range of hobbies that left little time for the apparent dangers of inactivity.
Steel and Gardiner, for example, prescribed pastimes for women that took
place within the safe confines of the domestic environment. But, tradi-
tional hobbies, such as sewing and singing, seemed trivial in the imperial
realm, particularly in relation to the work of colonial men. So, in a desire to
be more useful, many British women took up philanthropic work which
conferred English domestic ideals on Indian women.
For colonial wives, engaging in social reform was a way to assume a
position of power and gain freedom from their regular domestic duties,
albeit temporarily. And, for single women who longed to travel in the
latter decades of the nineteenth century, philanthropic work and reform
activity provided a more permanent alternative to Victorian gender roles.
These projects took them into public places, such as schools and hospitals,
and brought them into direct contact with indigenous women and indi-
genous spaces. These interactions unquestionably shaped Britain’s percep-
tion of Indian women. Although, for the most part, philanthropic writing
seemed to confirm the colonial values espoused by the wider imperial
mission, some British reformists developed ideas outside patriarchal
imperialism. And, as Chapter 6 shows, around the turn of the century,
women writers presented a major challenge to colonial and gender dis-
course by engaging more openly with issues of sex and sexuality.
As the lines between public and private continued to blur, personal
matters found their way into public discourse. Male/female relationships
took place in a rather more open environment, and women writers felt more
able to comment upon these interactions, which did not always conform to
Victorian courtship practices. Diver and Marryat were keen to explain that
the climate and culture of India made it difficult to uphold certain standards.
Even so, such lapses were disconcerting to conservative onlookers because
women’s imperial identity was based upon a pure and virginal version of
English femininity established during the Sepoy Rebellion. Furthermore,
contemporary controversies in Britain, such as a rise in prostitution, the
spread of venereal diseases, an increasing awareness of homosexuality, and
the emergence of the New Woman, threatened the patriarchal status quo.
Victorian Britain then displaced these fears about social and sexual change
onto the subcontinent and criticized the British residents for a lack of
morality and propriety. It is highly debatable whether Victorian India was
any less ‘proper’ than Victorian England; but, there were more open discus-
sions about romance and sexuality. Imperial women writers brought such
matters to the fore, ostensibly as a means of bolstering their own imperial
identity; nonetheless, their writing acknowledged female sexual desire and
paved the way for women to take ownership of the female body and assume a
more active role in relation to the state’s regulation of their behaviour.
Chapter 7 suggests that the loss of privacy in India was most keenly felt in
the hill stations where women participated in a seemingly endless number of
social events designed to advertise colonial cohesion and confidence. In
particular, the various Vicereines engaged in a vigorous and visible assertion
of imperial superiority for an increasingly fragile British Empire. By the start
of the twentieth century, Victorian India had reached the zenith of its
exhibitionism: life was lived as a series of rather public enactments, per-
formed for the benefit of the indigenous people and onlookers from the
metropole. In its new incarnation, English culture and society was barely
recognizable. The act of replication exaggerated and amplified the social
rules of the metropole. Colonial India became a place of ritual, rigidity, and
superficiality. Women were often blamed for this muddled manifestation of
English identity. Yet, they were part of a wider Bhabhian mimicry that took
place. Arguably, the real problem lay in British women’s participation in
these public and imperial enactments. This situation was particularly trou-
bling to a metropolitan centre faced with more and more women rejecting
patriarchal power. Derisive representations of imperial women were, there-
fore, a way of undermining support for women’s rights and preserving the
power of a patriarchal empire.
Taken together, imperial women’s writing became a textual site which
operated at the boundaries of social convention through the interplay of
gender and imperial discourses. Hence, despite the separate spheres

ideology, they were able to show that there existed in Victorian culture
and society a borderland, a place that occurred between the binary
distinctions of nineteenth-century gender discourses; this book sug-
gests that the colonial spaces of India cultivated this liminality. As
Mary A. Procida states, ‘the binary categories of public and private,
masculine and feminine, the world and the home, must be rethought
in the context of the Raj’.39
NOTES
1. Current scholarship generally avoids the term ‘mutiny’ preferring either the
Sepoy Rebellion or the First Indian War of Independence.
2. Hariot Dufferin, Our Viceregal Life in India: Selections from My Journal,
1884–1888, 2 vols. (London: John Murray, 1889), 2: 23.
3. Throughout this book I use the term ‘British’ to signify the geographical
area of the United Kingdom, whereas English is used to signify a cultural
and a national identity, in the way previously defined by Catherine Hall:
In constructing what it meant to be English, a further claim was con-

stantly being made – that Englishness was British, whereas those on the
margins could never claim the right to speak for the whole. A Welsh
identity could never be anything other than distinctively Welsh: an
English identity could claim to provide the norm for the whole of the
United Kingdom, and indeed the Empire. (White, Male and Middle
Class: Explorations in Feminism and History (Cambridge: Polity Press,
1992), pp. 205–6).
4. Patrick Brantlinger, Rule of Darkness: British Literature and Imperialism,

1830–1914. (Ithaca: Cornell University Press, 1988), p. 222.
5. Spratt, Major F., R. E. Acklom, C. S. Symes, Sir A. H. Gordon, and
H. Beauchamp, A Handbook for Travellers in India, Burma, and Ceylon
Including the Provinces of Bengal, Bombay, and Madras . . . Etc. 8th ed.
(London: John Murray, 1911), p. 305.
6. This phrase is borrowed from Jane Robinson’s book of the same title, Angels
of Albion: Women of the Indian Mutiny (London: Penguin, 1996).
7. Charlotte Canning definitively stated that ‘There is not a particle of credible
evidence of the poor women having been “ill-used” anywhere’ in A Glimpse
of the Burning Plain: Leaves from the Indian Journals of Charlotte Canning,
ed. Charles Allen (London: Michael Joseph Ltd., Canning, 1986), p. 91.
NOTES 19
8. Benedict Anderson, Imagined Communities: Reflections on the Origin and

Spread of Nationalism (1983. London: Verso 2006), p. 9.
9. Anderson, Imagined Communities, p. 9.
12. For example, Katherine M. Bartrum’s A Widow’s Reminiscences of the Siege
of Lucknow (1858).
13. Jane Robinson’s Angels of Albion tells a number of these stories.
14. David Spurr, The Rhetoric of Empire: Colonial Discourse in Journalism,
Travel Writing, and Imperial Administration (Durham: Duke University
Press, 1993), p. 86.
15. For Homi K. Bhabha’s discussion of the mimic men, see The Location of
Culture (London: Routledge, 1994), p. 123.
16. Indira Ghose, Women Travellers in Colonial India: The Power of the Female
Gaze (Delhi: Oxford University Press, 1998b), p. 147.
17. Quoted in Marion Fowler Below the Peacock Fan: First Ladies of the Raj
(London: Penguin, 1988), p. 193.
18. Canning, A Glimpse of the Burning Plain, p. 70.
19. Sarah Stickney Ellis, The Women of England: Their Social Duties and
Domestic Habits (London: Fisher, Son and Co., 1839), p. 38.
20. For a more detailed discussion of the negotiation of discourses in women’s
travel writing, see Sara Mills, Discourses of Difference: An Analysis of
Women’s Travel Writing and Colonialism (Manchester: Manchester
University Press, 1991).
21. Susan Bassnett, ‘Travel Writing and Gender’ in The Cambridge Companion
to Travel Writing, eds. Peter Hulme and Tim Youngs (Cambridge:
Cambridge University Press, 2002), p. 7.
22. Mary Russell’s The Blessings of a Good, Thick Skirt: Women Travellers and
their World (London: Collins, 1986) and Margaret MacMillan’s Women of
the Raj (London: Thames and Hudson, 1998) were vital to the recuperation
of forgotten women travel writers. However, post-colonial critics have taken
issue with their lack of attention to the distribution of power in empire.
23. Mills, Discourses of Difference, p. 18.
24. Alison Blunt, ‘The Flight from Lucknow: British Women Travelling and
Writing Home, 1857–58’ in Writes of Passage: Reading Travel Writing, eds.
James Duncan and Derek Gregory (London: Routledge, 1999), p. 94.
25. Sara Mills, Gender and Colonial Space (Manchester: Manchester University,
Press, 2005), p. 33.
26. Mills, Gender and Colonial Space, p. 13.
27. Mona Macmillan, ‘Camp Followers: A Note on Wives of the Armed
Services’ in The Incorporated Wife, eds. Hilary Callan and Shirley Ardener
(London: Croom Helm Ltd., 1984), p. 99.
28. Bhabha, The Location of Culture, p. 125.

29. From the late nineteenth century, the mixed-race community, previously
referred to as Eurasian, campaigned for sole ownership of the term Anglo-
Indian. The British colonizers strongly opposed this movement. Evidently,
they saw themselves as very much connected to the home culture and
attested to this connection. But, in 1911, the mixed-race community won
the legal battle to use the title.
30. Mary Louise Pratt, in Imperial Eyes: Travel Writing and Transculturation,
defines the contact zone as ‘the space of imperial encounters, the space in
which peoples geographically and historically separated come into contact
with each other’ (London: Routledge, 1992), p. 8.
31. Bhabha, The Location of Culture, p. 153.
32. Bhabha, The Locations of Culture, p. 159.
33. Florence Marryat, Gup: Sketches of Anglo-Indian Life and Character
(London: Richard Bentley, 1868), p. 150.
34. North permitted her name to be conferred upon the five specimens she
introduced to the Western world: Northea seychellana, Nepenthes northiana,
Crinum northianum, Areca northiana and Kniphofia northiae.
35. Raja Rammohun Roy founded the Brahmo Samaj, a rationalist Hindu
movement, in 1828.
36. Mrs R. S. Benson, Preface in Saguna: A Story of a Native Christian Life
by Krupabai Satthianadhan, (Madras: Srinivasa, Varadachari and Co.,
1895), p.xii.
37. For a more detailed discussion of the transnationalism of Besant and Sister
Nivedita, see Elleke Boehmer, Empire, The National and The Postcolonial,
1890–1920: Resistance in Interaction (Oxford: Oxford University Press,
2002).
38. I would like to thank Elleke Boehmer for pinpointing this term for me.
39. Mary A. Procida, Married to the Empire: Gender, Politics, and Imperialism in
India, 1883–1947 (Manchester: Manchester University Press, 2002), p. 7.
CHAPTER 2
There’s No Place Like Home: Homes

and Gardens in Victorian India
There is no place like home, up to about 85°! Love of home fades

at that degree. (E. Augusta King, The Diary of a Civilian’s Wife,
1887–1882, 1: 154)
It is a well-known fact that British women who travelled to India as part of

the Raj struggled daily with the heat and the dust. They complained that it
was virtually impossible to uphold expected standards of domesticity in the
unbearable heat of the tropical sun. But the temperatures and the aridity
were only two features on a long list of difficulties reported by women who
were trying to set up home in the Indian subcontinent. Women writers
described in detail – in journals, letters, primers, manuals, and memoirs –
the various struggles they endured in their efforts to establish a familiar
domestic environment in the unfamiliar Indian environs. This chapter
demonstrates that these attempts at anglicization were undoubtedly linked
to imperial discourses and invariably reconfigured gender roles, as pre-
viously discussed by Tamara S. Wagner:
In the context of settler colonialism, traditional gender roles experienced

significant shifts; extensions as well as constrictions. The hope of being able
to transport domesticity opened up opportunities for women that gave them
a new centrality. . . . But it also implicated them in the spread of imperialist
and national ideologies.1

DOI 10.1007/978-3-319-33195-9_2
22 2 THERE’S NO PLACE LIKE HOME: HOMES AND GARDENS IN VICTORIAN INDIA
Of course, Victorian India was not a settler colony, although there were settled
communities, and this book elucidates this very particular context. Colonial
wives in the subcontinent similarly experienced a concomitant shift in the
nature of their roles. As noted in my Introduction, this was partly due to the
requirements of imperial discourse in the decades after the Sepoy Rebellion
and to actual changes to their home environment. In both respects, women
found themselves in a visible position, susceptible to the gaze of imperial
patriarchy, and they responded to their homes in an appropriate manner.
According to Sara Mills, an individual’s relationship with place and spatial
relations is ‘a complex negotiation between the physical setting itself – the
architecture, the topography and the way they are coded in relation to power –
and the types of behaviour that we imagine are appropriate to that context’.2
Texts, such as Anthony D. King’s Colonial Urban Development: Culture,
Social Power and Development (1976), have explored this dynamic in relation
to public colonial spaces, but the impact of domestic architecture and imperial
discourse on women’s behaviour in empire remains broadly unexplored. In
order to address this lacuna, this chapter examines colonial domestic spaces
and considers the specific differences between British and Indian homes. I am
particularly interested in how women textually responded to the changes in
their home environment. I argue that their representations of these domestic
spaces demonstrated their commitment to contemporary gender discourses
while simultaneously contributing to imperial ideologies and colonial identity.
Colonial architecture, actually and ideologically, broke down distinc-
tions between home and world; this dissolution of clear Victorian bound-
aries created an ambivalent, in-between space from where British women
were able to underwrite colonial discourses. They documented in detail
their persistent efforts to anglicize their homes because, as Alison Blunt
and Gillian Rose argue, domestic narratives, like maps, sought to exert
claims of ownership, order, and domestication. Any claim to the mimetic
representation of a transparent space is a fallacy.3 Colonial homes and
gardens emerge then, not as an accurate recreation of those in England,
but as a representation of imperial mores and values. And, by using the
private sphere to further political discourses, imperial women overturned
gendered behaviours and ultimately undermined their own efforts to
replicate Victorian culture and society in India.
Apart from the work of Mills, Wagner, and Blunt and Rose, there has
been little critical attention paid to the cultural imperialism of women’s
domestic literature; such narratives were dismissed as conservative and
conventional and are only now beginning to gain ground in post-colonial
THERE’S NO PLACE LIKE HOME: HOMES AND GARDENS IN VICTORIAN INDIA 23
studies. We have still not managed to overhaul the gendered attitudes that
Virginia Woolf pointed to in A Room of One’s Own (1929): ‘This is an
important book, the critic assumes, because it deals with war. This is an
insignificant book because it deals with the feelings of a woman in a
drawing room’.4 It is precisely such ‘insignificant’ books that are the
focus here. However, I am not only concerned with the feelings of the
woman in her drawing room, but the representation of the drawing room
itself and the ways in which this representation functioned as part of a
broader cultural narrative. We have, to a certain extent, redressed such
topics in fiction but less so in non-fiction writing where the symbolic
properties of Victorian homes have not been wholly deconstructed.
While we have subjected the yellow wallpaper of Charlotte Perkins
Gilman’s room to much analysis, there remains much work to be done
on the chintzes of Victorian India.5
*****
Anne C. Wilson arrived in the Indian subcontinent in 1888 not long

after her marriage to James Wilson, a senior civil servant. The wedding
took place during James’s leave period and, when the time came for
him to return to India, his new bride accompanied him. From that day
forth, until they returned to Scotland in 1909, Lady Wilson travelled
with her husband on his various postings in India. She documented
their life throughout this twenty-year period, and published three
books about her experiences as well as A Short Account of Hindu
Music (1904).
Life in colonial India surely came as quite a shock to a woman who
had grown up in Victorian Scotland. The first instalment of Lady
Wilson’s memoirs, After Five Years in India: Or, Life and Work in a
Punjaub District (1895), explains that during her initial sojourn in the
subcontinent she spent most of her time in a secluded area of the Punjab
region where her husband was a deputy-commissioner, magistrate, and
collector. There, Lady Wilson was removed from virtually all vestiges of
domestic familiarity. To combat the estrangement she experienced, she
attempted to acquaint herself with the world around her. She reportedly
studied the lives of the people in the nearby communities and
the methods of administration employed by the British government.
However, these subjects are not the main focus of her published narra-
tives; instead, the majority of her writing attends to her domestic
trials and tribulations. She purported that people in Britain knew com-
paratively little about these subjects; for this reason, she felt compelled to
publish a record of her personal experiences along with helpful advice
and information. In particular, she writes, she wanted to aid women,
similar to herself, who suddenly found themselves resituated in such
unfamiliar environments and expected to enact English domestic culture.
Of course, such altruistic motivations disguised her personal authorial
ambitions: she had already written a small biography of Girolamo
Savonarola, a fifteenth-century monk and martyr (1882), and edited a
collection of her father’s writing, Love and the Fulfilling of the Law
(1887). India evidently presented her with further inspiration and
enabled her to become the subject of her own work. But, because the
British Empire was perceived as a masculine domain, she had to be
mindful of discursive constraints.
Authorial explanations and apologias were often included in women’s
travel writing, and we are now wary of taking them at face value. Women
writers used them as a means of attending to gender discourses that
situated femininity and colonialism as entirely incongruous. This kind of
self-effacement was so pervasive that, in 1845, Elizabeth Eastlake com-
mented: ‘It is a remarkable fact that ladies never publish their tours to
please themselves’.6 Instead, women travellers claimed they were writing
to satisfy the needs and desires of friends, family, and/or those men and
women who would follow in their footsteps. Yet the confident voices that
run throughout their texts belie such modest assertions. In particular,
imperial women who chose to focus on their domestic environment clearly
attempted to carve out a space for themselves in contemporary colonial
discourse.
Prior to the First War of Indian Independence and the influx of women
travellers to the subcontinent, the average East India Company employee’s
living quarters were rather sparse; they were intended only to serve a practical
function. This domestic neutrality was reconsidered when, due to the afore-
mentioned changes in colonial policy, more and more women began to
travel to India. These basic accommodations did not readily facilitate the
gendered discourses of Victorian femininity, so British women were charged
with exporting English domestic culture to the subcontinent. Thus,
although these women were removed from the normal sphere of their
experience, they were still, ideologically, if not physically, bound to the
private sphere. Like their peers in England, their role in society was deter-
mined by Victorian gender discourses that intended to keep women in the
home through a narrative of moral responsibility. Domestic writers, such as

Sarah Stickney Ellis, set this out clearly for their readers:
[T]he customs of English society have so constituted women the guardians

of the comfort of their homes, that, like the Vestals of old, they cannot allow
the lamp they cherish to be extinguished, or to fail for want of oil, without
an equal share of degradation attaching to their names.7
Ellis purported that domestic failings spoke directly to a woman’s char-

acter and, she suggested, other nations revealed their inadequacies in
this way:
In other countries, where the domestic lamp is voluntarily put out, in order
to allow the women to resort to the opera, or the public festival, they are not
only careless about their home-comforts, but necessarily ignorant of the
high degree of excellence to which they might be raised.8
Thus, because domestic spaces seemed to reflect the superiority of

Victorian femininity, in contrast to the shortcomings of ‘other’ (Indian)
women, imperial women writers paid particular attention to these envir-
onments. As such, Mills explains, the home became ‘peculiarly infused
with publicness and elements normally associated with the public sphere’.9
Undoubtedly, then, by the latter half of the nineteenth century, domes-
ticity was not simply a private or feminine concern. Even single men in
India were required to cultivate a comfortable home. Accordingly, Lady
Wilson intended for her second Indian volume, Hints for the First Years of
Residence in India (1904), to assist unmarried colonial officers in up-
country stations create suitable domestic environments.
Lady Wilson observed that many British men in India struggled with
their domestic responsibilities. As the only female in some remote areas,
she felt like the de facto mother of the station, and offered all kinds of
home help to men in need:
I have so frequently been called upon to “mother” our young friends, and
begged to help them buy their own pots and pans, their stores and their
necessities, that it occurred to me it might be of some use, if I furnish those
who propose to come to India with information as to what they will require
when they arrive here.10
By referring to herself as ‘mother’, a configuration which is discussed

thoroughly in Chapter 4, Lady Wilson feminized her commanding posi-
tion. Such rhetorical manoeuvres were particularly important for imperial
women writers, like Lady Wilson, who would return to Britain and did not
wish to become alienated from the home culture. This deference is most
evident in her final instalment of colonial life, which was published after
she moved back to Britain permanently.
In Letters from India (1911), Lady Wilson maintained that external
forces motivated her decision to publish. She insisted that her readers had
particularly enjoyed the personal experiences she recounted previously and
had requested more work in this vein.11 The result was an epistolary
narrative that documented her daily life in India, She recorded diligently
her persistent efforts to replicate British domestic environments in the
subcontinent. The book opens five weeks after Lady Wilson landed in
Bombay and just before she embarked on her first journey to the interior
plains. Naturally, she expressed a little caution as she prepared for this big
adventure. She thought about the immensity of India and the fragility of
English rule. She worried about the vast numbers of Indian people com-
pared to the relatively small number of Europeans in the subcontinent.
She pondered the potential implications of this imbalance: ‘What were we
in the land, I thought, but a handful of Europeans at the best, and what
was there to prevent these myriads from falling upon and obliterating us,
as if we had never existed?’.12 These were rather familiar fears in the
aftermath of the First War of Indian Independence, a conflict that saw
the ‘myriads’ resist the authority of their British rulers. However, Lady
Wilson does not make a direct connection between her musings and
recent historical events. Instead, she returns quickly to a typically feminine
subject: the home. But this narrative switch is not simply the result of
a ‘white solipsism’, to use Laura E. Donaldson’s phrase.13 As we know, the
separate spheres ideology meant that women were generally unable
to tackle political issues in a direct or explicit manner. Furthermore,
Lady Wilson perceived that the continued success of the British
Government relied, to some extent, upon her abilities as a homemaker.
In this role, as the creator of an English domestic space, she believed that
she could contribute to colonial control in India.
Lady Wilson’s first priority in India was the establishment of an angli-
cized ‘home’, an obligation that kept her busy from morning until night
due to the various ‘domestic peculiarities’ that she encountered.14 The
architectural and spatial features of the colonial home were broadly
unfamiliar to her because they developed out of both British and indigen-
ous building styles, taking into account the new environment and its racial
politics. In the metropolitan centre, middle-class dwellings were generally
built in terraces; they consisted of several small rooms, each with its own
definite boundary and distinct function. These homes maximized space
and ideally kept the function of any one group of inhabitants from
impinging on any other.15 They also created a kind of cocoon from the
outside world by using dark paints, heavy curtains, and over-stuffed fur-
niture. It is hardly surprising then that Lady Wilson was anxious when she
arrived at her new home in India. She listed its various distinguishing
features: the house was square, one-storied, flat-roofed, and with a pillared
verandah at each side.16 Inside, she explained, there were nine rooms,
three of which were in a row without an entrance hall or any passageway.
She complained that each room simply opened into the next and had one
or two ‘door-windows’; she was particularly critical of the high ceilings.17
These common features ensured that Indian homes were very different
from the domestic environments of Victorian Britain, and women’s
responses to these material conditions demonstrated the terms of both
their oppression and their privilege.
Lady Wilson claimed that her efforts to transform the ‘flat-roofed
house’ into a suitable dwelling were rather haphazard: ‘individually we
are but birds of passage in India, and have to build our nests of what
material we can find’.18 However, her somewhat hapless tone was at
odds with the reality that, since the mid-nineteenth century, increasing
numbers of British women had been living and nesting in the subcon-
tinent. By the end of the century, there were numerous advice manuals
and domestic memoirs offering help and guidance to women travellers,
many of which I discuss in the following chapter. Therefore, the con-
sciously self-deprecating tone served a dual purpose: it testified to Lady
Wilson’s overall success in producing a suitably comfortable and angli-
cized home environment while also acknowledging the various obsta-
cles she encountered.
One of the major difficulties faced by Lady Wilson and her compa-
triots was the peripatetic nature of colonial Indian life. I discuss the
various inconveniences of this frequent travelling in Chapter 3; but, in
the first instance, it is worth noting that it prevented many colonial
residents from securing permanent homes. Throughout their time in
the subcontinent, British women generally occupied a number of tem-
porary dwellings that were rented rather than owned. As such, there
was a limit to how much they could alter the physical structures of their
homes. And, to make matters worse, the transience of colonial life
meant they had to repeatedly re-enact their domestic refurbishments
in a variety of locations and situations, often without much warning.
For example, almost as soon as Lady Wilson completed her first domes-
tic transformation, she complained that she must, at a moment’s
notice, be prepared to leave it and get ready to spend some months
‘in the wilds’.19
Lord Wilson’s job required him to travel around remote areas of
Northern India. The vast distances between destinations meant that it
was not always possible for the Wilsons to return to their bungalow in
Shahpur; consequently, the newly-weds camped in some remote locations.
These circumstances were clearly disruptive to Lady Wilson’s domestic
ideals. Still, in the service of the Raj, she stoically prepared for life in a tent.
She packed up the many household goods that she had transported from
Britain and installed in her new home. She then forwarded these material
possessions to her next resting place:
The string of camels left an hour ago with chairs, tables and rolled-up tents
on their backs, boxes filled with house-linen, dishes, silver, glass, pots and
pans, clothes and books, fitting into huge panniers; and such an assortment
as you never saw of hen-coops, baths and every kind of incongruous extras
piled on to their humps.20
Lady Wilson’s description of the camel parade emerged as an evocative

Eastern scene that surely piqued the interest of her readers. Indeed, while
we might assume that her desire for domestic bliss would have caused her
to baulk at the very notion of camping, it actually seems to have awakened
in her a latent sense of adventure. In this exotic setting, the notion of
bedding down in a tent seemed somewhat acceptable; this was surely
because the camping trip was both temporary and tempered by an array
of creature comforts.21 Lady Wilson’s descriptions of camp life indisputa-
bly countered any suggestion of ‘roughing it in the bush’ as characterized
by the narratives of frontier women in other settled communities.22
Susanna Moodie’s difficult experiences in Canada, for example, caused
her to question whether it was possible for an emigrant ever to regard the
country of exile as home.23 Conversely, imperial women writers in India
consistently asserted their ability to find and make homes in all kinds of
unlikely places. Lady Wilson implied that even the most undomesticated
terrains could be made to submit to the civilizing forces of colonial

travellers. Her narratives generally evoked domestic order, stability, and
civility, the very cornerstones of late nineteenth-century colonial dis-
course. Even her portrait of life in the camp complied with such imperial
ideals. The campground appeared in her text as an oasis of Englishness
that barely acknowledged the Indian landscape lying just beyond the
canvas frame of the tent.
Lady Wilson informed readers that they actually had three tents: Lord
Wilson’s work took place in one tent and the remaining two tents, exact
copies of each other, alternately served as their home. When the Wilsons
occupied one of the domestic tents, they sent the other ahead to the next
destination; there, indigenous servants assembled it according to Lady
Wilson’s direction. She declared that the servants did a fine job and the
finished product was positively homely:
Dearest M. – here we are in camp, and anything cosier you could not
imagine. We are sitting in our deck-chairs before the stove, with our feet
on a wooden fender; the lamp behind us is hooked on to the central pole of
the tent. J. is reading the papers while I am writing to you. A bowlful of
Gloire de Dijon roses on the table beside me is a delight to my eyes, beyond
is a little bookcase filled with our favourite books, and on the top of it is the
guitar, the poor ill-used guitar! We have pictures on our walls, comfortable
chairs, tables and rugs, and in short are as snug as snug can be. You did not
think that was what people’s tents are like out in camp did you?24
The deliberate mention of the flowers, books, and musical instruments

signified attention to the various markers of Victorian norms and values, as
I explain below; in this way, Lady Wilson confidently conjured a quaint
vignette of Victorian domesticity. She showed her provision of a comfor-
table home for her husband, despite the unusual circumstances.
While colonial men were responsible for maintaining Britain’s imperial
interests in India, their wives were tasked with the faithful replication of an
ethnocentric ‘home’ environment that facilitated their husbands’ imperial
obligations.25 Lady Wilson’s writing attests to an air of anglicization
through her description of a stable and orderly space that echoed the
purpose of her husband’s work and ostensibly kept the Indian world
under control. But, there was a demonstrable gap between representation
and reality in this blissful invocation: although Lady Wilson insisted upon
her successful transformation of the simple tent into an English drawing
room, she read her favourite book while seated on a deck chair and the
‘walls’ she mentioned were made of canvas, not bricks and mortar.
Furthermore, beyond these ‘walls’, the wilds of India remained, carefully
hidden from narrative view in order to sustain this charming vision of
English domesticity. It is apparent from her text that activities, like cook-
ing and cleaning, necessarily took place outside and there was a great deal
of movement between outside and inside the tent. Therefore, this domes-
tic space did not, in any real terms, resemble an English home.
Significantly, it did not confine and contain Lady Wilson. She spent her
evenings travelling on horseback to the next destination, or socializing
with the three other households that shared the campground, often meet-
ing them in the evening for games, and dining with them about once a
week.26 This collective way of life surely cultivated a colonial community
but it unquestionably undermined the segregated nature of Victorian
society.
The loss of a clear demarcation between public and private spaces in the
campground allowed Lady Wilson a degree of physical freedom. Not only
did she socialise with other Europeans, she also ventured out, apparently
alone, into the Indian landscape. While it is safe to assume that this inde-
pendence was predominantly a narrative construction – she almost certainly
would have been accompanied by Indian servants and/or guides – she
evidently enjoyed being able to explore her environs without her husband
or another white male chaperone. She also seemed to relish living in close
proximity to indigenous life. She took note of the various Indian characters
that she met, such as the wolf-catchers and leech-gatherers, and who aroused
in her a broader curiosity about India. Her observations led her to wonder:
How strange these people are! What would I not give to be inside of their
heads for an hour, to look out at life with their eyes! What do they think
about, what do they love, what do they hate, what pains them or gives them
pleasure? Are we really like each other fundamentally or have we not a
thought or a feeling in common?27
There is evidence here of some engagement with the local environment,

but Lady Wilson’s musings did not attend to the material differences of
life for her and the indigenous people of India. She did not acknowledge
that racial privilege gave her, as a white woman, some authority over
those public spaces; nor did she admit that this colonial identity made it
possible for her to roam around outside without the fear of attack.
Lady Wilson evidently enjoyed her time in camp but she also under-
stood that, for her, such freedom could only be temporary. Along with her
husband, she had to return to an orderly and ordinary life in a bungalow
with anglicized interiors and a landscaped garden. When she did arrive
back to Shahpur, she was careful to give thanks for the sanctity of the
comparatively traditional domestic space: ‘here we are at last in our
Garden of Eden, with never a serpent to darken our peace’.28 In this
moment, despite her general reservations about bungalows, she reasserted
her support for the borders and boundaries of Victorian culture and
society.
Officers of the East India Company originally built bungalows as
temporary dwellings that provided them with rest during the occupation
of Bengal. Over time, these structures were replicated throughout the
subcontinent and the word bungalow evolved from ‘Bengal-style’.
Henry Yule and A. C. Burnell, the authors of Hobson-Jobson: The Anglo-
Indian Dictionary (1886), explained that the travellers’, or dawk, bunga-
lows were built from impermanent materials, generally set at a distance of
ten to fifteen miles apart, and were maintained by the ‘paternal care’ of the
government of India.29 They were rather modest buildings in relation to
the heavily furnished and highly decorated buildings found in the hill
stations. Nonetheless, Yule and Burnell were confident that, along with
the travellers’ own luggage, these spaces offered all that was necessary for a
brief sojourn: a bed, a table, a bathroom, and a servant who furnished food
at a modest cost.30 Most women writers did not agree. The popular
novelist Florence Marryat declared that any self-respecting English travel-
ler using the dawk bungalows should supply their own furniture, food and
servants.31 Unfortunately for Marryat, even such self-reliance did not
prevent domestic misfortune.
Marryat married Thomas Ross Church in 1854 shortly before she turned
twenty-one. She spent the next six years in India travelling with her hus-
band, who was in the Madras Staff Corps. Like Lady Wilson, Marryat
became quickly acquainted with the domestic disruptions endured by the
average colonial officer and his wife. Unlike Lady Wilson, she believed that
the transience of life in India made it impossible for her to recreate the
requisite domestic bliss. In her writing, she did not attempt to disguise the
absence of Englishness. She was extremely critical of the myths of metro-
politanism perpetuated by many of the memsahibs. Marryat claimed that
such narratives made life difficult for the average British woman. Instead, for
reasons that are explored further in Chapter 4, she acknowledged the extent
to which the replication of Victorian domesticity was an imaginary construct

produced in the service of the British Empire.
Marryat stayed in a number of dawk bungalows during her time in
India, and she was wholly unimpressed by these residences. She declared
that once free of military stations in India, one ‘must bid farewell to hotels
and all the other conveniences of civilisation’.32 She remarked upon the
fact that the travellers’ bungalows were lacking in British comforts and
conveniences. Thus, she was rather surprised when she arrived at her
accommodation in Rangoon and saw a bungalow with a slanted roof, a
feature that she believed to be the result of English influence. She believed
the roof’s function was to carry off rain in the wet season. Regrettably, it
did not quite live up to its assumed purpose. When unseasonable rainfall
occurred that evening during dinner, it simply poured into the bungalow
due to the lack of a ceiling. As Marryat quickly realized, there were only
rafters crossed and re-crossed under the angled roof.
Marryat remained rather cheerful, despite the damp dinner experience.
The party continued with their evening meal while sitting under the cover
of umbrellas. She gave thanks for the fact that she could still retire, in
relative comfort, to the bed she had brought with her from England. Alas,
her sleep was no less disturbed than her mealtime – throughout the night,
rats ran rampantly along the open rafters. Marryat became frightened the
athletic rodents might overstretch themselves and become uninvited bed-
fellows; so, she constructed a kind of ceiling by hanging sheets below the
beams to catch the less acrobatic rats. To her chagrin, these sheets simply
offered a larger surface for the rats to enjoy. She eventually dismantled her
‘ceiling’, feeling thoroughly annoyed by the flaws in her domestic
environment.33
These two incidents clearly demonstrated to Marryat how difficult it
was in India to keep the outside world outside; this was an important issue
in terms of Victorian domestic culture, which generally emphasized the
literal and metaphorical distinctions between public and private. Cultural
commentators, such as John Ruskin, were very definite about the separate
spheres of home and world:
[The home] is the place of Peace; the shelter, not only from all injury, but
from all terror, doubt, and division. In so far as it is not this, it is not home;
so far as the anxieties of the outer life penetrate into it, and the inconsis-
tently-minded, unknown, unloved, or hostile society of the outer world is
allowed by either husband or wife to cross the threshold, it ceases to be
home; it is then only a part of that outer world which you have roofed over,
and lighted fire in. But so far as it is a sacred place, a vestal temple, a temple
of the hearth watched over by Household Gods, before whose faces none
may come but those whom they can receive with love, – so far as it is this,
and roof and fire are types only of a nobler shade and light, – shade as of the
rock in a weary land, and light as of the Pharos in the stormy sea; – so far it
vindicates the name, and fulfils the praise, of Home.34
The Victorian home was perceived by Ruskin as a sanctum, safe and secure
from the hostile environment beyond its four walls; once inside, the family
should feel protected from any external dangers. According to Ruskin, this
distinction between home and world was central to the success of
Victorian society; this was undeniably because the separate spheres ideol-
ogy secured the dominant position of the middle-class man by containing
women within the home. Of course, we are now aware that this opposition
was, in many ways, an artificial construct. Feminist critics, such as Kathryn
Hughes, have illustrated the extent to which the Victorian home was
‘psychically, socially, and even economically . . . wedded to the world
beyond the front door’.35 Even so, in Britain, the home existed geogra-
phically and ideologically as a separate space; whereas in India, where
residential housing was not originally conceived with gender ideologies
in mind, divisions between the public and private spheres were less clear.
Prior to the arrival of British women in India, colonial architects
focused on racial discourses which made specific demands on the nego-
tiation of domestic spaces. Mills explains in Gender and Colonial Space
(2005) that India was ‘primarily designated into clear-cut territories
where distance between the colonised and the colonisers is emphasised’;
however, she also notes that such distinctions were often only an ideal, at
‘an actual level, this distance is impossible to maintain’.36 British and
Indian people frequently came into contact and these interactions had to
be carefully managed; this was especially pertinent when interracial com-
munications took place within anglicized areas, such as the colonial
home. Mills suggests that this was one reason the verandah became an
essential feature of imperial dwellings: this outside gallery could serve as a
meeting point for British and Indian people because, as a shaded part of
the house that is neither wholly inside nor outside, the verandah is
‘neither clearly public and, therefore, formal nor private and, therefore,
intimate’.37 In this ambiguous area, two cultures could come together
without transgressing racial boundaries. But, the ambivalence of the
verandah sat in marked opposition to Victorian architectural trends that

reinforced the separate spheres ideology by firmly distinguishing between
home and world. At this time, houses in the metropole saw the removal
of the small wrought-iron balconies that had fashionably decorated
Georgian homes; instead, thick walls and heavy doors generally placed
solid barriers between the two spaces.38 Ironically, in India, where the
supposed dangers of the outside world were felt to be even more pro-
nounced than in Britain, verandahs blurred the boundaries between
outside and inside, public and private, Indian and English. This fru-
strated women, like Marryat, who were accustomed to a distinct domes-
tic environment, seemingly secure from any external influences.
Imperial women’s writing frequently acknowledged the practical func-
tions of the verandah, such as the circulation of air and light; but, for some
women, its ambivalence engendered a feeling of vulnerability. The lack of
demarcation between British and Indian territories seemed to enable unfa-
miliar and dangerous elements to threaten the domestic space. Scottish
writer Violet Jacob (1831–1916), who spent five years in India, felt particu-
larly anxious about the wild animals that encroached upon her bungalow:
‘Even round this civilised house we live in the jackals yell at night and have
often been up into the verandah’.39 Evidently, for Jacob, the interstitial
terrace compromised the imperial qualities of her home. Thus, it is not
surprising that women writers sought to reconfigure and reclaim this con-
tentious space in their narratives in order to reassure readers of the safety and
the security of British enclaves in India. For example, when Marryat
described Dr C.’s verandah in Mysore, she emphasized its anglicization:
All along the back of the broad carpeted verandah were disposed settees and
couches, whilst the front part was occupied by various little tables and chairs,
where the ladies staying in the house might at any hour call for tea or other
refreshments, and the gentlemen enjoy their cigars, newspapers and
“brandy-pawnee” at the same time.40
Marryat cast the ever troublesome verandah in the image of a Victorian

drawing room where visitors enjoyed their customary after-dinner enter-
tainments. However, like the representation of Lady Wilson’s tent, we
cannot assume this description provided an accurate reflection of an
objective reality. The colonial verandah could also be fixed and framed
in order to convey particular cultural ideals. It is only by unpicking
representations of this space that we can understand these motivations.
Domestic descriptions might, therefore, require a closer look to reveal

fully their ideological underpinnings.
The instability of place and space has been highlighted by Blunt and
Rose, who argue that ‘claims for mimetic representation advanced by
both colonial maps and imperialist history can be challenged by decon-
structing both representations and notions of transparent space’.41
Furthermore, Blunt and Rose suggest, by critiquing transparency, as
well as universalism and essentialism, we can elucidate the ‘more frag-
mented, complex, and often contradictory notions of both space and
subjectivity’.42 This is certainly the case with women’s imperial writing
whereby the details often undercut the overall impression of domestic
anglicization. With this in mind, we must return to Marryat’s description
of Dr C.’s verandah. While she extolled the various virtues of the ver-
andah’s domestic qualities, she went on to say that, in this outside space,
it was rather more like dining at a restaurant than enjoying a private meal
in the comfort of one’s own home.43 In many respects, this summed up
much of colonial life for women in India, as Mills explains:
Private life was lived as if always in public, as if colonial superiority had to be

on constant display, not only conduct such as building railways and roads
and enforcing the law, but also in terms of more mundane acts such as
cooking, eating and relaxing.44
Private practices frequently took place in a public environment, and,

because of their visibility, assumed an imperial importance; this overlap
resisted the patriarchal encoding of place that separated public and private
and this altered the rules of gendered behaviour.45
The verandah was one of several colonial architectural features that
broke down the physical and ideological distinctions of separate spheres.
Indian bungalows also favoured an open-plan layout, as described by
Georgiana Theodosia Paget upon her arrival in India in 1857:
This bungalow has a large porch to drive under, and a wide matted verandah
running all round, into which the rooms open by jalousies, and which serves
the purpose of a passage. You enter at once into the centre one of three
sitting-rooms, which are only divided by screens of red silk, set in frames of
dark carved wood, of which all the furniture is composed, and which, in
delicacy of execution and beauty of design, exceeds any carving of the kind
I have ever seen. The ceilings are very lofty, and the walls white plaster. Our
bedroom was at one end of the house, with a bath-room, containing

enormous tubs, opening out of it. The beds stand in the middle of the
rooms, and are enclosed by mosquito curtains at night.46
One of the most troubling aspects of this open-plan structure was the lack
of a separate, enclosed area for the Indian servants to work, or to sleep; this
was a problem for even the most liberal memsahibs. Jacob complained that
her ayah, Rachel, kept her bedding on the floor in a roll that she simply put
out at night before going to sleep. Unfortunately, Rachel snored so loudly
the whole household could hear her, a problem Jacob foolishly attributed
to the stud Rachel wore in her nose.47
Middle-class homes in Britain tried to tackle the problem of snoring
servants by housing the domestic help in separate quarters, usually at the
top of the house and usually accessed via their own stairwell and entrance-
way to avoid any unnecessary contact with members of the family. This
model of spatial segregation clearly responded to the broader ideologies of
Victorian society whereby separate spheres, not only for men and women,
but for middle class and lower class, were of utmost importance. Partitions
within the home were designed to reinforce the hierarchical divisions of
society and, even though servants’ quarters were an ideal rather than a
reality for many families, the notion held tremendous ideological power in
terms of how Britain defined itself. Consequently, the lack of servants’
quarters in India disrupted this bourgeois identity.
As previously noted, women were generally powerless to change the
structure of the house; instead, they registered their commitment to
British bourgeois ideals by paying attention to interior decoration.
Hariot Hamilton-Temple-Blackwood, Marchioness of Dufferin and Ava
(1843–1936) and Vicereine of India (1884–88), stayed in various official
residences throughout the subcontinent and wrote extensively about her
forays into the world of interior design. She described in detail her many
colonial homes, specifying the various ways in which she imposed an
impression of Englishness upon her domestic spaces. For example, in
Calcutta, Lady Dufferin did her best to recreate the semiotics of an
English home: she rearranged the house in terms of the various social
groups that resided within:
I have thrown all conservative principles to the winds, have abandoned the
rooms used by all previous Viceroys, and have moved into the visitors’ wing.
So that I have now a lovely boudoir, looking on to the garden, instead of a
dull room upstairs, without a balcony or a view, and a nice room next for the
girls, who would otherwise have sat in their bedrooms. I am close to my own
staircase and nothing can be nicer. Having thus packed myself and belong-
ings into one of the elephant’s paws (or wings) of this house, we are really
comfortable.48
Lady Dufferin made changes to the various Viceregal residences, but she
noted that, even with these enhancements, an Indian home was markedly
different to an English one.
Lady Dufferin employed numerous Indian servants, many of whom
roamed freely throughout the house. She was increasingly frustrated by
the fact that her servants seemed to find their way into even in the most
secluded areas:
We each have a “jemadar”, or body servant, who attends to us at other

times. Mine stands outside my door and sees to all I want, goes in my
carriage with me, and never leaves me until I am safe inside my room. I
daren’t move a chair unless I am quite sure the door is well shut, else he
would be upon me, and I am sure he would even arrange my papers and my
photographs for me.
Nelly and Rachel also have their jemadars, and all the housemaids (and
they are legion) are men with long red tunics, turbans, gold braid – oh, so
smart! – while every now and then in one’s best drawing room, or in one’s
most private apartments, a creature very likely clad in a dingy white cotton
rag, makes his appearance, and seems to feel as much at home there as his
smarter brethren do. He is probably a gardener, and most likely presents you
with a bouquet of violets!49
The persistent presence of Indian servants was an unalterable fact of

colonial life, as I discuss in detail in Chapter 3, and they subverted any
sense of the inviolability of the colonial home. As a result, many British
women became concerned about indigenous incursions on their suppo-
sedly sacred domestic spaces and they bemoaned the subsequent loss of
privacy. Paget wrote:
The dressing operations in this country appear to be conducted in the most

primitive and public manner, with the blinds open to the verandah, along
which the native servants are continually passing; and as the upper part of all
the doors is open, every body hears what every body else says, all over the
house.50
Even in the most private recesses of their home, women felt exposed to
prying eyes. This disrupted the ideological function of the Victorian home
and they tried various ways of reasserting its symbolic properties. For
example, they used screens to secure some semblance of privacy in their
open-plan bungalows.
Screens are a decorative item of Eastern furniture that were somewhat
popular in Europe during the nineteenth century. In India, they had a
practical function, especially given the visibility of women within the
home. For example, Lady Dufferin used her screen to close off an area
for writing in the bedroom of the Viceregal Lodge in Simla. The bedroom
was the most private room in a house that frequently hosted public
functions, and it was surely Lady Dufferin’s awareness of her home’s
ambiguity that caused her to retreat into this secluded space. It is certainly
no coincidence that she referred to this room in Ruskinian terms as a
‘delightful little sanctum’.51 This praise of seclusion seemed to accord with
Victorian perceptions of women’s writing as a predominantly personal
activity; but this implication was wholly superficial. Lady Dufferin’s letters
to her mother Catherine Anne Rowan Hamilton were printed on the
Viceregal printing press and circulated to a wide number of friends and
family; they were then used as the basis for her published two-volume
travel account Our Viceregal Life in India: Selections from My Journal,
1884–1888 (1889). Furthermore, although she apparently sought out this
private space, she opened it up to public scrutiny by writing about it. She
provided a detailed account of how, in this very same room, she installed
imported furniture and decked it out in the ‘freshest and most English of
chintzes’.52 She then went a step further and took a photograph of it.
Lady Dufferin took up photography as an alternative to the more
typical pastime of watercolour painting. While she never published her
images, she exhibited a number of her photographs in an amateur exhibi-
tion in Simla and collected several of them together in an album circulated
among family and friends.53 Thus, she visually conveyed this most ‘private’
space to her peers and attested publicly to her preservation of Victorian
culture in India. Interestingly, this is the only domestic scene in the album.
Her other images are concerned with aristocratic picnics, panoramic land-
scapes, and orientalized vignettes, such as those taken in Mandalay in
1886 immediately after the annexation of Burma.54 Amidst these other
scenes, the desire to capture a seemingly ordinary space, like her bedroom,
indicates to us the importance of its symbolic properties; it also demon-
strates Lady Dufferin’s awareness of the power of the photograph and its
ability to exemplify her attendance to imperial identity, even while in her

bedroom at home.
The public nature of colonial homes meant that the enactment of
Englishness took place at all times and in all spaces. This was particularly
important in the official residences, where the lines between public and
private were almost entirely erased. The primary function of many of these
impressive buildings was to impart power and authority; domestic com-
forts were often an afterthought. For example, Government House in
Calcutta, which became for Lady Dufferin and her husband a semi-per-
manent base, was the result of Governor-General Richard Wellesley’s
imperial vision. Modelled on Kedleston Hall in Derbyshire, the impressive
architectural structure was first inhabited in 1803. Prior to this, the
governor-generals of India had lived in rather undistinguished rented
accommodation. When Lord Wellesley took up the position in 1798, he
felt that he deserved something fitting to his new status.55 He built a large
and commanding architectural monument, which eighty years later Lady
Dufferin found ‘intolerably uncomfortable’ despite its explicitly English
features.56 She found that it lacked a woman’s touch, and she immediately
set about making the house homely:
Both my time and my thoughts have been so entirely occupied with furnish-
ing that I have little else to tell you of. We are performing wonders in the
way of settling down, and I have arranged myself a very pretty drawing room
with another next door, which can be thrown open if there are people to
dinner.57
Domestic considerations, such as inviting guests for dinner, were no

simple matter for the Vicereine of India. She frequently hosted official
dinners that catered for over 100 people, and, on occasion, she provided
suppers for as many as 1,000 guests made up of the colonial elite. With
such large and important imperial gatherings held in her home, the
domestic space could barely be conceived as private. Therefore, as a public
and political space, every room had to evoke Englishness and to proclaim
the values of the Raj. Lady Dufferin achieved this partly by filling her
houses with markers, objects, and commodities that attested to Britain’s
national identity and cultural superiority.
The Victorians commonly utilized commodities to construct and con-
solidate identity. Didactic manuals, such as Charles L. Eastlake’s Hints on
Household Taste in Furniture, Upholstery and Other Details (1869),
encouraged the use of everyday objects as a means of domestic self-fash-

ioning.58 Hence, the middle and upper classes conspicuously displayed
particular items as evidence of gentility and class; this took place mainly in
the drawing room as this was the most public room of the house, used to
receive and entertain guests. In India, a similar process was at work except
this careful exhibition occurred in almost every room and the objects on
display were imported items from the metropolitan centre. Wilfrid Blunt
stated, in no uncertain terms, that British women in India were expected
to use only English furniture and furnishings: ‘No Collector’s wife will
wear an article of Indian manufacture . . . and all her furniture, even to her
carpets, must be of English make’.59 He advised readers to transport only
specific, notable objects from the metropole; through the act of reloca-
tion, these familiar household items acquired additional meaning. As
Kirstin H. Peterson points out, the extension of middle-class domesticity
could not be achieved by ‘mere reproduction and instead required selec-
tion and adaptation’.60 It was simply impossible to transport everything,
so particular items, such as books, pictures, and musical instruments, came
to hold great symbolic power.
In the absence of other status symbols, the memsahibs relied upon
material culture in more pronounced ways than were perhaps evident at
home. This preoccupation with materiality surely contributed to the
emerging stereotype of the superficial, artificial, memsahib. Seen from
afar, the vehement valorization of material goods as evidence of personal
worth seemed a little crass to metropolitan observers. But, for those in the
colonial centre, the appearance of middle-class Englishness in the home
helped British women to connect with one another through shared sen-
sibilities. For example, Lady Wilson formed an opinion of Mrs L.’s char-
acter based on her home, with its books and pictures; these items
apparently demonstrated her devotion to family and acted as ‘a living
refutation of the wholesale assertion that every woman in India is a gad-
about and a butterfly’.61
Due to the transient and temporary nature of much colonial living,
women generally advised against bringing anything too bulky. Furniture
exported from home would have to, in all likelihood, move around various
residences. Nonetheless, despite this practical consideration, the piano
features prominently in many women’s narratives. Evidently, the repre-
sentative value of the piano justified the inconvenience of its transporta-
tion to and through the subcontinent. Edith Lytton, Vicereine of India
(1876–80), was clearly aware of its cultural power: she expressed delight at
being reunited with it, and her children, after a long journey.62 The piano
signified her return to a civilized domestic environment after spending
time travelling around less anglicized areas of India. Similarly, Lady Wilson
used the piano, alongside a few other selected items, to differentiate
between comfortable domesticated spaces and the other inappropriate
accommodations she encountered:
Blessings on the man who dreamt of Sakesar and made it an English home. I
am delighted with our new quarters. You can’t imagine the kind of material
pleasure one has in material things that simply look English. The roof of this
house enchants me, merely because it slants instead of being flat . . . the
woodwork is actually varnished, the bow-windows are really windows, not
doors; the fireplaces are all in the right place, and now that our books,
pictures, piano and general household goods have arrived, we are as cosy as
cosy could be, and feel as if we had been established for centuries instead of
five weeks.63
Lady Wilson felt better equipped to project a state of normality and

security when surrounded by the items specifically mentioned here.
Although the physical properties of the house at Sakesar were delightful,
it was only once she adorned the interior with appropriate objects – books,
pictures, and the all-important piano – that she could really begin to
project a feeling of homeliness. It is notable that this same list of objects
appears in almost every domestic narrative. Books, pictures, and musical
instruments became almost fetishized, reiterated at every opportunity.
For those with gardens, the same fetishizing process took place outside
as well as inside the home, as Romita Ray explains:
Gardens were especially significant in such self-reflexive affirmations of

Britishness in the colonial setting. Environments refashioned with the taste
for specific plants, they reveal choices shaped by their participants’ social and
cultural backgrounds. A channel through which identity could be inscribed
onto the local landscape.64
Particular flowers, such as the rose, were planted in every available domes-
tic landscape. Private gardens and the various public botanical gardens
cultivated imported plants, and invited the colonizers to gaze upon famil-
iar flora and fauna and imagine themselves at home. A particularly endur-
ing monument to this mode of anglicizing India was found in the grounds
of Government House at Barrackpore.
This estate was another product of Governor-General Wellesley’s

imperial vision at the turn of the eighteenth century. A huge bungalow
with expansive gardens, female residents were drawn to its familiarity.
Lady Canning remarked on its resemblance to an English country
house.65 And Lady Dufferin recalled its similarity to an English park:
With Barrackpore we were quite delighted. I suppose you know that it is a

place the Viceroy has, about 12 miles from Calcutta. It is situated on the
river, and is quite like an English park, with beautiful single trees of different
kinds, and it is all so pretty.66
Lord Wellesley had cleared the grounds surrounding the house of their
original properties and reconstructed them in accordance with a pictur-
esque vista. He even went so far as to ‘build’ a Gothic ruin to accord fully
with the properties of the visual model he was following. The setting was
then further enhanced by the fact that, at the edge of the estate, across the
river at Serampore, a church steeple rose above the tree in a rather
comforting illusion of home.67 At Barrackpore, it seemed that, as far as
the imperial eye could see, there was a startling resemblance to the English
countryside.
The physical properties of the estate at Barrackpore, with its menagerie,
mapped walks, ponds, and terraces, unquestionably assumed an English
identity. The landscaped gardens did contain some indigenous plants, but
the overall organization originated from a European way of viewing nature
as something to be repressed and contained within an aesthetic system.
Imperial discourses perceived the Indian landscapes in negative terms as
wild and undisciplined, lacking in civility, and ultimately requiring the
order and control of a British gardener.68 These untamed spaces, seen as
detrimental and dangerous, stood in opposition to the rhetoric of progress
and development that underpinned the colonial mission in the second half
of the nineteenth century. Paget, for example, was critical of the extent to
which nature was allowed to take its course in some areas of the
subcontinent:
And now I must record the impression made upon my mind by this first
day’s journey through a more entirely Indian and less travelled country, than
any I have yet seen; it was one of astonishment that a highly civilised people
like the English should so long have been nominal masters of a land like this,
and yet done so very little towards its advancement. Here we have the richest
soil abandoned to the luxuriousness of nature; forests of magnificent timber

and full of trees whose fruit is good for food and yet inhabited only by the
cheetah and the tiger, and a fierce tribe of men, almost equally savage. . . . If
ever England comes forward boldly as the champion of her faith, then may
we hope to see civilisation and religion advance hand in hand, agriculture
flourish, and the commercial riches of this lovely country spread out to the
world by means of canal, road and railroad!69
She clearly advocated the clearing of the Indian landscape as a way of

suppressing all that was wild and undomesticated; this was a particularly
pertinent assertion given that she was writing during the course of the First
Indian War of Independence, a conflict that rhetorically pitted civilized
English women against an army of untamed Indian men. Bearing this in
mind, it was also fitting that the Angel at Cawnpore, discussed in the
Introduction, stood in a Memorial Garden that British women celebrated
for its vision of Englishness. Writers, such as Constance Gordon
Cumming, saw this space as unequivocally civilized:
[A]s to the garden, it is little short of a miracle to see such a triumph of art
over nature – to pass from the world of dust outside to those smooth green
lawns, with masses of such roses as might excite the envy of a Devonshire
rose-gardener.70
Here Cumming views the English organization of the garden as a ‘tri-

umph’ over the natural inclinations of the Indian landscape. For her, the
Memorial Garden rejected Indian influence entirely, both in terms of its
aesthetics and its actual exclusion of indigenous people who were not
allowed to enter. Significantly though, as Marryat pointed out in Gup:
Sketches of Anglo-Indian Life and Character (1868), roses are not actually
native to England.71
When Marryat arrived in Bangalore, she noted the abundance of pink
roses that surrounded the residential gardens. She also pointed out the
erroneous nature of people’s responses to the flowers:
They forget that prolific and prosperous as dear England is, her soil is not
the original source of everything worth looking at or tasting in this world,
and that the East claimed the rose as her peculiar property long before we
transplanted and adopted it as our national emblem.72
As Marryat’s revelation accurately noted, what constituted Englishness in

India was based largely on perception and performativity. As noted by
some early travellers, such as Anne Elwood, this caused a bemusing double
standard:
How would the china-fanciers of Great Britain delight in the beautiful little
cups in which the natives drink their coffee, but which in India, the English
reject with disdain, and in the fine jars which are here used for the most
ordinary purposes! However, when at Rome, one must do as they do at
Rome, and no one at Bombay could venture to make use of Asiatic china,
without running the risk of its being thought that he was too poor to
purchase European.73
Elwood understood that the colonizers’ sense of English culture did not
necessarily accord with the metropolitan centre’s ideas. In Victorian
England, for example, it was common to decorate houses and gardens
with ‘exotic’ features from the East because these features hinted at
Britain’s colonial power and authority. In the colonies, the same commod-
ities were generally not permitted because in this new setting they were
imbued with a different meaning: in the ambivalent domestic spaces of
India they might suggest contamination and infiltration. Deirdre David
discusses this very issue in Rule Britannia: Women, Empire, and Victorian
Writing (1995). She points out that, while in Calcutta, the British insisted
upon looking at an anglicized version of India, in London they sought out
orientalized spaces, such as the horticultural monument of colonial appro-
priation that is Kew Gardens.74 Therefore, Englishness in Victorian India
was a carefully constructed ideal that did not necessarily reflect the home
culture because, at home, national identity was ostensibly untroubled by
contaminating influences and contentious spaces.
Seemingly, the Viceregal residences were the only domestic places
where Eastern objects were on display. In these imposing, explicitly
imperial spaces, colonial exotica could operate as mementoes of Britain’s
power and might. This is evident from Lady Dufferin’s descriptions of the
new Viceregal Lodge in Simla. Unsatisfied with Peterhof, the official
summer residence, Lord Dufferin began work on the building of a huge
home on Observatory Hill. The project obviously reflected Lord
Dufferin’s self-aggrandizement, at home and abroad, but the imposing
property also bore his wife’s imperial input. Lady Dufferin’s writing out-
lines her contributions to the overall design and decoration. She discussed
at length their preparations for the new house, which were very much
connected in her mind with the annexation of Burma.
Lady Dufferin greeted her husband’s news about the British invasion of
Burma with typical marital and imperial complicity. The only concern she
voiced was that the preparations for war might make the country so poor
that they would not be able to afford to build their new house.75
Fortunately for her, the Viceroy’s bid to expand Britain’s colonial territory
by overthrowing King Thibaw and his wife was quickly realized.76 In the
immediate aftermath, Lady Dufferin visited Mandalay and plotted what
best to do with the spoils of war:
We looked at the “Prizes”. Very poor prizes they are! Theebaw’s ladies
were much too sharp for our soldiers, and managed to walk off with
everything. There is positively only one jewel, and that is French. It is a
necklace of small diamonds and rubies, and an ornament for the hair in
the shape of a peacock, to match; one very big, but bad emerald, and
three large good ones; that is absolutely all we could find worth sending
to the Queen. . . . We wanted to choose something for the Princess of
Wales, but there is nothing. We shall profit indirectly by this conquest for
we shall get carpets and chandeliers and mirrors for the new Government
House at Simla, and a few pieces of nice China and two handsome
Siamese mirrors for the Calcutta House, which hitherto has been sadly
destitute of ornament.77
Lady Dufferin registered the palace as a site of colonial presence. She

displaced the indigenous history just as the British forces plundered the
complex; and, by referring to the Burmese acquisitions as ‘prizes’, she
erased their local meaning and utility, thinking instead of the objects’
desirability as commodities. She transformed these items into artefacts of
times past, remnants of a culture that she was helping to erase. As such, her
attitude was symptomatic of a wider drive for colonial exhibition in the late
nineteenth century. She treated the subcontinent as a product available for
observation and ownership by displaying the spoils from the Burmese
palace in the new Viceregal Lodge. As will be discussed in Chapter 5,
upper-caste Indians and upper-class British frequently came together here.
During these gatherings, the plundered objects served as constant remin-
ders of Britain’s imperial power and authority. Yet, for all its extravagant
imperial assertions, the Lodge’s colonial identity was no less superficial
than the average bungalow.
Scratching the surface of this palatial structure reveals the artificial

nature of its authoritative demonstration: the house is not made from
stone, it is painted brick, and the pillars of the Great Hall are not
alabaster, but plaster. This inauthenticity was clearly not out of place
in late nineteenth-century Simla – the hill stations were frequently
criticized for their poor performances of English culture and society.
As we have seen throughout this chapter, the domestic spaces of
the subcontinent were full of flawed replications and recreations. In
Victorian India, there was a definite emphasis on outward appear-
ances and artful representations rather than genuine transformations.
The authors delight in the fact that they could create a broad impres-
sion of Englishness. It mattered little whether Marryat actually
bought wallpaper from the leading London supplier to decorate
her bungalow walls; what was important is that she said she did. In
doing so, the memsahibs perpetuated a myth of metropolitanism,
which enabled them to contribute to the formation of an imperial
identity.
Just as women in Britain played an important role in the formation of
middle-class identity through their writing of domestic matters, women
in India used the domestic space to construct Britain’s national identity.
They too fashioned the character of a large class of people through their
assertion of clear affiliations, distinct boundaries, and separate values. But
the change in environment, along with the change of power dynamics,
meant that the assertion of Englishness was disrupted. In Bhabhian
terms, it was ‘almost the same but not quite’.78 When we take a closer
look at these writings, what actually seems to emerge is a mimicry, rather
than a mirroring, of British domestic culture. Lady Dufferin’s drawing
room in the hill station of Simla may have looked like her drawing room
at home in Clandeboye, County Down, but it was by no means a
straightforward simulacrum.
NOTES
1. Tamara S. Wagner, ‘Introduction’ in Victorian Settler Narratives: Emigrants,
Cosmopolitans and Returnees in Nineteenth-Century Literature (London:
Pickering and Chatto, 2011), p. 4.
2. Sara Mills, Gender and Colonial Space (Manchester: Manchester University
Press, 2005), p. 4.
NOTES 47
3. Alison Blunt and Gillian Rose, ‘Introduction’ in Writing Women and Space:
Colonial and Postcolonial Geographies (London: Guildford Press, 1994),
p. 13.
4. Virginia Woolf, A Room of One’s Own/Three Guineas (1929. London:
Penguin 2000), p. 67.
5. Charlotte Perkins Gilman, The Yellow Wallpaper (1892. London: Virago,
2013).
6. Elizabeth Eastlake, ‘Lady Travellers’. Quarterly Review 75 (1845): 100.
7. Sarah Stickney Ellis, The Women of England: Their Social Duties, and
Domestic Habits (London: Fisher, Son, and Co., 1839), p. 25.
8. Ellis, The Women of England, p. 25.
10. Anne C. Wilson, Hints for the First Years of Residence in India (Oxford:
Clarendon Press, 1904), p. 7.
11. Anne C. Wilson, Letters from India (1911. London: Century Publishing
Company, 1984), p. xiii.
12. Wilson, Letters, p. 4.
13. Laura E. Donaldson, Decolonizing Feminisms Race, Gender and Empire
Building (London: Routledge, 1993), p. 1.
15. For a detailed discussion of Victorian homes, see Judith Flanders, The
Victorian House: Domestic Life from Childbirth to Deathbed (London:
HarperCollins, 2004).
17. Flora Annie Steel and Grace Gardiner in The Complete Indian Housekeeper
and Cook offer a solution to this problem of high ceilings: they suggest the
use of friezes ‘to lower the obtrusive height of most Indian rooms’ (1888.
London: Heinemann, 1909), p. 28.
21. Lady Lytton also expressed her enjoyment of this outdoor life in India,
1876–1880 (London: privately printed at the Chiswick Press, 1899), p. 51.
22. Critics generally perceive Susanna Moodie’s Roughing it in the Bush (1852)
as the quintessential frontier narrative; as Tamara S. Wagner points out in
her Introduction to Victorian Settler Narratives, Moodie was a ‘notoriously
reluctant settler’ frequently complaining about the harsh reality of life as an
emigrant (London: Pickering and Chatto, 2011), p. 5.
23. For a detailed discussion of Moodie’s experiences, see Mills, Gender and
Colonial Space, p. 114.
25. For further discussion of the roles and responsibilities of imperial wives, see
Chapters 3 and 4.
28. The garden was full of roses, the supposedly quintessential English flower,
and sweet pea, which was hugely popular in the late-Victorian period. For
the full description, see Wilson, Letters, p. 38.
29. Henry Yule and A. C. Burnell, Hobson-Jobson: The Anglo-Indian Dictionary
(1886. Ware: Wordsworth Editions, 1996), p. 129.
30. Yule and Burnell, Hobson-Jobson, p. 129.
31. Marryat explains that if you were foolish enough to travel without your own
food and servants, then you were usually served the unsatisfactorily standard
meal of curry and rice and a desert of Indian fruit. For a full account, see
Florence Marryat, Gup: Sketches of Anglo-Indian Life and Character
(London: Richard Bentley, 1868), p. 65.
32. Marryat, Gup, p. 64.
33. Marryat, Gup, pp. 202–4.
34. John Ruskin, Sesame and Lilies: Two Lectures Delivered at Manchester in
1864 (London: Smith, Elder and Co., 1865), p. 148.
35. Kathryn Hughes, The Short Life and Long Times of Mrs. Beeton (London:
Fourth Estate, 2005), p. 249.
38. Judith Flanders, The Victorian House, p. xxiv.
39. Violet Jacob, Diaries and Letters from India, 1895–1900, ed. Carol
Anderson (Edinburgh: Canongate, 1990), p. 30.
41. Blunt and Rose, ‘Introduction’, p. 14.
42. Blunt and Rose, ‘Introduction’, p. 19.
45. For a detailed discussion, see Blunt and Rose, ‘Introduction’, p. 1.
46. Georgiana Theodosia Fitzmoor-Halsey Paget, Camp and Cantonment: A
Journal of Life in India in 1857–1859, With Some Account of the Way
Thither (London: Longman, Green, Longman, Roberts, and Green,
1865), p. 59.
47. Jacob, Diaries and Letters, p. 21.
48. Hariot Dufferin, Our Viceregal Life in India: Selections from My Journal,
1884–1888, 2 vols. (London: John Murray, 1889), 1: 14.
49. Dufferin, Our Viceregal Life, 1: 15.
50. Paget, Camp and Cantonment, p. 59.
NOTES 49

53. Several of Lady Dufferin‘s photographs are included in an unpublished
album that, along with her letters from India, resides in the family archive.
Photographs. Dufferin and Ava Papers. Public Record Office of Northern
Ireland. D/1071/J/D/6.
54. For a detailed discussion of these photographs, see Éadaoin Agnew,
‘Refracting the Raj: Hariot Dufferin’s Photographs of India, 1844–88’ in
Women, Travel and Truth, ed. Clare Broome Saunders (London:
Routledge, 2014): pp. 77–91; and Éadaoin Agnew and Leon Litvack,
‘The Subcontinent as Spectator Sport: The Photographs of Lady Hariot
Dufferin, Vicereine of India.’ History of Photography 30 (2006): 348–59.
55. For a detailed discussion of Government House, see Jan Morris, Stones of
Empire: The Buildings of the Raj (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1983),
p. 67.
58. Charles L. Eastlake, Hints on Household Taste in Furniture, Upholstery, and
Other Details (London: Longmans, Green, and Co., 1869), p. 2.
59. Wilfrid Scawen Blunt, India Under Ripon: A Private Diary: Continued from
his ‘Secret History of the English Occupation of Egypt’ (London: T. Fisher
Unwin, 1909), p. 248.
60. Kirstin H. Peterson, ‘Reconstructing British Domesticity on the North
American Frontier’ in Victorian Settler Narratives: Emigrants,
Cosmopolitans, and Returnees in Nineteenth-Century Literature, ed.
Tamara S. Wagner (London: Pickering and Chatto, 2011), p. 57.
62. As quoted in Mary Lutyens, The Lyttons in India: An Account of Lord
Lytton’s Viceroyalty, 1876–1880 (London: John Murray, 1979), p. 89.
64. Romita Ray, ‘“A Dream of Beauty”: Inscribing the English Garden in
Victorian India’ in Intrepid Women: Victorian Artists Travel, ed. Jordana
Pomeroy (Aldershot: Ashgate, 2005), p. 61.
65. Lady Canning writes: ‘I believe it would look rather nice even as an English
country-house, so marvellously is it improved by 450 yards of rose-chintz, a
great many arm-chairs, small round tables, framed drawings etc’. For the full
description, see Charlotte Canning, A Glimpse of the Burning Plain: Leaves
from the Indian Journals of Charlotte Canning, ed. Charles Allen (London:
Michael Joseph Ltd., 1986), p. 34.
67. For further discussion of Barrackpore, see Morris, Stones of Empire, p. 68.
68. Ray Desmond, The European Discovery of the Indian Flora (Oxford: Oxford
University Press, 1992), p. 282.

70. Constance Frederica Gordon Cumming, In the Himalayas and On the
Indian Plains (London: Chatto and Windus, 1884), p. 101.
73. Anne Katharine Curteis Elwood, Narrative of a Journey Overland from
England by the Continent of Europe, Egypt, and the Red Sea, to India;
Including a Residence there, and Voyage Home, in the Years 1825, 26, 27,
and 28, 2 vols. (London: Henry Colburn and Richard Bentley, 1830),
p. 411.
74. Deirdre David, Rule Britannia: Women, Empire, and Victorian Writing
(Ithaca: Cornell University Press, 1995), p. 121.
75. Hariot Dufferin, Ten Printed Journals. Dufferin and Ava Papers. (Public
Record Office of Northern Ireland), 1: 133.
76. King Thibaw and his Chief Queen Supyalatt were the last rulers of Myanmar
(now Burma); their kingdom was annexed by Britain during Lord Dufferin’s
Viceregency and Thibaw and his wife were dispatched to India.
77. Dufferin, Ten Printed Journals, 3: 51.
78. Homi K. Bhabha, The Location of Culture (London: Routledge, 1994)
p. 86.
CHAPTER 3
Good Housekeeping: Household

Management and Domestic Organization
Life in India always partakes of the nature of a campaign. (Flora Annie

Steel and Grace Gardiner, The Complete Indian Housekeeper and
Cook, p. 32)
Once the memsahib had secured her bungalow, draped her chintzes, and
displayed her books and pictures, she had to tackle the difficult task of
household management. Although physical appearances went a long way
toward evoking an English atmosphere, interior decoration was just the first
step on the long road to domestic bliss. The next stage, as outlined by several
women writers, was good housekeeping, by which they meant hiring, train-
ing, and supervising servants in order to maintain strict domestic routines
that would in turn support the health and happiness of all members of the
household. For the most part, this chapter is not concerned with whether
writers, or even readers, of domestic primers upheld these regimes and
routines. Rather, I am interested in how women’s representation of house-
hold management played a vital role in producing a coherent national
identity for the colonial residents. Some of these texts have been introduced
in Chapter 2 in relation to their conception of physical spaces; we return to
them here because many imperial writers also inscribed particular modes of
domestic behaviour, both for themselves and their servants. Furthermore, as
seen below, there were several texts devoted solely to this particular subject.

DOI 10.1007/978-3-319-33195-9_3
52 3 GOOD HOUSEKEEPING: HOUSEHOLD MANAGEMENT . . .
Feminist critics such as Nancy Armstrong and Elizabeth Langland have

outlined the role of British domestic and conduct literature in the formation
of English, middle-class identity. They show how, from the eighteenth
century, these books were instrumental in shaping ideas about gender and
class. As Langland explains: ‘In a reciprocal process, then, middle-class
women were produced by domestic discourses even as they reproduced
them in order to consolidate middle-class control’.1 Similarly, domestic
memoirs and manuals written in Victorian India produced a code of con-
duct for the English exiles in order to consolidate colonial power. These
texts constrained British women through a very Victorian version of femi-
ninity, while simultaneously giving them a voice within the dominant
imperial system. This duality occurred because national identity was, in
part, transmitted to the colonial community through domestic identities.
By the mid-nineteenth century, as Anne McClintock argues, there had
emerged in Britain a ‘cult of domesticity’.2 This powerful ideal was then
exported to the Empire as part of Britain’s national character and evidence of
a cultural superiority. There, seemingly private matters concerning the orga-
nization and upkeep of the home became entangled in public discourse. For
example, individual and domestic hygiene became signifiers of imperial
success, racial attributes, and/or cultural values; as McClintock points out,
‘Nothing is inherently dirty; dirt expresses a relation to social value and social
disorder’.3 Thus, the perceived lack of cleanliness in the colonial home was
seen to reflect the poor moral values of indigenous India as embodied by the
local servants, who posed a problem for imperial ideals of anglicization.
The relationship between memsahibs and their servants has previously
been examined by Nupur Chaudhuri. She argues that, by writing about
their Indian servants, memsahibs identified themselves as active participants
in Britain’s imperial venture in India.4 It is, therefore, somewhat ironic that
women gained access to the public sphere of the Empire by documenting
their various interactions and interrelations within the private sphere.
However, as discussed in Chapter 2, because the colonial home was imbued
with imperial ideologies, women treated it as a microcosm of empire. They
drew comparisons to the broader colonial context and established an
‘empire in the home’, to use Rosemary Marangoly George’s phrase.5 In
this domestic space, there was constant conflict between the memsahib and
her indigenous employees who did not live up to expected standards of
cleanliness and organization. And, in women’s writing, there was a tension
between the need to gloss over such difficulties in favour of highlighting
GOOD HOUSEKEEPING: HOUSEHOLD MANAGEMENT . . . 53
domesticity’s civilizing properties and the desire to catalogue various obsta-

cles in order to show the extent of women’s work. Thus, for many British
women, housekeeping in India was conceived as a kind of battleground in
which they attempted to assert their authority by adopting a management
style that echoed the imperial administrations of India. In dealing with their
indigenous employees, they imagined themselves as colonial leaders, a con-
figuration that was extremely empowering. Furthermore, as colonial home-
makers, they learned various transformative skills, such as management
techniques, leadership qualities, and economics and finance; these attributes
prepared them for useful work outside the domestic environment and
contributed to women’s growing confidence in the latter decades of the
nineteenth century.
*****
In The Garden of Fidelity (1929), Flora Annie Steel recalled that when she
first travelled to India as a newly-wed in 1868 she knew nothing about
colonial domestic practices, except for a little information that she gleaned
from a few select books.6 She also complained that women of her genera-
tion were expected to participate in the important project of keeping
England alive in India through the exemplification of their domestic
culture, and yet they were often kept ignorant about how best to do so.7
It was this ignorance that prompted her and her friend Grace Gardiner to
produce The Complete Indian Housekeeper and Cook (1888). This popu-
lar, practical manual outlined everything a woman needed to know about
moving to, and living in, India. It provided women with practical assis-
tance regarding the interior decoration of their home, and acted as a kind
of textbook on household management, including extensive information
on working with Indian servants.
The two authors of this expansive manual had substantial experience of
life in India. Gardiner arrived in the subcontinent in the 1860s with her
husband John William Gardiner, who joined the Indian Civil Service in
1864. Together, they brought up a large family in India. Conversely, Steel
and her husband had only one child who survived. Henry William Steel also
worked for the Indian Civil Service, and immediately after the couple were
married in England, they set sail for India where they lived for twenty-two
years. These two women dedicated their book to all ‘English girls to who
fate may assign the task of being house-mothers in our Eastern Empire’;
their primer, packed full of detailed, descriptive information, quickly
became the standard reference book for anyone undertaking new domestic
adventures in Victorian India.8 It went through at least ten editions
between 1888 and 1921.9
The guide opens with a chapter on the various responsibilities of
the colonial mistress. The two authors lamented the lackadaisical
attitude of some British women in India and, to ensure there was no
doubt about imperial expectations, they set out a standardized list of the
colonial wife’s primary responsibilities, which were no different, they
insisted, to those at home:
[T]he whole duty of an Indian mistress towards her servants is neither more
or less than it is in England. Here, as there, a little reasonable human sym-
pathy is the best oil for the household machine. Here, as there, the end and
object is not merely personal comfort, but the formation of a home – that unit
of civilisation where father and children, master and servant, employer and
employed, can learn their several duties. When all is said and done also, herein
lies the natural outlet for most of the talent peculiar to women.10
Steel and Gardiner were quite clear about the fact that women did not
undertake domestic management merely for personal gain. Instead, they
claimed, the upkeep of a home in India, with all its attendant ideological
constructs, played an important role in colonial society through its power
to act as a civilizing and unifying tool. Steel and Gardiner insisted, there-
fore, that English seeds were to be planted in the gardens, English dishes
were to be served at the table, and English standards were to be used to
measure the value of one’s Indian servants.11
In a didactic, yet comforting tone, Steel and Gardiner reassured their
readers that this anglicization was entirely possible: ‘In regard to actual
housekeeping, the authors emphatically deny the common assertion that it
must necessarily run on different lines to what it does in England’.12
Fellow imperial writer Maud Diver (1867–1945) supported this idea in
The Englishwoman in India (1909). In fact, she suggested that managing
a home in the subcontinent was actually much easier than managing one
in Britain.13 After all, she explained, there were no staircases or passages
to keep in order; no blinds or sashes to repair; no windows to clean; no
gas-pipes to leak; no water-pipes to freeze; no boilers to burst; and no
grates to polish.14 In light of all these reassurances, we might wonder why
there then emerged a plethora of domestic manuals, such as Mrs Temple-
Wright’s Baker and Cook: A Domestic Manual for India (1896) or The
Memsahib’s Manual Being an Easy Guide to Learning Hindustani, With

Some Advice on Health and the Household by A. K. D.-H. (1914).
The Complete Indian is undoubtedly the most comprehensive of the
various imperial domestic guides; it is essentially a manual of every-
thing that an imperial housewife needs to know. It details what to do,
when to do it, and how to do it. As noted above, the book begins by
specifying the various duties of the colonial wife; it then provides
estimates of expected domestic expenditure and explains how to man-
age everything from the stables to the preparation of high-class entrées
and garnishes. There is guidance on how best to hire servants and train
servants. There are even suggested punishments for disobedient ser-
vants. It includes hints on the management of young children and
ideas for the preservation of physical and mental health. There are
chapters on cows, poultry, and dogs; on gardening, cooking, and
cleaning. Indeed, there are stipulations for virtually every aspect of
colonial domestic life, disseminating a set of seemingly practical guide-
lines to which readers could adhere. However, as Langland advises, we
must approach such texts with a degree of scepticism:
Victorian etiquette manuals, management guides, and charitable treatises

cannot be taken as straightforward accounts of middle-class life: these non-
literary materials did not simply reflect a “real” historical subject but helped
to produce it through their discursive practices. These were documents
aimed specifically at enabling the middle class to consolidate its base of
control through strategies of regulation and exclusion.15
Langland explains that conduct literature does not necessarily reflect

the real lives of their authors and readers; instead, it reflects the broader
culture’s ideals and ideologies.16 In this way, she argues, women’s domes-
tic writing helped to shape mores and values by outlining appropriate
modes of behaviour to which their contemporary readers aspired, if not
adhered. As Langland goes on to suggest, even if individuals did not
wholly enact the prescribed patterns of behaviour, the domestic texts still
contributed to broader ideological convictions:
Even if we are inclined to be sceptical about the possibility of persons

observing such rules in daily life, the very popularity of the etiquette manuals
reveals a pervasive awareness of and commitment to the class distinction they
create and reinforce.17
In Victorian India, domestic writers were less concerned with class dis-
tinctions and more intent upon elucidating racial and cultural differences
in accordance with dominant imperial discourses. They declared a resis-
tance to all things Indian, even those objects and concepts that were
openly admired in Britain.
In the metropole, women were publishing recipes for curry and rice in
periodicals, newspapers, cookbooks, and household manuals. Eliza
Acton’s popular Modern Cookery, in all its Branches (1845) provided
readers with several choices of curry, and Mrs Isabella Beeton, in her
well-regarded The Book of Household Management (1861), devoted a
small section to various Indian staples such as mustards, curry powders,
and pickles.18 Thus, in Victorian Britain, as Chaudhuri explains, upper-
middle-class and middle-class women served as a major channel for Indian
artefacts and mediated Indian tastes.19 Yet, as seen in Chapter 2, this was
emphatically not the case for British women in India. In The Complete
Indian, for example, there are over 100 pages devoted to recipes and
cookery and only two are given to Indian cooking:
The following native dishes have been added by request. It may be men-
tioned incidentally that most native recipes are inordinately greasy and
sweet, and that your native cooks invariably know how to make them fairly
well.20
Such vigorous and visible assertions of Englishness are identified by

Chaudhuri as evidence of a racial and cultural exclusion that was particular
to the subcontinent:
[N]ineteenth-century memsahibs, to create a British lifestyle in the Indian

subcontinent, seem to have collectively rejected Indian objects in their
colonial homes and refused Indian dishes in their diets. These expressions
of intransigent ethnocentrism among memsahibs have led scholars of Indian
colonial history to conclude that British women were largely responsible for
maintaining social distance between the ruler and the ruled. . . . Yet the
memsahibs’ negative attitude regarding the use of Indian goods and dishes
was almost totally confined to the colonial environment.21
As discussed in the previous chapter, Englishwomen were fully conscious

of their duty to create an ethnocentric home environment that supported
their husbands’ imperial obligations, regardless of personal taste or
culinary preference. But, when these same women returned to Britain, and
were no longer directly involved in the imperial enterprise, they were freer
to transmit a culture that they seemingly had rejected.22
This kind of cultural exclusion, witnessed in women’s imperial writing,
suggests that eating habits and dietary customs in India were treated as
important cultural signifiers and were subject to serious regulation.
Seemingly innocuous comments about recipes and ingredients acquired
additional import. Thus, when Georgiana Theodosia Paget received news
that war was raging throughout the country, she deliberately informed
readers that she was enjoying ‘a well-appointed English dinner’ in Malabar
Hill.23 She declared that, although the accounts from Lucknow and the
North-West were very bad, she sat down to a meal which, with a few
exceptions, was ‘very much like one’s ordinary fare at home’.24 There was
clearly a strong subtext to such declarations: Paget wanted her contem-
porary readers to know that, even in the most troublesome circumstances,
it was possible for the imperial mistress to insist upon British standards.
Hence, she implicitly set the civilized conduct of the British residents in
contrast to the barbarous and violent behaviour of the Indian people at
this time.
Even Violet Jacob, who openly admitted in her letters home that she
preferred the banks of Depalpur to a Christmas dinner table at home, felt
compelled to mention that she sat down to a traditional British meal on
the Christian feast day.25 She painted a rather familiar picture of the festive
repast: ‘We had turkey and plum pudding for dinner and a few holly
berries on the table’.26 These Christmas celebrations were evidently per-
formative and political; they created an illusion of Englishness in India and
distinguished between those who celebrated the Christian holiday and
those who did not. Similarly, there were a number of discrepancies
between Steel’s own behaviour and the general advice she proffered in
her domestic manual.
During Steel’s time in India, she celebrated Indian women’s traditional
arts and crafts and wrote an article on phulkari embroidery (1883). At the
same time, like the texts discussed in Chapter 2, The Complete Indian
instructed memsahibs to decorate their houses exclusively with British goods:
Carpets for the sitting-rooms and all curtains must usually be taken, piano,
small tables, comfortable chairs, knickknacks [sic], ornaments (many of the
latter packed in among your dresses), chair backs, tablecovers, something to
cover the mantelpiece, and possibly a few pictures.27
The domestic manual also suggested that British women need only learn
Hindustani in order to communicate with – that is, give orders to – their
servants, a directive that had little bearing on reality.28 A number of
women writers, Steel included, admitted that they studied Hindustani,
out of interest, during their leisure time.29 In fact, Steel learnt various local
languages while accompanying her husband around India. Nonetheless, in
spite of her engagement with Indian culture, The Complete Indian, as an
imperial text, emphasized the distinct differences between the character-
istics of the colonizer and the colonized.
Imperial women writers were only too aware that, because the collec-
tive identity of a nation is totally imagined, and somewhat arbitrary in
nature, it needs to be set out and disseminated via the written word.30
According to Steel and Gardiner, in order for this cohesion to work fully,
all women had to subscribe to the same set of middle-class customs and
traditions; any manifest differences between individual households could
ultimately weaken Britain’s overall authority by diluting the markers of its
imperial identity.31 Furthermore, in order to consolidate ideas about racial
and cultural superiority, domestic writers repeated a set of basic ideas
about the identity of their servants, as Chaudhuri explains:
[T]he wives of officials, military officers, missionaries, and merchants,

expounded an image of Indians to the female reading public in Britain
through their letters and diaries to female relatives, and through published
autobiographies, advice manuals, articles, and advice columns in women’s
periodicals. Since servants were the group of Indians with whom memsahibs
had the most contact, their relationship with domestics shaped British
women’s attitudes towards the Indian in general. The servants’ dark skin
and their religious, social, and linguistic differences contributed to the
negative attitudes of the memsahibs towards them.32
Women writers made little effort to distinguish between the various Indian
races and religions. Instead, Chaudhuri argues, based on their interactions
with a few indigenous individuals, they inscribed familiar racial stereotypes
which they applied liberally to the indigenous people:
Assuming the roles of experts in dealing with their servants whom they saw
as superstitious, unintelligent, dirty, lazy, and dishonest, memsahibs created
an identity for themselves as specialists on household management in India.
Since memsahibs had the most contact with their indigenous servants, they
generalised this image for the entire Indian population.33
Women writers repeated, time and again, a set of broad generalizations

about the Indian people they met, most of which were negative. On
occasion, they included positive comments about servants, but these
tended to refer to an individual who was isolated as an exception to the
rule. For example, Anne C. Wilson gave high praise for her bearer, Akbar,
who worked for her and her husband for thirteen years. The bearer was the
head servant in an Indian household, and Lady Wilson considered Akbar
to be completely honest and honourable; she entrusted him with the keys
to the cellar and storeroom and even with a certain amount of money.
Eventually, he became a mediator between her and the other servants, and
he gradually took on many daily domestic responsibilities.34
Alternatively, women writers often presented negative experiences
through broad, sweeping statements that reiterated common tropes and
contributed to an overarching colonial episteme whereby the Indian peo-
ple were consistently seen as inherently inferior to the British colonizers.
Over time, such representations took on the mantle of fact. Meyda
Yeğenoğlu argues that it was through the repetition of such tropes that
Britain subjugated its colonized nations:
The colonial episteme is maintained by a reiteration or citation of certain

statements and representations. It is this citational nature of colonial dis-
course that guarantees its “factual” status, its “naturalness” while simulta-
neously concealing the conventions upon which it is based.35
The persistence of particular ideas suggested an element of truth, and

repetitions in imperial women’s writing fostered perceptions of the
Indian people as unable to govern or manage themselves.
Steel and Gardiner attested to the Indian people’s need for governance
by utilizing a familial rhetoric that proclaimed the childlike nature of
Indian employees. They instructed readers to treat their servants with
the same benevolent authority they would bestow upon their offspring:
[T]here is at present very little to which we can appeal in the average Indian
servant, but then, until it is implanted by training, there is very little sense of
duty in a child; yet in some well-regulated nurseries obedience is a foregone
conclusion. The secret lies in making rules, and keeping to them. The Indian
servant is a child in everything save age, and should be treated as a child; that
is to say, kindly, but with the greatest firmness.36
The inferior nature of Indian servants was also evoked through an evolu-
tionary model. Mrs Guthrie, for example, described her ayah as very small,
and very black, stating that she looked exactly like a monkey wrapped up in
white muslin.37 Such configurations emerged with force in the 1860s and
1870s, and, as Chaudhuri notes, surely reflected the influence of Social
Darwinism.38 Around this time, women writers blamed poor standards of
housekeeping on the biological, or ‘natural’, qualities of their servants.
Lady Wilson was very clear about the inherent cause of their poor work
ethic: ‘What we are apt to call laziness and stupidity on their part might
more justly be recognized as the inborn inertness and physical weakness of
their race’.39 For her, the Indians’ innate characteristics made it difficult to
maintain appropriate English domestic standards, a suggestion that fed
into broader imperial ideas that sought to justify colonial rule. Arguably
then, as Chaudhuri and other feminist historians have noted, in Victorian
India, the home acted as a microcosm of empire as imperial women
attempted to contribute to colonial control by replicating colonial power
structures on a domestic level. However, what they have failed to see is
that, like the Empire more generally, the inscribed hierarchies of the home
were never totally secure. As Mary Louise Pratt identifies, colonization was
never the uncontested imposition of one culture upon another.40 In the
‘contact zones’, power was always a struggle.
The colonial domestic environment provides an excellent example of
Pratt’s ‘contact zone’, a social space where two cultures ‘meet, clash, and
grapple with each other’ in an asymmetrical relation of domination and
subordination.41 Imperial writers often stressed their separation and distinc-
tion from the colonized people, but there were always spaces in the Empire
where the two cultures came into collision and where they were both
transformed as a result.42 Indisputably, English and Indian individuals
came into close contact in the colonial home. The effects of this contact
were apparent in women’s writing. It is clear that British women struggled
to protect themselves and their domestic haven from Indian influence, and
this affected their ability to maintain an orderly English household.
Mrs John Gilpin opened her manual, Pakwān-ki-kitāb: Memsahib’s
Guide to Cookery in India (1914), with a focus on the trials and tribula-
tions endured by the colonial wife:
Having suffered myself from being planted in this country with no

knowledge of the language or the customs, and recalling vividly how
utterly forlorn I felt, in preparing this little manual for such as I was then
I have endeavoured to make everything as simple, as clear and as concise

as may be.43
Gilpin stated that housekeeping in India was by no means a simple

replication of domestic work in Britain; this was largely due to a daily
struggle with her Indian servants. While some very wealthy Victorians
brought one or two servants from Britain, most colonial homes were
composed of a number of Indian servants employed by the mistress
upon her arrival in a given area. According to women writers, even the
hiring of suitable employees was not an easy process. For the most part,
women relied on references, because new arrivals had neither friends nor
family whom they could ask for recommendations. Typically, servants who
came to be interviewed brought a certificate provided by their former
masters. However, Lady Wilson explained that these documents were
not entirely reliable. She found that when the British parted with a servant,
they did not want to ruin his chances of ever getting future employment
and were ‘too disposed to treat these certificates as of the nature of
obituaries, and be to the virtues of the departed ever kind, and to his
faults a little blind’.44 This kindness, she noted, made it rather difficult for
their compatriots to distinguish between good and bad servants.45
Once the memsahib secured some employees, the next major diffi-
culty that arose was the question of communication. For this reason, as
noted above, Steel and Gardiner insisted that all British women in
India learnt some Hindustani:
The first duty of a mistress is, of course, to be able to give intelligible orders
to her servants; therefore it is necessary she should learn to speak
Hindustani. No sane Englishwoman would dream of living, say, for twenty
years, in Germany, Italy or France, without making the attempt, at any
rate, to learn the language. She would, in fact, feel that by neglecting to do
so she would write herself down an ass. It would be well, therefore, if ladies
in India were to ask themselves if a difference in longitude increases the
latitude allowed in judging of a woman’s intellect.46
The possibility that any woman could conceive of coming to India without
learning how to give orders to her servants confounded these domestic
authors. But not everyone had the time to learn the language before they
arrived in the subcontinent and began their colonial housekeeping duties.
Many memsahibs simply learned on the job, and, as they acquired the
language, they found themselves subject to some rather humorous

miscommunications.
The Memsahib’s Manual suggests that linguistic misunderstandings
occurred with some frequency. It includes the case of one young lady
who solemnly told her cook ‘Ham plum-pudding hai, boil char gunta’,
which translates as ‘I am a plum pudding, boil four hours’.47 There was
also the instance in which a gentleman friend who recently arrived in
India to be an Indigo planter and told his men to fill the ‘Kazanchi’
(cashier) with water, clearly meaning ‘Kazana’ (tank); luckily, the ser-
vants used their initiative and deposited the water in the appropriate
place.48 While the author of the manual frequently commended servants
for their creative understanding, the narrative essentially highlighted the
problems of not being able to communicate effectively with one’s
employees. Notably, these anecdotes also acted as justification for the
publication of the manual, which doubled as a vocabulary book. The text
is helpfully broken up into useful word lists, covering practical topics
such as furniture, crockery, linen, food and drink, animals, and parts of
the body etc. As such, it enabled the colonial mistress to issue basic
orders, perpetuating the assumption that no other forms of communica-
tion were needed or desired.
For women who were unable to master the language sufficiently, the
main duties of the various servants were also available in translated tracts,
published in a variety of indigenous languages. The mistress of the house
issued these documents to the individual servants and directed them to
follow the printed instructions. The pamphlets undoubtedly offered
much-needed support for new arrivals but they were no match for the
commanding tone of an imperious mistress. Even with an authoritative
voice, and a knowledge of the language, housekeeping in India could be
quite challenging, especially at first. The number of servants, the gender of
servants, the types of servants, their specific duties, the amount they were
paid, the way they carried out their tasks, and their mores and values
were all entirely new to the women of Victorian India. And, to confuse
matters further, these important details differed depending on the region
in which you resided.
As we have seen, for many women, life in India usually involved a series
of domestic upheavals that they were powerless to oppose. At the mercy of
their husband’s job, and/or the Indian climate, women had to be able to
cope with sudden changes in situation. Steel had more experience with
this than most women: she moved house fifteen times in sixteen years.
And, as she pointed out in her memoir, not her manual, this disruption to
domestic duties was something English households did not generally have
to endure:
I often wonder how some English households would take an experience

which comes very often to Indian households. You have just interviewed the
gardener, settled where seeds should be sown, plants planted. You have
perhaps arranged for some festival to be held somewhere, next month, then
you find you are being transferred.49
Each time the memsahib moved, she had to start all over again: more often
than not, employees were locals who were not willing to relocate to
another region. So, the memsahib had to hire new servants every time
she arrived at a new destination; this was particularly frustrating because
there were regional variations between job titles and specific duties. Steel
and Gardiner attempted to ease this daunting situation by providing a
table that explicated the various roles of the Indian servants, complete with
these regional variations. This was followed by a small narrative section on
each of the servants, outlining every aspect of their domestic role.
Regardless of region, the majority of Indian servants were men. The
average middle-class house in India had only one female employee, the
ayah; this was wholly different from the metropole where there was
usually only one male servant. As frequently the sole female servant,
the ayah had many responsibilities based around the personal care of
British women and children. If there were no children in the house,
she acted largely as a lady’s maid carrying out a multitude of duties
that included bringing morning tea, preparing the mistress’s bath,
cleaning the mistress’s room, hemming dusters, arranging flowers,
and sewing buttons.50 In this capacity, almost every Englishwoman
in India engaged daily with their ayah. The memsahibs generally
represented these interactions in relatively positive terms, perhaps
because of their intimacy and the fact that the ayah facilitated their
imperial duties as wives and mothers, as I discuss further in Chapter 4.
In addition to the ayah, colonial households usually had to employ a
bearer, sweeper, cook, khitmutgâr, musolchi, bheesti, dirzi, dhobi, and
syce. Then, depending on the size of the home, the size of the husband’s
wage packet, and the location of the home, the memsahib may have
enlisted additional domestic help. In total, homes often employed roughly
double the number of servants a middle-class family in Britain employed.
The Viceregal household had the largest number of servants, and the
number of domestic workers employed there steadily increased through-
out the latter decades of the nineteenth century. During Edith Lytton’s
time as Vicereine, about 300 servants worked in Government House in
Calcutta. In addition to these domestic helpers, she reportedly hired about
100 Indian cooks presided over by a European chef, who was apparently
driven to complete distraction by his underlings; seemingly, he found the
numerous Indian workers impossible to co-ordinate and control.51 Mary
Caroline Minto evidently faced a similar logistical nightmare: she noted
that, by the time she occupied the role of Vicereine in 1905, the number
of servants in the Viceregal Lodge had risen to 700, each with their own
appointed task.52
The vast numbers of servants employed in the Viceregal Lodge may
seem excessive but, as will be explained in Chapter 7, the Viceroy and
Vicereine frequently held dinners for hundreds of people. These elaborate
occasions undoubtedly required a lot of hired help; nonetheless, super-
vising such large numbers of servants and ensuring that they maintained
the appropriate standards was, for Lady Lytton, a rather difficult and
tiresome, full-time occupation:
We are delighted with our Calcutta palace, but all things have their draw-
backs, and I get so tired walking about the house. Going over plate, linen
and all departments is always tiring, and I sometimes long for a cottage
again. There is too much work and duty to be made worldly or spoilt
out here.53
Such claims contradict popular accounts, outlined in Chapter 5, of the

memsahib spending her days sipping gin and tonics on the verandah. But,
of course, the average household did not employ hundreds of servants, nor
did they have palatial residences or an imperial entertaining schedule;
nonetheless, most women had to manage substantially more servants
than they did at home. In Bombay, in a more ordinary situation, Lady
Wilson had around thirteen employees. Although this was a mere fraction
of the number Lady Lytton seemingly required, it was still rather a large
number for a middle-class or even upper-middle-class household; many
households in Britain had to be content with a single female servant. As
McClintock points out, the notion that a typical middle-class home was
not complete without at least three paid domestics was an ideal not a
reality.54 According to McClintock, most homes could not actually afford
to employ the various servants suggested by the popular domestic man-

uals. In reality, she explains, most middle-class women worked harder than
they readily admitted to; they hid their own chores around a daily routine
that included verifiable leisure times, such as scheduled morning calls.55
In India, the situation was reversed. The requirements of the caste system,
the affordability of labour, and an abundance of willing workers made it
more common for the middle classes to hire multiple servants.
Many women writers professed that they hired large numbers of
servants because of the caste system, a social stratification in India that
divides labour and power. This claim was not entirely accurate. While
caste undoubtedly dictated the division of household labour, imperial
women also used caste as a means of justifying their extravagant
employment strategies, interpreting it in subjective ways, as seen by
Mary Curzon’s explanation of her domestic situation:
We are getting used to Indian customs and peculiarities. Everything is

wonderfully peaceful and tranquil and no one is ever in a hurry. Everyone
has a quantity of attendants and each one of these has his special occupation
and his caste only permits him to do that one. One man heats your bath-
water, another brings it, and a third pours it into the tub – a fourth empties
it and he being low caste does the objectionable thing which no drains
necessitate – quite a different lot wait on you at breakfast and there is a
waiter for every person at the table. The result is that the waiting is admir-
ably done – and they all glide about in livery and bare feet and a dinner of a
100 – or one of 8 – are wonderfully smooth and perfect, and the immense
number of native servants in the house are all under the head English
steward named Hiller who came out with Lord Landsdowne.56
Obviously caste did not require a different waiter for each diner. Such
manifestations were largely for show, particularly in the Viceregal
house where there were frequently guests at the table. The vast num-
bers of servants attested to the wealth and status of the household.
Some fourteen years earlier, Lady Dufferin offered a very similar
description:
One “caste” arranges the flowers, another cleans the plate, a third puts
candles into the candlesticks, but a forth lights them; one fills a jug of
water, while it requires either a higher or a lower man to pour it out. The
man who cleans your boots would not condescend to hand you a cup of tea,
and the person who makes your bed would be dishonoured were he to take
any other part in doing your room.57
In this passage, Lady Dufferin’s humorous tone somewhat exposes the

facetious nature of her account. As we are now aware, such representations
were wildly exaggerated, often knowingly so. In reality, because people in
Britain generally viewed servants as a marker of class, imperial women
enjoyed an inflated sense of social status by having numerous indigenous
employees attend to them.
Of course, the more servants they employed, the more organization
and supervision that was required and, due to the apparent ‘nature’ of
Indian employees, this was not always an easy task. Hence, Steel and
Gardiner strongly recommended fewer servants:
As a rule, the fewer domestics you have the better they will perform their
duties. Nothing, in fact, upsets the smooth working of a household like too
much leisure or a too minute division of responsibility. Above all nothing is
more insensate than the multiplication of khitmutgârs. If a man cannot wait
on six people, he is not worth keeping as a table attendant. But, with the
curious perversity which characterises so many Indian customs, one often
sees three table servants waiting on two people, while the whole cleansing
work of a large dusty dilapidated Indian bungalow is left to one man, who is
also scavenger, dog man, poultry man, and general scapegoat. The authors’
advice therefore is – Cut down the table servants and increase the sweepers.58
The authors were clearly aware that people like Lady Curzon employed
excessive numbers of Indian employees and that most women did not have
an English steward like Hiller to manage them. They therefore reminded
readers of the difficulties involved in managing large numbers of Indian
employees; they were also wary of the resulting dangers of too much free
time, for both the memsahib and her servants. Yet, despite Steel and
Gardiner’s authority on most matters, it would seem that many memsa-
hibs ignored this expert advice. Their memoirs are full of complaints and
criticisms about the unsavoury and even ‘savage’ behaviour of the various
Indians within their homes.
Despite declarations about the orderly and civilized nature of the
colonial home, imperial women writers also recorded that their indigenous
servants were guilty of a whole litany of unauthorized activities, from
demonstrating a lack of method in their work to smoking hookahs in
the kitchen and sleeping in their uniforms.59 Lady Wilson suffered so

many frustrations that she felt obliged to warn her fellow travellers:
Punctuality, which is a necessity in a civilian’s day is to them but an irksome

restraint, an unnecessary interruption of limitless time. That household
goods should be daily replaced in one spot, to them is a meaningless and
troublesome eccentricity. That any of their belongings, including their meat
should be encased in dust and dirt no more affects their imagination, than it
would disturb ours to reflect that the walls of our house are cemented with
mud and encased in plaster.60
Lady Wilson inscribed the Indians’ lack of care and attention for British
imperial values as inherent and pervasive. Because these practices took
place inside the colonial home, they threatened the security and safety of
the domestic sphere and were perceived as potentially dangerous to the
physical and moral wellbeing of the British inhabitants.
The Christian connotations of cleanliness emerged in the sixteenth
century, and, in the late eighteenth century, the proverbs of John Wesley
consolidated this association by linking virtue with industry and hygiene.
Subsequently, middle-class women were only too familiar with such
axioms as ‘Cleanliness is indeed next to Godliness’. In Victorian India,
however, Lady Wilson explained that this ‘national household motto . . . is
not a clause in Mahomedan ethics, and that Indians regard the routine of
daily existence from a standpoint which is totally different from ours’.61
Thus, when Lady Wilson claims that the Mahomedans drank the water
from the pond in which their cattle have lived and in which they have
themselves escaped from the heat, she is not only suggesting a lack of
hygienic practices, she is also implying a lack of Christian spirit more
generally.62
The metaphorical properties of dirt have been discussed in detail by
McClintock in Imperial Leather: Race, Gender and Sexuality in the
Colonial Conquest (1995). She uses an 1899 Pears’ Soap advertising poster
as an example of how the British Empire created links between hygiene
and morality. This colonial advertising campaign announced: ‘The first
step toward lightening THE WHITE MAN’S BURDEN is through
teaching the virtues of cleanliness’.63 It is a bold statement, with strong
racial implications: it implies that cleanliness could improve life in the
Empire by making the Indians more virtuous. It also suggests that nor-
mative British standards of hygiene could potentially protect the white
population from (physical and mental) contamination in the colonies. In

both respects, white women could play a part by ensuring that the home
was clean, and therefore, civilized. Indeed, as Steel and Gardiner clearly
explained, the memsahib, as housekeeper, was generally accountable for
the ‘decency and health of all persons living in her service or compound’.64
But, even with their best efforts, imperial women frequently found them-
selves subject to the impositions of dirt and disease.
The lack of distinction between outside and inside spaces, discussed
in Chapter 2, made it more difficult to keep the home clean and tidy, as
Paget noted:
Officers and men were quite exhausted and suffering from inflamed eyes
caused by extreme dust, which appears to be a great source of annoyance in
this country; and as the floors of the bungalows are mud, and are being
continually swept by the servants with little hand-brooms, there is nearly as
much dust inside the house as out of it.65
When dirt and dust infiltrated the domestic space, the imperial bound-
aries – between us and them, India and England, home and world –
required for colonial cultural identities were difficult to uphold. In this
way, we can see how the ambivalence of the home gave rise to a fear of
infection.
Imperial women writers do record many untimely deaths among the
British in India; but, there was also a great deal of scaremongering.
Concerns about certain ailments were used to reinforce particular ideas
about the indigenous people and to situate indigenous spaces as possible
sites of contamination and contagion, thereby reinforcing ideas about the
need for racial segregation. In the opinion of a medical missionary, Dr
Mildred E. Staley, indigenous towns and villages exemplified the insanitary
conditions of life in India: large populations were crammed into dark, ill-
contrived dwellings where drains were left open and refuse was plainly
visible.66 As such, she recommended that the Europeans live as far away as
possible from any Indian bazaar or hut. She advised her readers to select a
home on sloping ground, as high above the indigenous settlements as
possible.67 After all, as she reminded them: ‘prevention is better than
cure’.68 Thus, in order to avoid ailments such as cholera, dysentery, and
enteric, all of which could be prevented, Staley advocated the need for
physical, as well as ideological, distance between the English and Indian
people. The British generally heeded such advice and built their homes in
separate spaces, such as the cantonments and the hill stations. Even so,
there were always Indian servants within their domestic dwellings because
the memsahibs were convinced that, left to their own devices, their
employees abandoned appropriate standards of hygiene. With this in
mind, most colonial mistresses insisted that their servants live within the
home quarters and not in the bazaar. Official residences housed the
servants in buildings nearby the family home but, as Jacob’s experience
of the snoring ayah suggests, in smaller stations and for the less wealthy
memsahibs, this was not always feasible. In residential bungalows, with no
servants’ quarters, Indian employees often slept on the verandah, or on the
kitchen floor. This proximity was a little troubling as it increased the
potential for dirt and disease within the home.
The Memsahibs’ Manual tells the story of a sahib who did not regularly
supervise his domestic employees. One day, he unexpectedly ventured into
his kitchen to find out the reason for the unusually long pause between
dinner and desert. His surprise visit frightened his cook who ran off with a
plum pudding tied up in the end of his dhoti! The Indian servant had been
boiling the dessert in one end of his garment while the other end was still
wrapped round him.69 The retelling of such incidents provided the neces-
sary justification for subjecting servants to constant scrutiny, a practice
which Steel and Gardiner insisted upon. They claimed that there were too
many women who did not go into their kitchens, who buried their heads
in the sand, and ‘who put up with a degree of slovenliness and dirt which
would disgrace a den in St. Giles’.70 By aligning India’s domestic spaces
with the slums of London’s East End, which were, at this time, perceived
as a centre of crime and corruption, Steel and Gardiner admitted to the
potential for disorder and disruption within the home, but they also carved
out an important role for domestic women that echoed imperial strategies
more generally.
During the latter half of the nineteenth century, there were persistent
efforts to render the colonized subject available to see. The Raj attempted
to place the indigenous population in a position where there always existed
the possibility of observation; this created a system whereby the observed
must act in accordance with the ruling powers. Erving Goffman refers to
this behavioural modification as the process of ‘conversion’ in Asylums:
Essays on the Social Situation of Mental Patients and Other Inmates (1961).
In order to attain a more anglicized home and produce well-behaved
servants, imperial women adopted this strategy. They emphasized the
importance of a daily routine that included visiting the kitchen every
day, inspecting cooking utensils, giving out fresh dusters, and monitor-
ing water sources; and, in theory, this contributed to the overall conver-
sion of the indigenous population. As seen throughout this chapter, such
efforts to convert the indigenous servants had limited success; but, even
though the civilizing powers of the memsahib were in constant contest,
such narratives were still transformative. Women inscribed for themselves
and others an active role to play, albeit within the safe space of the
domestic environment and the discursive constraints of imperial patri-
archy, and this gradually altered the terms of their place in society.
Langland explains:
[B]ourgeois women were both oppressed as women and oppressors as

middle-class managers. And they helped facilitate change not as agents
fighting against oppression to generate new opportunities, but as subjects
positioned within those power operations.71
According to Pratt, the colonial home acted as a space where women

could collect themselves, engage a coherent subjectivity, and then
venture forth into the world.72 While it was the men’s job to collect
and possess everything else, Pratt states that ‘women travellers sought
to collect and possess themselves’.73 They then asserted ownership,
entitlement, and familiarity over the home. Pratt suggests this echoed
the colonial narratives of their male counterparts and gave them the
confidence to emerge into imperial society more generally.74 Once
imperial women achieved this secure sense of self, they extended
their skill-set beyond the domestic environment. They were armed
with new forms of expertise and a clearer path to political discourse.
Of course, we must be careful not to overstate women’s position:
Victorian feminine ideals still constrained colonial women, but by
binding their feminine identity to the colonial culture the memsahibs
were both subordinated and empowered.
NOTES
1. Elizabeth Langland, Nobody’s Angels: Middle-Class Women and Domestic
Ideology in Victorian Culture (Ithaca: Cornell University Press, 1995),
p. 11.
NOTES 71
2. Anne McClintock, Imperial Leather: Race, Gender and Sexuality in the

Colonial Conquest (New York: Routledge, 1995), p. 5.
3. McClintock, Imperial Leather, p. 152.
4. Nupur Chaudhuri, ‘Memsahibs and their Servants in Nineteenth-Century
India’, Women’s History Review 3 (1994): 549.
5. Rosemary Marangoly George introduces this phrase in her article of the
same name: ‘Homes in the Empire, Empires in the Home’, Cultural
Critique 26 (1993–94): 95–127.
6. Flora Annie Steel, The Garden of Fidelity: Being the Autobiography of Flora
Annie Steel, 1847–1929 (London: Macmillan, 1929), p. 27.
7. Steel, The Garden of Fidelity, p. 47.
8. Steel and Gardiner, The Complete Indian, p. 3.
9. For a more detailed discussion of the various editions of Steel and
Gardiner’s domestic manual, see Ralph Crane and Anna Johnston,
‘Introduction’ in The Complete Indian Housekeeper and Cook (Oxford:
Oxford University Press, 2011), p. xxviii.
11. Crane and Johnston, ‘Introduction’, p. xvi.
13. Maud Diver, The Englishwoman in India (Edinburgh: William Blackwood
and Sons, 1909), p. 62.
14. Diver, The Englishwoman in India, p. 62.
15. Langland, Nobody’s Angels, p. 24.
18. Isabella Mary Beeton, The Book of Household Management, Comprising
Information for the Mistress, Housekeeper, Cook (London: S. O. Beeton
1861), pp. 449–52.
19. Nupur Chaudhuri, ‘Shawls, Jewellery, Curry and Rice in Victorian Britain’
in Western Women and Imperialism: Complicity and Resistance, eds Nupur
Chaudhuri and Margaret Strobel (Bloomington: Indiana University Press,
1992), p. 236.
21. Chaudhuri, ‘Shawls, Jewellery, Curry and Rice’, p. 232.
22. Chaudhuri, ‘Shawls, Jewellery, Curry and Rice’, p. 242.
Journal of Life in India in 1857–59, With Some Account of the Way Thither
(London: Longman, Green, Longman, Roberts, and Green, 1865), p. 59.
25. Violet Jacob, Diaries and Letters from India 1895–1900, ed. Carol
Anderson (Edinburgh: Canongate 1990), p. 103.

29. Lady Anne C. Wilson and Lady Dufferin both record the fact that they took
lessons in Hindustani. Lady Wilson found it rather difficult, but she also
noted: ‘when one remembers how marvellously educated Indians have
mastered our complicated language, with its arbitrary differences in the
pronunciation of words spelt in the same way, and its many idioms so
entirely unlike their own, one is ashamed of one’s own stupidity, and renews
the attempt to learn their language for the pleasure of being able to talk to
them in their own tongue’. Lady Anne C. Wilson, Letters from India (1911.
London: Century Publishing Company, 1984), p. 42.
30. Benedict Anderson, Imagined Communities: Reflections on the Origin and
Spread of Nationalism (London: Verso, 2006), p. 6.
32. Chaudhuri, ‘Memsahibs and their Servants’, p. 549.
34. Lady Anne C. Wilson, After Five Years in India: Or, Life and Work in a
Punjaub District (London: Blackie and Son, 1895), p. 53.
35. Meyda Yeğenoğlu, Colonial Fantasies: Towards a Feminist Reading of
Orientalism (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1998), p. 38.
39. Anne C. Wilson, Hints for the First Years of Residence in India (Oxford:
Clarendon Press, 1904), p. 37.
40. Mary Louise Pratt, Imperial Eyes: Travel Writing and Transculturation
(London: Routledge, 1992), p. 105.
41. Pratt, Imperial Eyes, p. 7.
43. Mrs John Gilpin, Pakwān-ki-kitāb: Memsahib’s Guide to Cookery in India
(Bombay: A. J. Combridge and Co., 1914), p. 1.
44. Wilson, Hints, p. 32.
47. A. K. D.-H., The Memsahib’s Manual being an Easy guide to Learning
Hindustani, with some Advice on Health and the Household, (Calcutta:
Thacker, Spink and Co., 1914), p. iiv.
48. D.-H., The Memsahib’s Manual, p. iv.
49. Steel, The Garden of Fidelity, p. 104.
50. Steel and Gardiner, The Complete Indian, pp. 92–96.
51. Edith Bulwer Villiers Lytton, India, 1876–1880 (London: Privately Printed
at the Chiswick Press, 1899), p. 36.
NOTES 73
52. Mary Caroline Minto also offers her readers a comprehensive list of her
various servants in My Indian Journal, 6 vols. (Calcutta: n.p., 1905–1910),
1: 14.
53. Lytton, India, 1876–1880, p. 99.
56. Mary Curzon, Lady Curzon’s India: Letters of a Vicereine, ed. John Bradley
(New York, Beaufort Publishers, 1986), p. 57.
57. Hariot Dufferin, Our Viceregal Life in India: Selections from My
Journal, 1884–1888, 2 vols. (London: John Murray, 1889), 1: 16.
59. For specific examples, see Paget, Camp and Cantonment, p. 162; and
Wilson, Hints, p. 35.
66. Mildred E. Staley, Handbook for Wives and Mothers in India (Calcutta:
Thacker, Spink and Co., 1908), p. 1.
67. Staley, Handbook for Wives and Mothers, p. 2.
68. Staley, Handbook for Wives and Mothers, p. iiv.
69. D.-H., The Memsahib’s Manual, p. 55.
CHAPTER 4
Family Ties: Imperial Women as Wives

and Mothers
[A] united family in India seems hardly possible. (Mary Caroline

Minto, My Indian Journal, 1: 46)
Nancy L. Paxton states that, during the Raj, the very foundations of
British national identity seemed to rest on bourgeois concepts such as
the idealized notion of the family.1 This ideal was fundamentally middle
class and embroiled in Victorian gender discourses. One of the major
functions of the Victorian family, according to Catherine Hall, was to
provide a privatized haven for British men who were subject, day in and
day out, to the pressures of competition in the new industrial world.2 In
the second half of the nineteenth century, these middle-class ideals were
transported to India, where colonial conditions and imperial ideologies
made it impossible to sustain the idealized distinctions between family life
and work life. In the subcontinent, as Mary A. Procida has observed, the
family’s primary goal was no longer about the gain of private wealth or
individual happiness; it was about securing the fortunes of the Raj.3 Thus,
the private world of the family, like the home, was subject to the rigours of
public and political discourse, and dictated interactions between mothers
and children, husbands and wives. Hence, Procida contends: ‘Anglo-
Indian women . . . were married not only to their husbands but to the
Raj itself’.4 This placed enormous constraints on the ways in which
women could engage with imperial discourses and colonial life. Yet, for

DOI 10.1007/978-3-319-33195-9_4
76 4 FAMILY TIES: IMPERIAL WOMEN AS WIVES AND MOTHERS
many women barred from civilian and military employment, marriage

provided a clear way to mediate some involvement with imperialism and
gain access to discourses of power. Married women stood alongside their
husbands to ensure the success of the Empire, not least by exemplifying
the supposedly civilizing properties of British culture and society, which
included the ideals of a companionate union and a nuclear family.
In India, the husband’s role in society was the principal one. Because
his obligations were fundamental to the fortitude of the Raj, wives and
mothers were expected to prioritize this work. Consequently, to enable
women to attend to their husbands, British children in India were often
nursed by Indian women called ayahs; this practice facilitated women’s
imperial duties but it caused a lot of personal and political anxieties about
racial purity, national identity, degeneration, and miscegenation. As a way
to redress the potentially disruptive aspects of the ayah and the influence
of the surrounding indigenous culture, British children born in India were
usually sent to the metropole at around the age of six. As E. M. Collingham
explains in Imperial Bodies: The Physical Experience of the Raj, c.1800–1947
(2001), in the late nineteenth century, the British sought to resist rather
than embrace the Indian environment; they devised certain practices to
protect themselves against any kind of indigenous infiltration, such as
educating colonial children in Britain. The colonizers hoped this would
endow their children with the appropriate habitus, to use Pierre Bourdieu’s
term, before they returned to the colonial outpost to assume their adult
imperial responsibilities.5 Nonetheless, Collingham suggests that by struc-
turing their world around the potential threats of India, the British also
demonstrated how vulnerable they felt.6 Collingham states that such anxi-
eties were rarely articulated.7 But, Imperial Women Writers argues that this
was not the case: a number of women reveals specific fears and apprehen-
sions, particularly in relation to the child’s body, which became a locus of
colonial concerns.
Imperial women writers also disclosed deep anxieties about their own
loss of purpose once their children left India for the metropolitan centre.
Their imperial duties primarily focused upon the exemplification of
Victorian femininities, which included the visible performance of their
familial role as wife and mother. In the absence of their children, and
often their husbands, they risked being made redundant to the colonial
mission. It was, therefore, important that they reconfigured these absences
as their own special imperial burdens. They presented the loss of family as a
sacrifice they made for the good of the Empire, as an opportunity to
FAMILY TIES: IMPERIAL WOMEN AS WIVES AND MOTHERS 77
become mothers to the Indian people. In this way, they articulated clearly
their commitment to Britain’s civilizing mission and there subsequently
emerged in colonial writing what Barbara N. Ramusack refers to as a
‘maternal imperialism’.8
The figure of the mother was central to Britain’s national identity
and nationalist discourse, partly because the infantilization of indigenous
subjects placed them as children in the care of a maternal nation.
Simultaneously, as Alison Blunt explains, the qualities associated with
mothering (protection, warmth, emotional, and nutritional security)
were associated with the home country.9 Queen Victoria came to embody
metonymically this relationship. She assumed the role of mother to her
various colonies. In this way, she feminized her imperial authority and
carved out a discursive position that was subsequently adopted by imperial
women writers who sought positions of power within gendered con-
straints. They explained that their natural and nurturing maternal instincts
called on them to educate and elevate downtrodden Indian women.
In the late Victorian period, British colonialism relied upon a fable of
uplifting salvation; as Deirdre David argues, this discourse gathered ideo-
logical force throughout the latter decades of the nineteenth century, and
women were asked to act as agents in this labour of both renovating and
expanding Britannic rule.10 Certainly, from 1857, when Queen Victoria
proclaimed Britain’s non-interference in India’s socio-cultural arena,
women, as non-official imperial workers, were called upon to enter
Indian homes and exercise their ‘feminine’ influence. However, in order
to export and exemplify these values, British women had to leave behind
their own domestic environments and actively engage in an imperial
world. This transition arguably carved out the beginnings of a feminist
movement, albeit predominantly within the frame of colonial discourse.
*****
Georgiana Theodosia Paget explained in the opening pages of her narra-

tive, Camp and Cantonment: A Journal of Life in India in 1857–1859,
With Some Account of the Way Thither (1865), that she travelled to India at
the behest of her husband who, upon the outbreak of the Sepoy Rebellion,
was suddenly required to travel to the subcontinent, rather than
Switzerland as originally planned. Despite the change in destination,
Major Paget still sought permission to bring his wife. By the time Paget
received consent for her journey, ‘barely a fortnight remained in which to
settle all private affairs, to provide for the children who were to be left
behind, and to select the necessary outfits’.11 This sudden move was the
first of many for the Pagets. Once they arrived in the subcontinent, it was
clear that the Major’s position as ‘officer in command’ required a lot of
travel, and, as Paget noted, this generally took place alongside her hus-
band’s company.12 As such, in what was a fairly typical situation, the
married couple had hardly any privacy in the colonial outpost. In India,
husbands and wives often shared their intimate, family life with a variety of
officers, aide-de-camps, and Indian servants. Furthermore, there was
rarely, if ever, an extended period of time when all members of one family
were together under the same roof. In this environment, it was hard to
retain any illusion of the Victorian middle-class family existing as a coher-
ent unit separate to the outside world.
Political events in the subcontinent took precedence over personal
relationships. Paget had to get used to a life of constant disruption and
to frequently being without her children and her husband:
We had got so settled here [Poona], that we had almost forgotten the
probability of a move; and we were preparing for our usual ride this evening,
when a telegram arrived, ordering my husband to march on Belgaum, some
300 miles off in the southern Mahratta country, being prepared to take the
field on the way, to chastise the Rajah of Sholapur, who has been attacking
some of our Madras troops.13
At this time, Paget was heavily pregnant, and, owing to the dangerous
nature of her husband’s determined route, she was unable to travel with
him. She was instructed to take the long way round, to journey down the
coast by boat, in the protection of an appointed male aide.
Paget’s decision to travel on board the Charlotte, a vessel presumably
named in honour of the current Governor-General Canning’s wife, while
heavily pregnant was quite unusual. In order to show her commitment to
her husband and his colonial mission, she was determined to meet him at
his destination, despite the fact that pregnant women in the Victorian
period were supposed to remain inactive and out of public view. When
Paget went prematurely into labour during the journey, these extraordin-
ary circumstances became rather pronounced. Victorian etiquette prohib-
ited her from providing readers with too many explicit details about the
experience, but she did admit that she gave birth on board the boat
without the assistance of a doctor or a midwife! It is safe to assume that
this was a rather alarming situation for the new mother and her aide. Yet,
her narrative indicates that she bore it all with typical and spiritual stoi-
cism: ‘God is very merciful and does not lay upon us more than we are able
to bear’.14 Such forbearance is a common feature of imperial women’s
writing, which frequently invokes a strong sense of imperial duty by
recalling the courage of their martyred predecessors.
Paget’s movements were somewhat restricted after the birth of her
baby. In addition to her own wellbeing, she now had to consider the
safety of her young child, a future imperial servant; so, for a time, she
avoided any kind of unnecessary travel. During this period, she generally
remained in the relative safety of India’s military outposts while her hus-
band embarked on various journeys around the district. She often found
herself quite alone without friends or family. And, as was the case for many
memsahibs during their husbands’ absences, Paget became well
acquainted with the flaws of India’s postal system. She waited fretfully
for news of the Major’s safety:
I had few acquaintances in Ahmednugger, and my life was very lonely;

and the delays and mismanagement of the postal arrangements were the
cause of much anxiety to me: for though my husband wrote to me
constantly, I very rarely received a letter from him; nor did he get
those I despatched to him daily – till months after the date – with one
or two exceptions.15
These were evidently fraught periods of isolation. Yet, Paget continued to

work hard at her wifely duties. In Camp and Cantonment, she described
how she kept the home fires burning in anticipation of her husband’s
return and that she waited patiently for the recommencement of norma-
tive family life. Other than expressing concern for her husband’s safety, she
did not dwell on how his absence, or the absence of her other children,
made her feel. After all, it was potentially unpatriotic to complain about
missing husbands and absent fathers when important imperial work pre-
vented these colonial men from being at home. Consequently, imperial
women writers rarely recorded, in any explicit way, negative feelings. Their
writing focused on their duties as loyal spouses because it was this role that
gave them access to public discourses and colonial power.
In Victorian India, Procida explains, women’s position in society
derived from their marital status and the work of their husbands:
‘Anglo-Indian women were incorporated wives who supported their
husbands’ careers by subsuming their own ambitions, ideas, and identities

to the demands of their spouses’ work’.16 Of course, to an extent, this
expectation of selflessness applied to all Victorian wives. Sarah Stickney
Ellis, in The Wives of England, their Relative Duties, Domestic Influence,
and Social Obligations (1843), stated clearly that a woman’s needs were
secondary to those of her husband:
To make that husband happy, to raise his character, to give dignity to his
house, and to train up his children in the path of wisdom – these are the
objects which a true wife will not rest satisfied without endeavouring to
obtain.17
Colonial primers reiterated the ideals put forward by Ellis, but they also
suggested that the memsahib had additional burdens to bear. According
to Mildred E. Staley’s Handbook for Wives and Mothers in India (1908),
the colonial wife’s work was more difficult and more onerous than that of
the average Victorian woman. Staley stated that this increased workload
was partly because her private duty as a wife was not distinct from her
husband’s work in the public sphere:
[T]he young wife should realise from the beginning that the making of a
happy healthful home in India means heavier responsibilities and more
anxious cares than would ever have been hers in England. She will need as
skilled judgement and as great a courage and self-control as any required
from her husband in his professional works, though directed to different
ends. Indeed, most men in India are so over-burdened with work and
anxieties that many home matters not usually considered in the province
of the wife will have to be decided and arranged by her, if she would take her
share in the building up of the Empire and of the Race.18
Staley also stated that women in India had to echo the imperial skills of
their husbands by being judicious, courageous, and controlled; they must
be prepared to take on extra responsibilities in order to contribute to the
accomplishments of their husbands and to secure the continued success of
the Empire. In this way, she suggested that colonial duty superseded the
lines between the gendered spheres of family and work.
In Victorian Britain, the general perception was that middle-class men
were spending more and more time at a physical remove from the private
domestic environment while engaging in the public world of work. Critics,
such as John Tosh, have shown that this was not entirely true.19 Even so,
in Britain, the idea held symbolic sway in terms of the separate spheres
ideology. Whereas, in India, the distinctions between home and world
were not upheld in real or ideological terms. At times, the public and
private lives of colonial spouses coexisted in ways antithetical to the
gendered discourses of the metropolitan centre. For example, during
Lord Wilson’s time as a district officer, his wife accompanied him on his
tours, sharing in his daily duties.
As noted in Chapter 2, the Wilsons had two tents, one was her hus-
band’s office and the other, pitched in an adjacent space, was their home.
These canvas structures, as previously discussed, were rather fluid spaces. In
the camp, Lady Wilson was privy to the work undertaken by her husband.
Later, when they had settled in their bungalow in Sakesar, Lord Wilson
continued to work frequently from home. When Lady Wilson was in the
garden enjoying the smell of the roses, the verbena, the mignonette, and
the sweet peas, she could see her husband ‘at an office-table disposing of
files’ and sifting through a lot of ‘unnecessary administrative chores’.20
This overlap between the public and private was acceptable because colo-
nial work was seen as a way of life, not a way to make money, a personal, as
well as a professional, responsibility. One was never really off-duty in the
Empire. Imperial responsibility imposed upon all areas of life in the sub-
continent, seeping into seemingly private areas, such as the marital home
and family life. In this environment, Lady Wilson felt able to comment
upon certain colonial matters. She noted the high level of seemingly
unnecessary bureaucracy in Victorian India, and acknowledged that she
had read government files and observed their long-winded nature. These
comments, thinly veiled as benevolent, motherly concern for overworked
clerks, were surely prompted by the sight of her hard-working husband and
the impact this had on their time together.21 Thus, when Lord Wilson was
promoted to the role of Secretary to the Government of India in the
Department of Revenue and Agriculture, Lady Wilson responded to the
news in terms of the increased amount of work for her and her husband.
She anticipated that Lord Wilson would be required to toil for twelve hours
a day and that this would mean extra work for her, too. Being a dutiful wife,
she insisted that she would remain with him in Calcutta ‘to look after his
creature comforts, and to be here to drive with him in the evening, to take
his mind off those portentous files’.22 By doing so, Lady Wilson implicated
herself in her husband’s colonial duties, and used her marriage to carve out
her own colonial role.
Many women found this proximity to colonial rule empowering, but

some women felt constrained by the collusion expected of an imperial
wife. In India, dissent of one’s husband meant dissent of the Raj, and vice
versa. You had to support both or neither. Hence, in order for Annie
Besant (1847–1933) to express freely her critical views on patriarchy and
imperialism she first had to separate from her husband, as discussed in
Chapter 5. Similarly, it was only when Florence Marryat had returned to
the metropole and distanced herself from her marriage that she felt able to
publish her damning indictment of life in India and the British Empire’s
destruction of Victorian family values.
When the time came for Marryat’s eldest children to be sent to England
for school, she seized upon the opportunity and returned with them to her
homeland, leaving her husband behind in India. Marryat and Church
conducted a long-distance relationship for fifteen years, during which
time she gave birth to seven children and lived, for the most part, as a
single mother. Living alone could not have been easy in the patriarchal
society of Victorian Britain; yet, Marryat evidently preferred this arrange-
ment to living in India where she felt she had to comply with the dictates
of a colonial marriage and patriarchal imperialism. In England, she
embarked on a prolific writing career that provided her with the means
to achieve some financial independence, a move that proved to be crucial
because, in 1879, Church divorced her on the grounds of adultery.23
Although she went on to marry Major Francis Lean later that year, the
relationship did not last long.
Marryat wrote her travel narrative Gup: Sketches of Anglo-Indian Life
and Character (1868) from the safe distance of her flat in London; at this
remove, from both her husband and the Empire, she felt able to criticize
the superficial and disruptive nature of colonial life. Marryat believed that
India was partly responsible for the breakdown of her first marriage. She
argued that efforts to mimic metropolitan culture in the colonial outpost
only led to a distortion of British lifestyles. She was particularly scathing
about how attempts to export English domesticity affected marriage and
motherhood, and perceived that family life in India was a mimicry of the
Victorian original. In Marryat’s experience, husbands and wives in India
could not carry out ‘normal’ family practices, predominantly because they
were frequently forced apart for long periods of time by their colonial
duties. And, according to this memsahib, there were no happy-ever-afters
in Victorian India.
During the hot season, colonial officers continued their work on

the plains, and their wives, or the grass widows as they came to be
known, travelled to the hill stations alone. After a time, many of these
women reportedly took advantage of their new-found freedom and
began to have a little too much fun; according to Marryat, they soon
became a danger to the men around them:
There are always plenty of females on the hills, consequently the hills are
dangerous to an idle man. There are wives who can’t live with their hus-
bands in the plains; the “grass-widows” (or widows put out to grass), as they
are vulgarly termed; and as won’t might very often be read for can’t, perhaps
they are (without any reference to the amount of their charms) the most
dangerous that the idle young man could encounter.24
Through such descriptions, Marryat somewhat admitted to the sexual

activities of her peers and, as discussed in Chapter 6, she challenged
dominant discourses about the pure and passive female body. She painted
a critical picture of the dissolution of bourgeois family values in India, of
which her most damning indictment appeared in her novel Véronique:
A Romance (1869):
India is the nursery of bigotry, prejudice, and small-mindedness; its enforced

existence of enervating and soul-debasing indolence often kills all that
promised to be noblest and best in a man’s character, whilst it seldom has
the power to draw out his finer qualities, and make them sterling. She is truly
the Juggernaut of English domestic life – year after year we lay beneath her
wheels the flower of our British manhood, who, if they survive the process,
deliver up in their turn, sweet home affections, the prattling of their chil-
dren, often the best part of their wives (for what true mother smiles as she
could smile when leagues of ocean roll between her and her little ones?)
generally, the best part of themselves. And then, when they have had youth,
and all that makes youth beautiful – that can make old age serene – crushed
out of them; when they have learned to look at life only through Indian
spectacles, and to cavil at everything that is not done exactly after the same
pattern as they do it in the East, they return to their native shores; to meet
their children as grown up men and women, and to wander about in a listless
manner like fish out of water, for the rest of their days, grumbling at what
they cannot alter and regretting what they cannot regain.25
The detrimental effects described here were the collateral damage of

Britain’s colonial project. Marryat, as a young mother, worked hard to
limit the impact on her own family, especially her children. She made it
clear that, unlike most colonial wives, she was simply not prepared to
sacrifice her relationship with her children for the sake of her marriage
and the Empire. She believed that colonial discourses, which insisted upon
exporting idealized family life to India, actually destroyed the very values
they hoped to exemplify.
In Véronique, Marryat conjured the powerful metaphor of the jugger-
naut to imagine fully the destructive force of colonial India. By represent-
ing the subcontinent as the Hindu temple car that apocryphally crushes its
own devotees beneath its wheels as they throw themselves in front of its
mighty weight, she explicitly criticized imperial discourses that demanded
the sacrifice of normal familial relations for the sake of transporting these
idealized notions to the colonies. But, as noted above, Marryat was only
free to make such judgements once she had left her husband and India.
And, even then, she placed her most explicit criticisms in her fictional
writing.
Most women were unwilling, or unable, to express such bold condem-
nations. Because they could not see a way to be autonomous and inde-
pendent, they were tied to their husbands, to the British Empire, and to
India. The Raj determined the nature of their personal relations and this
meant sacrificing their maternal relationships for the good of the Empire.
Perhaps as a means of compensating for this sacrifice, imperial women
writers generally depicted their children in greatly sentimental terms. They
recorded their maternal feelings in detail because they could not exercise
them in person. Lady Wilson, for example, expressed in her writing heart-
felt devotion to her son, Jack, born during her time in India:
He is here, darling Mother, our own little son, fast asleep on a pillow beside
me, as cosy as cosy can be. A little dove has flown in through the open
window and is cooing just like my bird. And I know now the joy of a world
of Mothers, and just what that moment of bliss means to them, when they
first lay a little bundle in their dear husband’s arms, and call it “our child”.26
Unfortunately, the blissfulness described here did not last long. Lady
Wilson quickly resumed her colonial duties and took her place by her
husband’s side, frequently leaving her son in the care of a British nanny,
Miss M., whom Lady Wilson described as an upright and wholesome
figure. She wrote, with some relief, that Miss M. spent her days darning,
knitting, sketching, scanning newspapers, reading, and engaging in some
general perusal of the Bible.27 Miss M. sometimes travelled with the
married couple but, if needed, they could also leave her alone with Jack
while they attended to colonial business. Nonetheless, Lady Wilson’s
memoir is full of implicit anxiety about the fact that the nanny had a better
relationship with her son than she did. She claimed not to be jealous when
Jack protested that he loved Miss M. more than he loved his mother, his
reason being that his nanny looked after him when he was sick and read
him stories.28 But, the fact that Lady Wilson recorded such heart-breaking
incidents indicated to readers the extent of her motherly love and the
enormity of her sense of loss; this, in turn, emphasized her commitment to
the Empire. She took some consolation from the fact that, in India,
motherhood was more than a fulfilment of personal needs. By giving
birth, she somewhat satisfied her obligation to colonial society because
British women had an imperial duty to procreate and to populate.
Victorian women were expected to produce the next generation of
soldiers and citizens. Therefore, supposedly private decisions about having
a child and raising a child had to take into account racial, national, and
political discourses. There were laws governing how British parents raised
their children. As Anna Davin explains, British children belonged ‘not
merely to the parents but to the community as a whole’; they were ‘a
national asset’, ‘the capital of a country’, and on them depended ‘the
future of the country and the Empire’.29 But children born in India, and
exposed to Indian influences from an early age, were in danger of getting
sick or ‘going native’, ultimately, of not being able to fulfil their imperial
roles. As such, children’s colonial bodies became a contested site, torn
between opposing English and Indian influences; this was epitomised by
the use of Indian ayahs as nannies and wet nurses. Unlike the Wilsons,
most colonial families could not afford a British nanny; they hired an ayah
to care for and to nurse their young children. Even wealthier families, such
as the Lyttons, who were sometimes constrained by specific imperial duties
and unforeseen colonial circumstances, had to hire an ayah to help out at
times of need. This common arrangement led to a lot of anxiety about the
colonial child’s cultural identity and most imperial women expressed their
unhappiness with the practice.
The Lyttons’ son, Victor, was born a little prematurely, not long before
Edith Lytton was due to accompany her husband, Robert, on a tour round
the frontier in preparation for the Imperial Assemblage of 1877. This
important colonial event, which I revisit in Chapter 7, marked a seminal

moment in colonial history, and it was imperative that Lady Lytton was
there to support her husband. The Lyttons hoped the Assemblage would
act as a visual spectacle to highlight British superiority. They intended
their marital communion to have ideological as well as visual impact at the
various functions. But, Lady Lytton’s exemplification of the perfect colo-
nial wife at the Delhi Durbar disrupted her enactment of her maternal
duties. Furthermore, Victor’s early arrival meant the appointed nurse was
not there to take care of him before they embarked on their travels.30 It
was not possible to bring baby Victor on the journey because imperial
duties would prevent Lady Lytton from breast-feeding him in the appro-
priate manner while travelling. So, in order to fulfil her duties at the
Durbar, she was forced to borrow the nurse of Lytton’s Private
Secretary’s wife until she had time to employ some temporary help to
look after her son. Then, due to the short notice, she had to hire a ‘dirty
little brown wet nurse’.31 Her use of such disparaging language revealed
the level of racial and cultural anxiety surrounding the use of indigenous
wet nurses.
Steel and Gardiner, in their primer, accepted the need for Indian ayahs
to work as nannies; but they expressed clear opposition to these Indian
women acting as wet nurses. In this latter role, such figures clashed with
the imperial ideal of racial segregation; this created a worrying potential
for infection and infiltration. Steel and Gardiner attempted to guard
against these fears by advising readers, in a typically didactic manner, to
run the Indian nursery in exactly the same way as they would run an
English one. They claimed that it was entirely possible to insist on the
same levels of discipline, cleanliness, decency, and order. The manual
reassured British women that English mothers undoubtedly knew best
when it came to the care of their children. For those who struggled with
breast-feeding, they advised that nature would always supply the
demand.32 In the unlikely event that this did not occur, Steel and
Gardiner pointed out that Indian wet nurses were unsuitable alternatives
because their breast-feeding practices did not conform to Victorian ideas
on the subject. They were especially concerned about the Indian tendency
to suckle children constantly.33 This practice did not conform to the advice
of Victorian childcare manuals, which generally advised that the mother or
nurse should only feed the infant at regular intervals. In line with this view,
Steel and Gardiner suggested that a child’s feeding times should initially be
every two hours and gradually increased to every three or four hours.34
Regulation not only taught the child routine and discipline, it had the
additional benefit of enabling the mother to fulfil her social and imperial
engagements.35
But, as noted in the previous chapter, primers and manuals often
focused upon the ideal rather than the reality. In this instance, Steel
and Gardiner’s dismissal of Indian ayahs was largely rhetorical, a subtle
but insistent reminder that British was always best. Alongside such
assertions, in response to questions raised by their readers through
correspondence, The Complete Indian included a wealth of information
about how to make use of these women as nurses and nannies.36 Steel
and Gardiner, and their peers, reluctantly accepted that ‘good’ ayahs
were suitable nurses for English infants.37 Accordingly, these Indian
women emerged in imperial writing in ambiguous and somewhat con-
flicting terms. They commanded a degree of independence and respect
from the imperial writers, probably because colonial parents could not
be expected to hand over their children to a figure described in the
same derogatory terms as other Indian servants. At the same time, the
image of an Indian woman breast-feeding an English child thoroughly
disrupted any clear division between ‘us’ and ‘them’, a separation that
women’s narratives tried to maintain through their representation of
colonial life as a replication of life in the metropolitan centre. The
ayah’s extremely intimate relationship with her young British charge
transgressed imperial boundaries; this raised concerns about racial
purity and cultural superiority.
It is hardly surprising then that many imperial women writers expressed
their fears about racial and cultural identity through their representation of
the body of the British child. As Collingham argues, many of these fears
focused on the body because the physical self is a site where social struc-
tures are experienced, transmuted, and projected back onto society; body
size, eating, drinking, gestures, and movement, all reveal consciously and
unconsciously wider social structures.38 She uses Pierre Bourdieu’s con-
cept of habitus to explain how these social structures, as well as patterns of
behaviour or lifestyles, are shared by members of the same society, stating
that, ‘the values, attitudes, and ideologies of a society are literally embo-
died’.39 Thus, the British in India were concerned that their children
would come to physically embody the characteristics of the indigenous
race. This was particularly worrying in post-1857 India when, as
Collingham explains, the British model of colonialism had shifted from
being open to influence and accepting of the hybrid body of the nabob, to
resisting every aspect of Indian culture.40 There were also concerns about
the potential dangers of raising English children in the subcontinent
where the indigenous environment had such detrimental effects. Even
Steel, who so calmly insisted on the anglicization of the nursery in The
Complete Indian, clearly felt anxious about the physical and mental well-
being of children in India. Although her manual suggested that mothers
who nursed their own children would establish and buttress a strong
maternal bond that would withstand the early external influences of the
colonial country, she took no chances and sent her only surviving child to
England at the age of sixteen months, a decision that she did not mention
in her primer.
Lady Wilson apparently shared Steel’s concerns. She declared that chil-
dren raised in India were much more excitable than children raised in
England as a result of the climate on their ‘more susceptible nerves’.41 In
this unfamiliar atmosphere, she feared that male babies did not grow up to
be the ‘stolid, silent, rostbif type of English boy’ that the British Empire
needed.42 She implied that colonial children no longer enacted the values
and ideologies of British society; instead, they began to assume the habitus,
the structures and patterns of behaviour, exhibited by Indian servants. They
became weak, capricious, and fragile. Such characteristics spoke directly to
late nineteenth-century fears about miscegenation and degeneration.
During the second half of the nineteenth century, there were increasing
concerns about the degeneration and devolution of the British people and
British society. There was a growing fear that the modern and progressive
world of the Victorians was on the brink of collapse. Such ideas were
crystallized by Max Nordau’s Degeneration (1895), a term that came to
refer to all problematic areas of fin-de-siècle British culture, including the
lacklustre performance of the British troops against the Boer soldiers
during the Second Anglo-Boer War (1899–1902). So-called degenerate
behaviour seemed to threaten Britain’s imperial power and the debilitated
bodies of colonial children gave rise to such theories. Thus, it was impera-
tive that imperial mothers did their best to protect the fragile constitutions
of their offspring. But, this was not easy in the subcontinent. Primers, such
as The Memsahib’s Manual, reminded them time and again of India’s
reputation as a dangerous place of dirt and disease:
In tropical countries such as India where there are large collections of

natives, one has to guard more against contagion than in European
countries. The lower class of native in India does not seem to realise
the danger of contagion, or if he does, is too apathetic to take any

precautions against it.43
As discussed in Chapter 3, hygiene and cleanliness were extremely impor-

tant to the muscular Christianity of the British Empire. Yet, the colonial
bungalows were subject to dreadful draughts and determined dust that
came off the Indian plains. Because servants seemed unable or unwilling to
guard against such threats, moral and physical infection spread among the
most vulnerable members of the colonial society.
A. K. D.-H., the author of The Memsahib’s Manual, referred to India as
a ‘tropical’ country as an efficient way of aligning it with danger and
disease. Staley’s primer made the same association, even taking the time
to prove that India occupied part of the dreaded tropical zone by docu-
menting its degrees of latitude and longitude. Staley then went on to
explain that, in the tropics, the conditions of life were very different from
those found in Europe; she believed this was predominantly because of the
increase in temperature, which had very particular effects:
[T]he effect of high temperatures through prolonged periods is to over-

stimulate the nervous system which becomes highly susceptible and, in the
end, overstrained and depressed. The heart and circulation participate in this
depression, digestion is slower than in cold countries, the appetite less keen,
and the liver overburdened with work.44
The consciously hyperbolic nature of such reports stemmed from the fact
that many women did experience the death of a child. The high infant-
mortality rate undoubtedly played an important part in the decision to send
children back to England at the age of six; but, as noted above, this practice
aimed to do more than protect the child’s physical health. As Maud Diver
explained to her predominantly English readership, when colonial children
reached six or seven they were at a particularly impressionable age and were
in acute danger of acquiring the wrong kinds of characteristics.45 So, at this
time, their parents sent them back to Britain to receive a proper and
thorough English education that helped them to grow up to be the next
generation of imperial civil servants and colonial soldiers.
In the late nineteenth century, race was a major measure of superiority;
at the same time, Paxton argues, cultural practice began to be asserted
with greater force.46 The colonial child’s body was indelibly marked by its
whiteness, but this racial evidence was no longer enough to secure
superiority.47 British children needed to be anglicized. Paxton explains

that this often meant being raised properly by an English family and by a
rigorous, disciplining education, preferably acquired in the metropolitan
centre.48 Thus, the anxiety about physical infection echoed wider fears
about cultural and national identity. There was a belief that too much
contact with the indigenous country and the Indian people might lead to a
perceived loss of whiteness that, as Paxton explains, was conceived in terms
of cultural values.49 Consequently, in the age of high imperialism, children
had to return to England to be taught the implications and the importance
of their racial heritage in order to evolve into the right kind of adult. Thus,
Paxton argues, any bad habits that were acquired in India were undone
through a reconnection to the home culture:
[C]olonial children need to be nurtured by a properly English family and by

a rigorous, disciplining education, preferably acquired in England rather
than in India, in order to appreciate the full significance of their “race” . . . an
Indian ayah or nurse, rather than an English mother, typically assumed the
mundane tasks of tending to the young child’s bodily needs creating the
necessity for the colonial child’s linguistic and emotional re-education.50
The dominance of imperial ideologies about the moral and mental well-
being of colonial children ensured that most women co-operated with this
practice, regardless of their personal feelings on the matter. But, while they
did not directly challenge the status quo, they did acknowledge the deep,
personal, pain caused by separation from their offspring.
Imperial women writers, like Lady Wilson, recorded the anguish they
experienced when the time came to wave goodbye to their young children:
[W]e come home next year. That point is settled now. Jim will return in six
months, and I six months later, when Jack will be eight and will begin his school-
life. I remember your advice not to think of the separation but of meeting again,
only the thought of the parting is not in one’s brain but in one’s blood.51
Thinking of the meeting, rather than the separation, should have been
easier for Lady Wilson than for most women: she was one of the lucky
ladies who could afford to go home every year to be with her son during
the summer holidays. She was aware that many parents did not see their
children for years at a time; these women, noted Lady Wilson, paid for the
Empire with their tears. She was extremely thankful for her ability to
avoid such long separations.52 Still, she worried about how much damage
the time apart would cause to her relationship with her son:
We have heard too much of the sad results of divided homes to accept such
possibilities, if they can be avoided. One mother told me her boy had ceased
to write to her because he said “he had forgotten what she was like”. And a
dear girl said that after dreaming for years of again seeing her mother,
something snapped in her heart when her mother came to her school and
did not know her, and that the sad fact was she had never loved her again.
Many parents feel as we do, and some of the mothers, to meet the
expenses entailed, remain with their husbands in the plains during the
hottest months of the year, instead of taking a house in the hills, and go
home when the monsoon breaks. Anything better than to be told by her
child, as one mother was, that “no one had ever looked at him as she was
looking now for three years”. That would never be our laddie’s fate I know,
in any case, but yet I think you will endorse our decision to mitigate as far as
we can the unnatural situation.53
Her use of the word ‘unnatural’ in this final sentence showed the strength
of her feelings on this matter – it was the closest she came to any form of
direct criticism on the subject.
Children often loomed large in their mother’s writing, perhaps in a
bid to offset the lack of actual maternal care. Furthermore, the writing of
this devastating loss of family emphasized the extent of the personal
sacrifice, and Procida argues that this gave imperial wives a distinct
purpose:
By emphasising the tremendous hardships women endured to remain with

their husbands, wives highlighted the importance of their imperial respon-
sibility. Thus Anglo-Indian women made the ultimate sacrifice of parting
with their children because the Raj, personified by their husbands, could not
function without their undivided attention and full-time participation. In
return for this sacrifice, they gained unprecedented access to the workings of
the empire.54
Procida notes that women paid lip service to the sanctity of motherhood
while, in reality, most of them were not actually tied to the home or the
nursery.55 Certainly, once their children were sent to Britain, colonial
wives were substantially freer from the domestic sphere than their metro-
politan counterparts. Many turned their personal devastation to their
advantage. They took the skills they had acquired as domestic managers,
and the ‘natural’ qualities they possessed as mothers, and became bene-
volently authoritative figures outside the home. They carved out for
themselves a new, powerful, discursive identity that was still rooted in
Victorian femininity.
Steel claimed that the open wound caused by leaving her daughter in
England led her to assume other public roles, such as the Inspectress of
Schools. She stated that she engaged in these activities to fill a personal
void, that she ‘stifled regrets with duty’.56 In the absence of her children,
and sometimes her husband, she extended her domestic skills and mater-
nal feelings to less privileged indigenous people outside her home. These
philanthropic activities drew on the revered characteristics of Victorian
femininity and provided her with a level of authority that did not disrupt
gendered expectations. In this respect, she emulated Queen Victoria, who
similarly utilized her familial role to feminize authority.
Queen Victoria circulated idealized images of the Royal family, such as
Franz Xavier Winterhalter’s painting The Family of Queen Victoria (1846),
in order to exemplify publicly her matriarchal position and cast herself as a
mother to the nation.57 She cultivated a very middle-class domestic per-
sona by displaying to the nation her companionate marriage and large
brood of devoted children. Such cosy images had a profound impact on
the public’s perception of their monarch, whom they came to regard as a
maternal figure, nurturing and magnanimously caring for her subjects,
including those across the British Empire. A hagiographic address given by
the European and Anglo-Indian Defence Association during the subcon-
tinent’s celebrations of her Golden Jubilee in 1887 exemplified this kind
of attitude:
We gratefully remember the many instances in which your Majesty, with

true womanly sympathy, has comforted the wounded and the afflicted,
helped the fatherless and the widow, and succoured the desolate and the
oppressed. By the example you have set your people as a wife and a mother,
your Majesty has enhanced the charms of English domestic life, and brought
closer to our hearts the sacred meaning of “Home”.58
The Queen clearly came to represent an acceptable version of feminine

power. Her majestic role was understood as an extension of her familial
duties, which somewhat veiled the political machinations of her power, as
Elizabeth Langland explains:
Any assessment of Victoria’s character must address the complex interaction

of the imperious, even wilful queen and the devoted, even doting wife. In her
reliance on Albert, in her professed ineptitude for public rule, Victoria con-
structed herself through emergent middle-class values; she presented herself
through a scrim of domestic virtues emphasising home, hearth and heart.
That she should, nonetheless, without disabling or disqualifying self-contra-
diction, take her place as head of the most powerful country in the world
bespeaks her own signal role in the construction of a new feminine ideal that
endorsed active public management behind a façade of private retirement.59
The Queen, therefore, complicated the separate spheres ideology of

Victorian Britain. As Natalie J. McKnight has shown, her enactment of
idealized femininity was predominantly a public show: while she was
superficially the epitome of wifely duties and maternal instinct, in her
personal correspondence she was scathing about pregnancy, childbirth,
and motherhood.60 Nonetheless, by successfully portraying a persona that
was faithful to the ideals expressed in Ellis’s The Wives of England, Queen
Victoria both perpetuated and subverted the fictions that conditioned
Victorian women’s behaviour. As such, she acted as a convenient role
model for women in India who forged a ‘maternal imperialism’, a term
coined by Barbara N. Ramusack.61 She demonstrated for them the possi-
bility of maintaining a public position while valorizing the dominant traits
of feminine and familial behaviour.
As representatives of the Queen, imperial women sought to exercise a
similarly benevolent authority. For the most part, due to gender con-
straints, they focused this authority on Indian women. They conveyed to
their readers the apparently childlike nature of Indian women and, in this
way, they implied a need for their civilizing influence as exemplary wives
and mothers. We have already seen how this parental relationship was
evoked in relation to indigenous servants; but, by situating Indian women
as daughters to the Queen, desperately in need of help and salvation,
imperial women writers invoked a kind of philanthropic call to arms, as
Ramusack explains.62 In this context, imperial women could step out of
their own homes and into the homes of their Indian counterparts in order
to extol the virtues of Victorian family life.
The idealism attached to the Victorian nuclear family and the reverence
surrounding anglocentric maternalism, not to mention the growing con-
cerns of Indian female reformers, cast some indigenous domestic traditions
into the spotlight. Because the British Government could not officially
interfere in these indigenous traditions, there was a need for unofficial

female reform workers.63 In light of this, imperial women writers painted
shocking pictures of practices that offended the supposedly civilized tenets of
the Raj. They represented gendered issues, like polygamy and child marriage,
through shocking images and emphatic language in order to justify their
active interference. Lady Dufferin, head of the National Association for
Supplying Female Medical Aid to the Women of India, stressed the unciv-
ilized nature of childbirth in India:
The medical treatment in Burma too is especially barbarous, and I may

mention to you one example of it. After the birth of a child the mother is
subjected for about seven days to a roasting fire. Wood is piled up for the
purpose, and she is nearly baked and dried up. I know that the ex-Queen was
treated in this fashion, and I suppose she had the best advice to be got.64
In a strikingly similar passage, Irene H. Barnes, in her history of the

CEZMS (1897), described how the Burmese treated new mothers:
After the birth of a child, a Hindu woman is kept in a very small, close, dark
room, with a fire (which is generally placed in a brazier under her bed) and
without any possibility of fresh air; on the next day she is given a cold bath,
and returned to her cell like a prisoner!65
Such images were a far cry from British women’s accounts of childbirth,
which were generally rather serene and positive. Even when the experience
was not entirely free from anxiety, as in Paget’s case related above, it was
important to depict these momentous events as ultimately rather civilized
affairs for imperial women; whereas for Indian women, it seemed that
childbirth was almost always something dangerous and dreadful. These
traumatic experiences were then used by female missionaries, like Rachael
Piggott, who wrote crusading pamphlets:
Picture, if you can, the agony of the expectant mother who has heard of, and
seen, many of the women in her village die for want of proper treatment. . . .
Instead of looking forward to a happy motherhood she sees nothing but
darkness ahead and awaits the event with horror. What effect must this state
of mind in the mother have on the child! . . . It is our duty to help them
improve.66
Piggott recruited the imperial discourse of middle-class duty, which

inspired the philanthropic movement and enabled bourgeois women to
move beyond their own domestic sphere to assist in the advancement of
an ‘other’. As Antoinette Burton explains, ‘Taking responsibility for
Indian women was at once a fulfilment of imperial duty and proof of
imperial citizenship’.67 The importance of this colonial role seemed to
placate any gendered concerns; it enabled British women to leave behind
domestic duties in order to join philanthropic projects and missionary
organizations.
Initially, missionary organizations were male institutions in which wives
could assume the role of helpmeet. Due to India’s strict ideas about
gender segregation, male missionaries did not have contact with much
of the female population. Elite sections of the Indian population practised
the tradition of purdah, which restricted access to the women of these
communities. Missionaries felt this restriction partly explained the notable
lack of converts from the upper-caste members of society. Furthermore, as
women were increasingly seen as the moral centre of society, colonial
discourse suggested that, in order to achieve the complete civilization of
the Indian people, it would be necessary to convert these Indian women to
Christian beliefs and practices. In the words of Diver: ‘woman is the lever,
the only infallible lever, whereby sunken nations are upraised’.68 This
notion is echoed in H. Lloyd’s missionary tract, Hindu Women: ‘[the]
position of women has been one of the greatest obstacles to the spread of
the Gospel of Jesus Christ in India’.69 In response to such statements, and
as part of a burgeoning proto-feminism, British women formed the
CEZMS in 1880. This organization emphasized the need for zenana
visitation, a project that attempted to introduce Christian teaching and
lifestyles into upper-caste homes, in order to carve out a particular area of
work that could not be carried out by colonial men. By doing so, it
enabled women, especially those who had not fulfilled their imperial
duty through marriage and procreation, to become useful to society.
Female missionaries defined their duty as ‘women’s work for women’,
which, as Patricia Grimshaw and Peter Sherlock suggest, was both a
justification and a description:
The female missionary organisations pursued the ideology of separate

spheres of activity focusing on the tasks of teaching girls, domestic training,
modelling Victorian and Edwardian womanhood, providing medical care in
the form of nursing and entering exclusive female spaces.70
These single women lauded British domestic and familial practices, yet
they embodied a central irony: they had rejected a life of bourgeois bliss in
order to convert others to its benefits. They remained unmarried and
became teachers, proselytizers, nurses, and preachers; yet, in all these
roles, they hoped to pass on Victorian family values and gendered ideals
to Indian women. As such, they simultaneously supported and subverted
imperial discourses. Amy Carmichael was one missionary woman who
embodied this colonial contention. She was also a prolific writer who,
during the high-imperial period discussed here, was affiliated with the
CMS and the CEZMS; this initially ensured her adherence to the femin-
ized codes and practices inscribed by these groups and, to a certain extent,
dictated the persona that emerged in her writing. Over time, however,
these experiences were transformative in terms of how she considered her
position as a woman and as a member of the colonizing race.
Carmichael grew in confidence during her time in India. Her cultural
authority and contact with the indigenous people encouraged her to strike
out on her own. She gradually moved away from the anglicized spaces and
colonial communities created by the missionary groups because she
believed that cultural segregation alienated her from her true work:
I found too that even the modified English life lived with English fellow
missionaries prevented my getting at the core of anything, so I often left
them and went away alone with one or two Indian women and lived almost
like a Tamil. . . . At once it was as if that invisible film of feeling went – I was
sensible of being allowed in.71
She began to feel that the exemplification of Englishness, as practised by

the British throughout the subcontinent, estranged the very people they
were trying to reach. So, Carmichael distanced herself from official orga-
nizations and metropolitan modes of being. She cast off her Western
clothes, which were a prominent marker of cultural and national identity,
and assumed the name ‘Amma’, the Tamil word for mother. Thus,
although she also adopted a degree of integration, her work was arguably
still conceived through an ‘imperial maternalism’.
During her later years in South India, Carmichael formed the
Dohnavur Fellowship. This organization worked with Indian women
to prevent the use of ‘temple children’, or ‘devadasis’, and looked after
the welfare and education of girls released from the profession.
Devadasis were girls and women dedicated to deities of particular
temples through a ritual marriage. They were prohibited from marry-

ing men but consummated their temple marriage when they reached
puberty by taking a sexual partner, usually an upper-caste male patron
of the temple. The practice took place predominantly in South India.
The women or young girls typically sang and danced and performed
rituals in exchange for an income. According to Mytheli Sreenivas,
they enjoyed a privileged position by means of their association with
the temple. They seemingly obtained benefits not available to other
Hindu women, such as financial stability, education, and freedom. On
the other hand, Amrit Srinivasan claims that the practice evolved into a
form of prostitution due to corrupt temple administration and andro-
centric forms of worship that established male dominance and power
over these women.72 Without doubt, there is a great deal of contro-
versy surrounding the position of devadasis throughout history. While
the issues are by no means straightforward, it is clear that the con-
solidation of British rule in South India called into question the ritual
and economic connections that had sustained the devadasi system.
Christian ideas about sex and morality, as discussed in Chapter 6,
and family values, as discussed here, emphasized the benefits of mono-
gamous marriage for Indian women, and stigmatized all other sexual
or marital practices, including the devadasi system.
British literature and colonial discourse simplistically reduced the deva-
dasis as unmarried, sexually active women to prostitutes; subsequently, the
process of adopting young girls to train in temple service came increasingly
under attack from the 1870s. The practice became viewed in much the
same way as trafficking in minors for the purpose of prostitution in Britain.
Such ideas were obviously influenced by contemporary metropolitan con-
cerns about the age of consent and child prostitution. At the same time,
the growing Indian women’s movement, as evinced by the formation of
the Women’s Indian Association in 1917 and the All India Women’s
Conference in 1927, also raised concerns about the status of devadasis
and what the practice signified about indigenous women’s place in society.
Like British women, Indian women were gradually and tentatively step-
ping outside their domestic environment and beginning to question the
patriarchal systems that attempted to limit the sphere of their experience.
Muthulakshmi Reddi (1886–1968), for example, was a physician, legisla-
tor, and founding member of the Women’s Indian Association; she orga-
nized public support for devadasi reform and brought the question
repeatedly to the Madras legislative council throughout the 1920s. For
her, social reform, especially concerning devadasis, was an even more

urgent moral imperative than gaining national independence.73
The overlaps between British and Indian proto-feminists, who sought
to raise the status of women through education and the reform of certain
traditional practices, such as the treatment of widows, child marriage, and
devadasis, will be discussed further in the following chapter. But, it is
worth noting here that, despite the imperial narratives of a civilizing
mission, there were instances when colonizers and colonized came
together to work toward a shared goal. Carmichael worked alongside
female members of the indigenous community, who clearly supported
her desire to eradicate the use of temple children. Together, Indian and
British reformists succeeded in making important changes to the law and
the devadasi practice was outlawed in 1947. Even then, Carmichael did
not return to Britain. She continued to live in Dohnavur until her death in
1951, a decision that indicates the extent to which India had become
home for her. In this respect, she differed from the imperial women writers
under consideration here. Colonial wives often lived in India for long
periods of time, but they retained a sense of belonging to Britain, knowing
they would eventually return home. In many cases, this knowledge inhib-
ited their engagement with India and the Indian people, and significantly
affected their representations. Conversely, once Carmichael decided not to
return to Britain, she was better able to interact with the indigenous
community on her own terms and to do so in a mutually beneficial way.
Crucially, this freedom to remain in the subcontinent was only possible
because she did not have familial or marital commitments. Over time, she
became less and less connected with the home culture. She eventually
severed many ties with the metropole.
Those women who were tied to the institution of marriage had to find
freedom and authority within the confines of the Raj’s patriarchy. They
used their marital unions to bolster their sense of autonomy and equality
by representing Western marriage as the result of romantic and compa-
nionate relationships. They also depicted indigenous unions as the result
of uncivilized practices like child marriage and polygamy. Such configura-
tions belied reality but gave them a sense of superiority in the colonial
outpost, as Philippa Levine explains:
The increasing romanticisation of marriage in Britain, which ignored how

often it was a carefully managed business arrangement, made such alternative
ideas of marriage seem barbaric and unnatural, evidence of a lesser sensibility.74
NOTES 99
Furthermore, various legislations during the nineteenth century, such as

the Custody of Infants Act of 1839, the various Matrimonial Causes Acts
between 1857 and 1907, and the Married Women’s Property Acts of
1870 and 1882, allowed the memsahibs to imagine themselves in a posi-
tion of relative power. They criticized the status of Indian women and
often overlooked the growing number of Indian women, like Reddi, who
were stepping out into the professional and political world to gain equal
rights for women, often with the support of their progressive husbands.
In a rather rare admission in The Modern Marriage Market (1897), Steel
challenged the idea that women in Britain were better off than those in India:
I am not, however, hoping to advocate the Indian system here (with child
marriage, female infanticide, and sati thrown in as make-weights) – though
my personal experience is that, even with polygamy superadded, the percen-
tage of rational happiness derived from wifehood and motherhood is as high
in India as it is in England.75
There was certainly no room for such statements in her primer; but, in a
text less closely related to colonial issues she was freer to admit that
English family life was not always ideal. As we know, Steel suffered greatly
from the loss of her children through death and detachment. She also
endured a rather loveless marriage.76 Indeed, regardless of the propaganda
of Victorian companionate matches, many British women did not enjoy a
romantic relationship with their husbands. For a number of these women,
children acted as a kind of recompense. As seen here, imperial women
were unable to enjoy fully this reparation; but, because colonial discourses
rested upon the ideals of a companionate marriage and the nuclear family,
women writers continued to extol the virtues of Victorian domesticity and
denigrate manifestations of alternative family situations in India. This
configuration gave them access to discourses of power, and facilitated a
degree of movement beyond the home environment.
NOTES
1. Nancy L. Paxton, Writing Under the Raj: Gender, Race, and Rape in the
British Colonial Imagination, 1830–1947 (London: Rutgers University
Press, 1999), p. 117.
2. Catherine Hall, White, Male and Middle Class: Explorations in Feminism
and History (Cambridge: Polity Press, 1992), p. 60.
3. Mary A. Procida, Married to the Empire: Gender, Politics and Imperialism in

India 1883–1947 (Manchester: Manchester University Press, 2002), p. 29.
4. Procida, Married to the Empire, p. 30.
5. For a full discussion of the acquisition and impact of habitus, see Pierre
Bourdieu, Outline of a Theory of Practice (Cambridge: Cambridge
6. E. M. Collingham, Imperial Bodies: The Physical Experience of the Raj,
c.1800–1947 (Cambridge: Polity Press, 2001), p. 84.
7. Collingham, Imperial Bodies, p. 97.
8. Barbara N. Ramusack, ‘Cultural Missionaries, Maternal Imperialists,
Feminist Allies: British Women Activists in India, 1865–1945’ in Western
Women and Imperialism: Complicity and Resistance, eds. Nupur Chaudhuri
and Margaret Strobel (Indianapolis: Indiana University Press, 1992),
p. 120.
9. Alison Blunt, Domicile and Diaspora: Anglo-Indian Women and the Spatial
Politics of Home (Oxford: Blackwell Publishing, 2005), p. 28.
10. Deirdre David, Rule Britannia: Women, Empire, and Victorian Writing
(Ithaca: Cornell University Press), p. 97.
11. Georgiana Theodosia Fitzmoor-Halsey Paget, Camp and Cantonment:
A Journal of Life in India in 1857–59, With Some Account of the Way Thither
17. Sarah Stickney Ellis, The Wives of England, their Relative Duties, Domestic
Influence and Social Obligations (London: Fisher, Son and Co., 1843),
p. 59.
18. Mildred E. Staley, Handbook for Wives and Mothers in India (Calcutta:
Thacker, Spink, and Co., 1908), p. 3.
19. John Tosh argues that men had the privilege to move freely between the two
spheres of Victorian society. For a full discussion, see John Tosh, Manliness
and Masculinities in Nineteenth-Century Britain: Essays on Gender, Family
and Empire (Harlow: Pearson Education Limited, 2005), pp. 70–72.
20. Anne C. Wilson, Letters from India (1911. London: Century Publishing
Company, 1984), pp. 39–40.
23. During her writing career, Florence Marryat authored seventy-five novels
and a rather critical memoir of her life in India.
NOTES 101

(London: Richard Bentley Publishers, 1868), p. 101.
25. Florence Marryat, Veronique (Leipzig: Bernhard Tauchnitz, 1869), 3: 9.
29. Anna Davin, ‘Imperialism and Motherhood’, History Workshop 1.5 (1978):
10.
30. Edith Bulwer Villiers Lytton, India, 1876–1880 (London: privately printed
31. Lytton, India, p. 43.
32. Flora Annie Steel and Grace Gardiner, The Complete Indian Housekeeper
and Cook (1888. London: Heinemann, 1909), p. 164.
36. Ralph Crane and Anna Johnston, ‘Introduction’ in The Complete Indian
Housekeeper and Cook (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2011), p. xxiv.
37. Crane and Johnston, ‘Introduction’, p. 166.
38. Collingham, Imperial Bodies, pp. 2–3.
43. A. K. D.-H., The Memsahib’s Manual Being an Easy Guide to Learning
Hindustani, with some Advice on Health and the Household (Calcutta:
Thacker, Spink, and Co., 1914), p. 54.
44. Staley, Handbook for Wives and Mothers, p. 12.
45. Maud Diver, The Englishwoman in India (Edinburgh: William Blackwood
and Sons, 1909), pp. 42–44.
46. Paxton, Writing Under the Raj, p. 168.
56. Flora Annie Steel, The Garden of Fidelity (London: Macmillan, 1929), p. 34.
57. For a full discussion of this painting, see Alison Gernsheim and Helmut
Gernsheim, Queen Victoria: A Biography in Word and Picture (London:
Longmans, 1959), p. 257.
58. European and Anglo-Indian Defence Association, The Englishman’s Jubilee
Pamphlet (Calcutta: Englishman Press, 1887), p. 26.
p. 63.
60. Natalie McKnight, Suffering Mothers in Mid-Victorian Novels (New York:
St Martin’s Press, 1997), pp. 14–16.
61. Ramusack, ‘Cultural Missionaries’, p. 120.
62. Although Ramusack deals primarily with short-term visitors to India, her
description of the ways in which female responsibility and authority is
couched in familial terms is echoed in various ways throughout women’s
domestic writing. For a more detailed discussion, see Ramusack, ‘Cultural
Missionaries’, p. 120.
63. The ban on missionary activity in India was lifted in 1813, but the govern-
ment maintained an official policy of non-interference, even though there
was great public support for evangelical activities from Britain and, until the
latter years of the nineteenth century, there were ever increasing numbers
volunteering for the missions.
64. Hariot Dufferin, Ten Printed Journals, 1884–88, Dufferin and Ava Papers
(Public Records Office of Northern Ireland), 3: 67.
65. Irene H. Barnes, Behind the Pardah: The Story of C. E. Z. M. S. Work in
India (London: Marshall Bros., 1897), p. 177.
66. Rachael Piggott, ‘Maternity Service. How Stands Sind? Better Training for
Dais Essential. Advantages of Registration: A Powerful Appeal.’ Leaflet.
Records of the Church of England Zenana Missionary Society, 1895–1939.
University of Birmingham, Special Collections. CEZ/G EA2/2F, p. 3.
67. Antoinette Burton, Burdens of History: British Feminists, Indian Women,
and Imperial Culture, 1865–1915 (Chapel Hill: University of North
Carolina, 1994), p. 60.
69. H. Lloyd, Hindu Women: With Glimpses into their Life and Zenanas
(London: J. Nisbet and Co., 1882), p. 2. The author of this text appears
on the title page as H. Lloyd. Cataloguers are confused as to what the ‘H’
stood for, and the author is variously listed as Henrietta, Harriette, Henry
and Helen. It is probable that the author is in the same Miss H. Lloyd who
was an editor of India’s Women: The Magazine of the Church of England
Zenana Missionary Society.
NOTES 103
70. Patricia Grimshaw and Peter Sherlock, ‘Women and Cultural Exchanges’ in
Missions and Empire, ed. Norman Etherington (Oxford: Oxford University
Press, 2005), p. 184.
71. Amy Carmichael, ‘First Contact with Temple Children’ (Typescript account,
Public Record Office of Northern Ireland, 1908), p. 5.
72. For a more detailed discussion of the devadasi practice, see Mytheli Sreenivas,
‘Creating Conjugal Subjects: Devadasis and the Politics of Marriage in
Colonial Madras Presidency’, Feminist Studies 37.1 (2011): 67; and Amrit
Srinivasan, ‘Reform and Revival: The Devadasi and Her Dance.’ Economic and
Political Weekly 20.44 (Nov 1985): 1873.
73. For a more detailed discussion of Reddi, see Sreenivas, ‘Creating Conjugal
Subjects’, p. 69.
74. Philippa Levine, Gender and Empire (Oxford: Oxford University Press,
2004), p. 142.
75. Flora Annie Steel in The Modern Marriage Market by Marie Corelli, Susan
Elizabeth Mary Jeune, Flora Annie Steel, and Susan Harris. (London:
Hazell, Watson, and Viney, Ld., 1897), p. 119.
76. For a more detailed discussion of Flora Annie Steel’s marriage, see Paxton,
‘Complicity and Resistance’ in Western Women and Imperialism: Complicity
and Resistance, eds. Nupur Chaudhuri and Margaret Strobel (Indianapolis:
Indiana University Press, 1992), p. 161.
CHAPTER 5
Ladies of Leisure: Pastimes, Daily Routines,

and Philanthropic Duties
The proverbial relationship between Satan and idle hands is too often
confirmed in the Himalayas. (Maud Diver, The Englishwoman in
India, p. 24)
The changes to the familial and the domestic situation, as described in the
previous chapters, meant women’s daily routines differed substantially
from what they were accustomed to in the metropolitan centre. The
popular press assumed that imperial wives were left at a loose end with
little to replace what had been lost. Critical commentators depicted the
memsahibs as idle and inert figures, who spent their days languishing on
sofas, drinking gin and tonics, and quietly perspiring in the Indian sun.
Such views endured with alarming persistence. The following description
of the memsahibs appears in Marian Fowler’s Below the Peacock Fan: First
Ladies of the Raj (1988):
The hot weather forced them to spend their days on sofas, behind closed
shutters. They reclined like invalids, dreamy and languid, in darkened rooms.
When they went abroad, they were often carried in palanquins . . . which more
than one Lady Sahib likened to coffins. Physically, India reduced them to almost
total indolence; if they dropped a handkerchief a servant would pick it up. They
perspired gently in their muslin dresses, thought about India, recorded their
impressions in long journal-letters mailed off to family and friends.1

DOI 10.1007/978-3-319-33195-9_5
106 5 LADIES OF LEISURE: PASTIMES, DAILY ROUTINES . . .
Fowler uncritically offers this familiar image and yet the vast majority of
women writers did not convey such lackadaisical lifestyles in their non-
fiction narratives. Undoubtedly, there were memsahibs who succumbed to
the debilitating effects of the soaring temperatures; but, there were also
numerous women, hoping to contribute to the imperial project, who
presented a more industrious impression of Indian life. If they occasionally
complained about a lack of productive occupation, in almost the same
breath they outlined their busy schedules and daily routines. Unlike mid-
dle-class women in Britain, who, according to Anne McClintock, adver-
tised keenly their pursuit of leisure activities, British women in the
subcontinent lifted the veil over women’s ‘work’.2
According to Walter E. Houghton, the thriving, capitalist culture of
Victorian England viewed idleness as a serious vice.3 Furthermore, imperial
discourse warned against the dangers of inactivity by highlighting the appar-
ently lazy nature of the Indian people and linking it to their lack of power and
authority. Colonial narratives suggested that the Indians’ inactivity meant they
were incapable of utilizing resources, cultivating morality, and mobilizing
modernity. Women writers contributed to this narrative by similarly depicting
their Indian counterparts as being without useful occupation. For example,
when Georgiana Theodosia Paget visited a zenana in a palace fort outside
Heblee, she remarked: ‘Apparently the native ladies of rank spend their whole
lives in absolutely doing nothing. It must be very dull’.4 Orientalist art and
literature perceived this inactivity as morally dangerous, inculcating the appar-
ent promiscuity of the East and providing further justification for colonial
rule.5 It was, therefore, imperative that imperial women writers differentiated
between how Indian women and English ladies spent their free time.
Once imperial women completed their morning chores, they were keen to
find useful ways to occupy the rest of their day. There was, unsurprisingly, an
attendance to familiar Victorian activities, such as reading, painting, playing
whist, writing and receiving letters, going horse-riding, and playing tennis.
Such modes of behaviour were highly representative of English national
identity, and, as Angelia Poon suggests, formed ‘a national habitus’ which
helped bring the colonial exiles together through a shared identity.6 Poon
appropriates Pierre Bourdieu’s term to explain how seemingly insignificant
details about what British women did, and how they did it, were part of an
enactment of Englishness that carried great symbolic import. Nonetheless, in
comparison to the occupations of colonial men, such pastimes were often
viewed as rather trivial amusements. The potential danger associated with a
lack of useful employment facilitated the pursuit of worthwhile occupations
LADIES OF LEISURE: PASTIMES, DAILY ROUTINES . . . 107
outside the home – it was apparently less troublesome to partake in masculine

activities than to display Indian characteristics.
As we saw in the previous chapter, British women were particularly
drawn to philanthropic work because this allowed them to become active
in the Empire while still attending to Victorian gender discourses. Imperial
writers constructed an image of the downtrodden Indian woman in need
of salvation. They presented her plight as a special imperial responsibility;
as Antoinette Burton notes, this was generally referred to as the ‘white
women’s burden’.7 This rhetoric did not take into account the increasing
number of Indian women reformers, who similarly challenged indigenous
traditions. As feminist critic Meera Kosambi has demonstrated, this was a
time which ‘saw a redefinition of custom and tradition, a renegotiation of
individual freedoms and constraints, and an attempt to recast Indian
society in a mould at once more progressive and more truly Indian’.8
Thus, women in both Britain and India were challenging social structures.
As seen here, the feminist reform movement was not simply the result of
one enlightened culture helping another. Indigenous and imperial reform
projects emerged and evolved in symbiosis, and proto-feminist campaign-
ers moved back and forth between the metropole and its colonial margins.
British women like Mary Carpenter travelled to India to champion
women’s ‘uplift’ and escape Victorian gender discourses, and Indian
women like Pandita Ramabai travelled to Britain to gain an education
and challenge Indian patriarchy; as Burton explains, ‘colonial subjects
criss-crossed across the globe’.9
Imperial women’s philanthropic work was initially supported by the
British Empire; but, as increasing numbers of women came forward from
both colonizing and colonized communities, there emerged dissenting
voices and different roles. Women, like Annie Besant, felt able to break
free from patriarchal associations and resist colonialist ideologies. Such
direct challenges to imperial power caused anxiety. Dominant forces
attempted to quash defiance, making it particularly difficult for women
connected to the Raj through marriage to resist colonial and patriarchal
authority. Thus, for the most part, colonial wives remained broadly com-
plicit with the structures of imperial power.
*****
In 1856, Charlotte Canning wrote about the ‘idle and selfish life’ that she led
in India.10 Her lack of occupation was partly due to her lack of knowledge
about how things worked in the subcontinent: she was unsure of how to go
about the most simple of activities, like going for a ride, in this unfamiliar
environment. This ignorance frustrated Lady Canning, who was concerned
about the example that she, as the Governor-General’s wife, was setting. The
warning words of The Wives of England and other primers were surely ringing
in her ears: Sarah Stickney Ellis was extremely critical of ‘languid, listless and
inert young ladies’ who reclined on couches and made up a rather ‘melan-
choly spectacle’.11 Dutifully, then, Lady Canning arose from her divan and
set about engaging in appropriate leisure pursuits, such as sketching and
interior decoration, which conformed to the image of middle-class femininity
that was integral to Britain’s national identity.
Victorian gender discourses expected middle-class and upper-middle-class
women to participate in character-building activities, such as sewing, playing
musical instruments, and visiting the poor; these hobbies distinguished them
from the labouring masses that had little, if any, leisure time.12 As
McClintock explains, ‘It was widely assumed that the visible sign of the
Victorian middle-class woman was the sign of leisure’. But, for many
women, this was another impossible ideal. As noted in Chapter 3, middle-
class women were often a lot busier than they were able to admit. McClintock
suggests that ‘[f]or most middling women, the cleaning and management of
their large, inefficiently constructed houses took immense amounts of labour
and energy. Yet a housewife’s vocation was precisely the concealment of this
work’.13 On top of her normal workload, she had to make time to ‘enjoy’
periods of leisure. But, in India, the situation was reversed: Englishwomen
often found themselves with an excess of free time. And, because of their
proximity to apparently idle Indian women, it was important for them to keep
busy.
The absence of family and friends, and the availability of additional
servants, meant that women in India often had fewer domestic responsi-
bilities than their metropolitan counterparts. This situation produced
images of memsahibs lounging on verandahs, drinking gin and tonics,
and exchanging titbits of tantalizing gossip. Male writers in particular
cultivated this impression of colonial women as not being appropriately
engaged; they saw this as a problem that resulted in silly and solipsistic
behaviour. In response to these, and other, erroneous charges, Maud
Diver penned her non-fiction narrative The Englishwoman in India
(1909). She acknowledged that, while there was a degree of superficiality
amongst women in Victorian India, there was also a lack of understanding
about their situation and about why such behaviours might arise:
That Englishwomen are disposed to pass judgement on their Anglo-

Indian sisters, as a class, is undeniable. From pedestals of sober respect-
ability and energetic industry, they denounce as idle, frivolous, and luxury
loving, those other women of whose trials and tribulations they know
little or nothing; and it must be acknowledged that a surface glance at
certain aspects of Anglo-Indian life would appear to justify much of the
unsparing criticism to which they are subjected. But a deeper knowledge
of what life in India really means would soften those criticisms to a
surprising extent.14
Diver felt she was in the right position to provide this ‘deeper knowledge’.
She was born in 1867 in Murree in Northern India to English parents. As
was the norm, she lived in India until she was old enough to go back to
England to school. Once she had completed her education, she returned
to India and, in 1896, married Thomas Diver, an officer in the Royal
Warwickshire Regiment. The couple later took up permanent residence in
England, where Diver became familiar with the derogatory ways in which
British writers and readers viewed colonial women.
Fictional narratives, such as Rudyard Kipling’s Plain Tales from the Hills
(1888) and Henry Stewart Cunningham’s The Chronicles of Dustypore
(1877), humorously depicted the women of Victorian India as giddy and
garrulous, and these texts proved extremely popular. But Diver claimed that
the real lives of the memsahibs remained a mystery:
Of late years we have heard a good deal, one way and another, of that
mysterious product – the Anglo-Indian woman. Kipling has sketched her
for us with inimitable skill and truth; the growing army of Anglo-Indian
novelists diligently enlighten us on the subject; and, in these days of
rapid flitting to and fro, she herself is very frequently in our midst, – yet
few, curiously few of us, on this side of the ocean, have any real knowl-
edge of her life, and thoughts, and ways; of the charm, the mystery, the
high-lights, and sharp black shadows that make up the sum of our sister-
women’s lives in India.15
According to Diver, these well-known writers had been unable to capture

the exotic tenor and extreme difficulties of life in India, although she
admitted that there was a degree of truth in Kipling’s portrayals of the
memsahibs. She felt it necessary to address the most common misappre-
hensions by unveiling in her book the specific, everyday details of colonial
women’s lives.
Diver wrote her narrative from an ostensibly neutral perspective. She

clearly drew upon her own experiences, but did not offer her own personal
story. Instead, she adopted a somewhat neutral tone, which implied the
accuracy and objectivity of her account of an average woman’s life in
Victorian India. First and foremost, Diver hoped to demonstrate that
colonial women were, at heart, English women who simply lived in
another country, a point which is indicated from the outset by the title
of her narrative. After all, as she knew from personal experience, even
women born in India spent the greater part of their childhood in the
metropolitan centre. Diver argued that these women, the memsahibs,
made every effort to stay true to their national identity by consistently
showing their commitment to the home culture. But, as she explained,
each and every day, they faced an uphill struggle. For reasons beyond their
control, they frequently suffered from a prolonged detachment from
family and friends; they sometimes spent extended periods of time alone
without their husbands, and/or their children, in a house full of Indian
employees; and, they often found themselves stationed in small outposts,
without any kind of social community, devoid of female companionship,
and excused from broader civilizing obligations. In these isolated sur-
roundings, the days seemed to stretch out endlessly before them.
In this environment, the memsahibs’ struggle to keep busy was made
all the more troubling by the fact that they were visible to each other, their
servants, and onlookers in the metropole. Their behaviour was increas-
ingly scrutinized and criticized. Even Diver, who sought to counter many
of the more negative representations of life in India, placed her peers
under the spotlight by writing about them and expressing some anxiety
about their not being sufficiently and, perhaps more importantly, appro-
priately occupied. Unlike other narratives that testified to the angliciza-
tion of India, Diver wanted to show her English readers the irreconcilable
differences between the colony and the metropole, and to exemplify the
extent to which these differences affected women’s behaviour. She
emphasized how difficult it was to recreate the regimes and routines of
metropolitan life in the colonial outpost when India’s climate and culture
undercut every effort to impose order and control. In this way, she
showed just how much women struggled for the sake of the Empire.
As previously noted, the soaring temperatures had a demonstrable
effect on British women and children. A prolonged spell in the grasp of
the hot weather upset even the generally adaptable and resilient Violet
Jacob:
A more severe hot weather is on us than has been here for long, for the want
of the winter rains seems to have upset the country and the climate. Instead
of a clear blue sky we have leaden clouds and the air is full of thunder that
will not burst. The result with me is sleeplessness, as the thermometer
registers over 90 degrees already and only drops a little at night. I have
splitting headaches and the night is often a nightmare. One’s hands and
neck and face all feel like one’s feet after wearing galoshes that “draw” them.
Mosquitoes are in full swing too.16
For reasons explained fully in Chapter 7, Jacob refused to make the annual
retreat to the Himalayan hill stations and, like many others, her physical
health suffered because of the intemperate climate. Those who did not fall
physically sick seemed to endure a more general malaise caused by an
overall lack of energy. The sun seemed to drain women of all vitality,
leaving them unable to fulfil their domestic duties and rendering them
unfit for worthwhile and symbolic pastimes. The ever critical Florence
Marryat pointed out that it was extremely hard to make your own employ-
ment when the climate was so utterly enervating.17 She complained about
her own inability to pursue appropriately ‘feminine’ activities, such as
sewing and embroidery: she noted that even pulling a needle through
cloth was too much exertion for her hot hands. And singing simply felt like
hard work, not least because the pianos that had been dutifully transported
to the subcontinent were now out of tune due to the rise in temperature.18
Marryat was concerned that without the distraction of anglocentric
pastimes, British women in India would reach a worrying level of apathy.
While she was travelling in Burma, she became extremely apprehensive
after visiting an English lady at Rangoon, ‘who had arrived at such a pitch
of “ennui” that she would neither eat nor drink, but sat all day doing
nothing, with the tears rolling almost insensibly down her cheeks’.19
Marryat referred to this condition as ‘Burmese Ennui’ and stated that
this affliction was ‘more likely to attack women than men’ because, in
addition to the monotonous temperatures which everyone endured, men
were kept busy whereas women had to contend with the absence of certain
duties and responsibilities.20 Marryat believed that inactivity that was not
‘diverted by change of scene and action’ would ‘degenerate almost into a
state of idiocy’ and eventually this inertia would take the form of a more
settled melancholy.21 Such assertions engendered a culture of fear around
idleness and indolence in colonial India, motivated in part by the negative
connotations of the word ‘degenerate’. As noted in the previous chapter,
there was an acute anxiety about the degeneration of the British race.
Ennui was seen by many as an indication of modern society’s deteriora-
tion; this state bred weakness and immorality as manifested through a
poetic impotence of will and a lack of overt action.22 Such behaviour did
not accord with colonial ideals and posed a threat to the stability and
success of the British Empire.
The state of apathy, as described by Marryat, also spoke directly to
concerns about racial contamination and contagion. As we have seen,
Englishwomen in India existed in constant and direct contact with the
local people, generating a fear that too much engagement with the indigen-
ous races might cause British women, as well as their children, to assume the
negative characteristics associated with their servants. Imperial women wri-
ters acknowledged this anxiety but were keen to assure their readers that they
were doing their best to fill their time and fend off detrimental states of
inactivity. As seen above, Diver and Marryat did this by acknowledging the
threat of such conditions but never admitting to experiencing these disorders
personally. They recorded other women’s enervating ailments and loss of
activity while simultaneously asserting their own productivity. Imperial
manuals and memoirs accounted for every moment of the day in India;
writers provided readers with daily schedules, domestic routines, and details
of their various feminine recreations. However, such personal information
did not accord with the expected content of conventional colonial narratives,
which generally prioritized the male colonial experience. Thus, as Paget’s
Camp and Cantonment: A Journal of Life in India in 1857–59 shows, this
had to be carefully managed.
After the birth of her baby, Paget remained alone in Ahmednugger. As
noted in Chapter 2, she shared with her readers the extreme loneliness she
experienced while living in this small rural camp without her husband. She
also complained of a daily existence that offered little in the way of
appealing diversions. She explained that, as a result of this isolation, she
had little worth reporting to her readers:
The last three weeks have afforded little worthy of daily record, or of
interest, to any one but myself. I moved into my house on the 27th of
November; and my daily life was as monotonous and solitary as it is
possible to conceive. My only enjoyment consisted in my daily rides –
in which I explored most of the country within two or three miles of the
cantonment, took many sketches, and found my horse a true and faithful
companion.23
In what became a rather familiar literary technique, Paget seems to skip

over several weeks at a time. In actual fact, she goes on to outline, in the
following pages of her memoir, her exact behaviour during those three
weeks:
On first settling in my bungalow, I set myself to work to unpack and tidily

re-arrange my own and my husband’s things; which latter, packed by his
native servant were miracles of confusion. . . . It took me a good day’s work
to set things in order. One evening I amused myself by superintending the
shoeing of my bullocks.24
Paget appears here to be deliberately acceding to the relegation of

feminine pastimes as trivial, uninteresting, and unremarkable, particu-
larly in relation to masculinized colonial activities; but, this only takes
place on a very superficial level. In reality, she exemplified the ideals of
industry and usefulness by writing of her adherence to Victorian
domestic routines. Paget and her publishers were clearly aware of the
symbolic import of her rather feminine activities. They were the pri-
mary focus of a publication that included an account of ‘the Pursuit of
the Rebels in Central India’ by her husband. Interestingly, the Major’s
military activity was set as an adjunct to his wife’s more domestic
writing, thereby indicating the value and visibility of women’s experi-
ences at this time.
For the most part, the value of women’s daily routines emerged
from their support of imperial discourse; however, as Gillian Rose
explains, these narratives also contested dominant discourses, such as
patriarchy:
[T]he everyday routines traced by women are never unimportant, because

the seemingly banal and trivial events of the everyday are bound into the
power structures which limit and confine women. The limits on women’s
everyday activities are structured by what society expects women to be
and therefore to do. The everyday is the arena through which patriarchy is
(re)created and contested.25
In Victorian India, women broadly conformed to the feminine traits

exported as part of Britain’s colonial identity. At the same time, because
these behaviours became powerful symbols of national identity and
colonial superiority, the documentation of their everyday routines
privileged and politicized seemingly insignificant details and pushed at

the boundaries of gender discourse.
Apparently inconsequential details about conduct, dress, mannerisms,
bearing, and taste, all carry great symbolic importance and, according to
Bourdieu, reveal vital information about a society’s structures.26 In Victorian
India, therefore, an attendance to anglicized behaviours reflected a cultural
and colonial superiority which, as Poon informs us, is imagined and iterative:
‘Englishness is performed by subjects writing and imagining themselves and
others like them’.27 Undoubtedly, then, women writers in India were aware
of their contribution to a national identity. Their modes of being, and the act
of writing these modes, helped to consolidate the colonial community’s
identity by encouraging others to follow their lead. As we have seen, Flora
Annie Steel and Grace Gardiner were wholly committed to this ideal of
cohesion. Their instructive text imparted directives beyond the domestic
matters of housekeeping and homemaking; they also mapped out a sample
daily schedule, complete with suggested meals and potential leisure pursuits:
The writer’s idea of a healthy, comfortable, hot-weather day is as follows:

Rise at five o’clock, or half-past, after a night spent under a thermantidote,
or on the roof with a punkah. Take tea and toast. Then, on some pretence or
another – if possible with an object – stay out of doors riding, driving, or
walking till half-past seven or eight o’clock. Take some porridge and milk, or
some other light refreshment, remembering that in the hot weather it is a
mistake either to feel empty or to take a full meal. Then bathe, either in a
swimming bath or in a tub fully of really hot water. Look after the house-
keeping, &c. Either before or after your bath. Not later than ten o’clock,
breakfast, and work steadily at something till noon. From twelve till two lie
down and read, or sleep. It is a horrible mistake to sleep after a heavy
luncheon; you wake unfit even for your own society. Lunch at two, or
half-past. Work till four, bath, dress and go out. So, as Pepys says, dinner
at eight, and to bed about half-past ten.28
Imperial women writers generally attested to this version of the daily

routine. Many of them recorded that they also got up at around five or
six; they took some exercise, followed by breakfast; they then carried
out their housekeeping duties until midday. At noon, it was time for a
siesta. The afternoon began with lunch and continued with productive
activities or visiting and receiving others until 4.00 pm. The evening’s
activities usually included a ride round the cantonment or station, and
they finished the day with dinner and then bed, unless there was a
significant social occasion to attend.
These iterated routines had what Poon refers to as a ‘homogenising
interpolative power’ because they provided a template for a collective
feminine identity in Victorian India: ‘the individual female reader is
exhorted to conform to an ideal that is legitimized at once by its attain-
ability and by its potential ubiquity’.29 Thus, when Hariot Dufferin out-
lined how she spent her time, she not only intended to provide her readers
with an image of her day, she hoped to create a coherent identity that
would bind them together through recognition and replication of a famil-
iar routine:
I will tell you how I spend the day, and then you will learn casually about
some of my arrangements. D. gets up pretty early to work, and I am
generally ready at 8.30. We breakfast at 9 o’clock on the balcony outside
my pink drawing room. We, four, (family) together. D. stays and walks
about for a little, while the green parrots and the crows look down upon us
from the capitals of the pillars which support the roof of the verandah.30
Her actions, as the Vicereine, surely held great sway, and the public value
of seemingly personal details is evident from the fact that she also included
this documentation of her daily routine in the published edition of her
letters. In Our Viceregal Life, she interrupted her narrative thread to
include a list of her many occupations and the time spent on each activity.
She proclaimed that she divided her recreational time between a range of
worthwhile pursuits, such as learning Hindustani, completing correspon-
dence, preparing for imperial entertainments, taking outdoor dissipations,
and enjoying some light exercise.31 These hobbies, as Bourdieu might
suggest, were not simply indicative of individual taste; they were socially
and culturally driven, reflecting the dominant ideals of British colonialism.
Thus, as Steel and Gardiner declared, women had a responsibility to
engage in particular recreational activities:
It is a duty to take some real recreation, and to unstring our bow daily. Of an
evening, for instance, all talk of work should be avoided and a real rest taken –
not a mere change of leg like the cabman’s horse. If several persons are in
camp together, a compendium box of games will afford amusement evening
after evening; while even a solitary traveller can enjoy variety in healthful
reading, a musical instrument, or letter writing.32
Readers clearly heeded their advice. Imperial women writers frequently

mentioned an enjoyment of musical instruments and English litera-
ture. There were ‘reading parties’, such as those attended by Steel,
where women came together and read aloud canonical British authors
such as Thackeray, Dickens, and Scott.33 These literary get-togethers
took place within the comfortable frame of the domestic environment,
and, because there was a general preference for authors who broadly
supported the status quo, these gatherings generally inculcated mid-
dle-class values. At the same time, as the Empire opened up new
opportunities, many women also sought ways to pass the time outside
the home.
Spurred along by their new-found ability to support colonial cul-
ture and a burgeoning feminist movement, women in India were keen
to contribute more fully to the imperial world. There emerged
debates about how far a woman’s usefulness could and should extend
beyond the colonial home. The Society for Promoting Christian
Knowledge (SPCK) engaged in this debate through their published
tract Glimpses of Anglo-Indian Life Here and at Home (1901); this
pamphlet confirmed a woman’s primary responsibility was her own
domestic environment. The authors acknowledged that, in large
families, it was often not possible to do much more than care for
one’s husband and children. However, the SPCK also suggested that,
in the absence of these duties of care, a woman’s natural sympathies
inclined her to carry out useful activities beyond the domestic sphere:
‘She will long to be doing something for the young, the ignorant and
needy, or the sick and suffering about her’.34 The tract identified the
desire to care and to nurture as innately feminine qualities, which
women needed to exercise in order to remain true to their gender.
And, in India, there were plenty of people apparently in need of their
maternal attention. Similarly, Diver suggested that no Englishwoman,
due to her ‘natural’ instincts, could ignore the indigenous woman’s
desperate situation. According to her, Indian women lay in dim
zenanas in pain and anguish, nursed by superstition and doctored
by incantations and charms; therefore, the memsahibs had a respon-
sibility to participate in a civilizing mission that would rescue these
unfortunate women.35
In the wake of the First Indian War of Independence, a growing sense
of moral and social duty marked colonialism in India, as outlined by
William Bonnar in an article for the Contemporary Review (1895):
Indeed in the history of the world, perhaps no nation has so thoroughly

realised her responsibility as a conqueror, and so honestly and strenuously
striven to fulfil it, as England has done by India since the time of the great
Mutiny.36
This notion of imperial responsibility developed alongside a philanthro-

pic movement in England. Since the 1860s, there had been an increasing
interest in the idea of using one’s leisure time to help the less fortunate
members of society. In India, in the latter decades of the nineteenth
century, reform activity focused on Indian women who had been pre-
viously neglected by colonialist ideologies centred on Indian men. This
new interest provided colonial wives with an opportunity to be useful
outside the home, and gave single women a legitimate reason to travel.
Mary Carpenter was, in many respects, typical of the latter group of
female reformers: she was single, English, middle-class, and well-educated,
and she dedicated her life to philanthropic projects. Initially, she directed
her benevolent sensibilities toward the needs of urban children in industrial
England and the state of British penal institutions. She also worked in her
family’s school. It was while teaching there that she met Raja Rammohun
Roy, the founder of the Brahmo Samaj, a rationalist Hindu reform group.37
Over the coming years, Carpenter’s contact with Indian male reformers
brought the apparent plight of Indian women to the forefront of her mind.
Many middle-class Indian men wanted to change some of the conditions for
the women in their social bracket; specifically, they hoped to secure a better
education for their wives and daughters. Influenced by these reformist ideas,
Carpenter determined to travel to India and join the movement to ‘uplift’
Indian women; she helped raise awareness about the lack of education
available for Indian women and secured funds to build and staff schools.
In doing so, she also accepted many of the indigenous and imperialist
patriarchal views of the time. Her desire for female education was conceived
within the purview of Victorian gender discourses, leaving her disdainful of
Indian religions and indigenous traditions.
Carpenter travelled to India in 1866 to report on the state of education
for Indian women, being especially concerned with those from the lower
echelons of society. She recorded her experiences in Six Months in India
(1868). The text, which was used to raise money from British officials,
pandered to the fragile ego of British imperialism: ‘It is most gratifying to
an Englishwoman to find how much had been done, both by our
Government and by private individuals, to promote the welfare of this
great country’.38 Ultimately, Carpenter wanted the government of India

to give grants to support secular female schools, and to employ secular
female teachers, as they already did for boys. In order to achieve this, she
had to couch her philanthropic ideals within the colonial framework. Her
project, which clearly intended to offer Indian and British women a new
outlet for their growing ambitions, evoked a narrative of Christian duty:
The devoted work or multitudes of Englishwomen in that great continent,

shows what our sex can do: new light, the rapid progress of civilisation, the
wants created by it, reveal increasing need of women’s work in India. May
many more Englishwomen arise, who shall devote themselves to the glor-
ious and blessed work of raising their Eastern sisters, to fill that place in
society for which the Creator has destined them!39
Over time, Carpenter’s philanthropic projects gave her the opportunity to

engage closely with indigenous reformers; this contact encouraged her to
present her philanthropic work through less colonial terms. Carpenter
referred to the Indian women as her ‘Eastern sisters’, rather than through
the more hierarchical mother/daughter relationship used by other imper-
ial writers.
Burton views such expressions of sisterhood as a means of stripping the
Indian women of their exoticism and domesticating them for the British
reading public.40 On the other hand, Billie Melman reads the biologically
inclusive term as an expression of sympathy and an example of how British
women aligned themselves with the colonized subject through a shared
history of oppression, marginalization, objectification, and domination.41
While it is undisputable that women have undergone similar experiences
under patriarchal authority, Rosemary Marangoly George argues that this
does not necessarily create a global sisterhood that erases difference: ‘there
were few if indeed any moments when alliances between genders over-
shadowed racial solidarity’.42 The work of post-colonial feminists, such as
Chandra Talpade Mohanty, has generally denied the existence of gender
communities in the face of racial politics. Mohanty argues that ‘sisterhood
cannot be assumed on the basis of gender; it must be formed in concrete,
historical and political practice and analysis’.43 Her insistence that biolo-
gical essentialism is a myth, that gender is a construct, and that women in
the West share very little with women in the East, highlights the problem
with Carpenter’s naïve familial phraseology. It is certainly notable that
the expressions of sisterhood were most frequently utilized by women
when they were writing about their philanthropic efforts and appealing to
potential benefactors from both the British and Indian communities. As
such, the term, for all its inclusivity, still implied the sense of familial
responsibility that characterized the civilizing mission of the late nine-
teenth century.
Burton argues that imperial women writers disguised their own aims
and ambitions by depicting their Indian counterparts as helpless victims
and therefore part of the ‘white woman’s burden’:
Throughout contemporary middle-class feminist discourse “the Indian

women” served as evidence of British feminists’ special imperial “burden”.
Despite both their genuine concern for the condition of Indian women and
the feminist reform activities of prominent Indian women during this per-
iod, many middle-class British feminists viewed the women of the East not
as equals but as unfortunates in need of saving by their British feminist
“sisters”. By imagining the women of India as helpless colonial subjects,
British feminists constructed “the Indian women” as a foil against which to
gauge their own progress. Middle-class Victorian feminists not only identi-
fied their cause with the British imperial mission, they helped to shape a
modern Western feminism which was profoundly influenced by the imperial
assumptions of its day.44
By using the Indian women’s situation as contrasting evidence of their own

cultural superiority and female agency, British women could see themselves
as modernizing forces.45 Although this perception transformed their sense
of self, they still relied upon traditional Victorian values for their imperial
subjectivity; this meant that many philanthropic women did not radically
reconceive gender roles in society. Many of these imperial women simply
moved from one home to another. There, they introduced to Indian
women ‘useful’ feminine pastimes that took place within the private sphere.
These moderate reforms gained women like Carpenter support from Indian
men who sought to redefine female behaviour, but only within domestic
spaces, thereby fundamentally preserving India’s gender segregation.
Carpenter’s campaigns earned her the respect of Keshub Chandra Sen,
the head of the Brahmo Samaj. He asked her to lead the National Indian
Association, a society that aimed to spread knowledge about India
throughout England and inculcate an understanding of English culture
among Indian visitors to the metropolitan centre. In this role, Carpenter
worked closely with progressive, Indian, middle-class men who agreed
that indigenous women should be better educated, particularly in relation
to practical and domestic skills that would enable them to be better wives
and daughters to their Christian or Brahmo Samaj husbands. Kosambi
explains:
The recent colonial cultural encounter had introduced reformist ideas of

women’s “upliftment” through an amelioration of the coercive customs of
child marriage and enforced widowhood, and through education, which had
been reserved for Brahmin men until the advent of caste- and gender-neutral
English education. But these reforms were to be circumscribed strictly
within a patriarchal framework and geared towards making women better
wives for the English-educated Indian men expecting companionate mar-
riages, and more enlightened mothers of future generations who would
restore India to its former glory and ultimately to political autonomy.
“Emancipation” of women was thus essentially an investment in societal –
that is, male – progress, rather than aimed at bringing about gender
equality.46
The patriarchal bent of many indigenous and colonial reformists is unde-

niable. Even so, philanthropic projects ignited a proto-feminist movement
that had meaningful repercussions for women in both Britain and India.
The drive for reform, particularly in relation to female education, opened
up opportunities for imperial and indigenous women in the latter decades of
the nineteenth century. Increasing numbers of British and Indian women
took advantage of their education to seek independent, professional careers
for themselves and better positions for their peers. Pandita Ramabai, one of
the most famous female indigenous reformers at this time, received an
excellent education in both India and Britain. She then went on to campaign
vociferously against various traditional practices that subjugated women.
Ramabai’s progressive parents had initially inculcated her activism; then,
after they died and she was left widowed with a young daughter at the age
of twenty-four, she took up her reform work with even more zeal. She spoke
out against the treatment of widows and the practice of child marriage, the
same indigenous traditions that were heavily criticized by British imperial
philanthropists. Evidently, there were various overlaps between the indigen-
ous and colonial reform movements, perhaps because they both emerged
from within patriarchal societies where women were a site of contestation.
Consider, for example, Ramabai’s Preface to Stri Dharma Niti (1882):
The present condition of women in our unfortunate country is too sad for
words and will undoubtedly make every thoughtful person’s heart melt with
grief. The women of this country, being totally helpless and lacking in
education, do not understand how to achieve their own welfare; it is there-
fore necessary for learned people to explain it to them and make them
conduct themselves accordingly. Great improvement has already taken
place in this country. Educated people are beginning to realise that the
country will not progress as much as it should unless women are given
knowledge and they are therefore making efforts for women’s progress,
which is praiseworthy indeed.47
Here, Ramabai evoked a paradigm frequently found in imperial

women’s writing in order to justify their encroachment on the public
sphere: she suggested that the position of women in society was indi-
cative of a nation’s status. Therefore, she argued, the way to improve
India’s situation, as a whole, was by educating its women. She was
particularly interested in the need for Indian women in purdah, who
were prevented from seeking help from male doctors, to acquire med-
ical knowledge.
Ramabai presented her ideas about women’s education to the Hunter
Commission in 1882.48 She explained that, because of gender segrega-
tion, Indian women were reluctant to consult male doctors; they also had
a lack of rapport with European female doctors, which caused hundreds of
thousands of premature deaths.49 She argued for a solution to this pro-
blem whereby Indian women could be admitted to medical colleges to
gain the necessary knowledge and qualifications. The Commission initially
opposed her ideas but Ramabai’s evidence caused a great sensation. Her
report reached Queen Victoria, who subsequently requested that Lady
Dufferin, during her time as Vicereine, preside over the National
Association for Supplying Female Medical Aid to the Women of India,
commonly known as the Countess of Dufferin Fund.
The Countess of Dufferin Fund raised money from indigenous
sources in order to supply medical care for women in purdah. The charity
awarded money to indigenous females, who trained as medical profes-
sionals; it also set up women-only wards in hospitals, and dispelled
erroneous ideas about methods of care. In an article written for the
Nineteenth Century, Lady Dufferin outlined the goals of her project
using familiar familial terms:
[T]he very best way in which we can help our Indian sisters is by supplying
them with medical relief. I must confess I think it is because it aims at
diminishing suffering and at saving life; because education and general
enlightenment must follow in its train; because it encourages and inculcates

respect and consideration for women; because it brings cultivation and
learning in contact with the zenana; and because in medicine and nursing
Indian women will find professions open to them.50
Lady Dufferin’s name is still associated with hospitals throughout India

because of the funds she raised and the positive changes that she intro-
duced. Undoubtedly, her charitable work gave some Indian women access
to better healthcare, and it enabled others to gain a more independent and
authoritative way of life.
There were a number of Indian women who, as a result of the Fund,
travelled to Britain to train in the medical professions. For example, there
was the famous case of Dr Rakhmabai (1864–1955), who repudiated her
childhood marriage contract through legal proceedings. She invited the
colonial government to interfere through a series of letters published in
the Times of India and a very public trial. Subsequently, Queen Victoria
released her from the contract and she went on to receive financial aid to
complete her studies in Britain.51 She then returned to India and worked
as a medical officer for women. Such success stories surely served as
inspiration for Indian, and possibly British, women, and make it quite
clear that British proto-feminism was only one facet of late nineteenth-
century reform. There was evidently a flow of ideas between British and
Indian feminists, who were struggling to find their way through various
patriarchies. Even so, Lady Dufferin preferred to focus on representations
of the colonial outpost as a place forever in need of the enlightening
principles of imperial women.
The overriding image that permeated British consciousness at the turn
of the century was that India, and most specifically Indian women, needed
saving. Over time, the absence of contrasting views enabled the British
people to see their colonial mission as unambiguous; Patrick Brantlinger
outlines this process in Rule of Darkness:
Abroad, the culture of the “conquering race” seemed, at least to the insular
and insulated sources of British public opinion, unchallenged: in imperialist
discourses the voices of the dominated are represented almost entirely by
their silence or their alleged acquiescence.52
Imperial texts, such as Kipling’s poem ‘The Song of Women’ (1888),

appropriated the perspective of the colonized people so as to emphasize
that the desire for ‘improvement’ and ‘uplift’ came from within the
colonized country. The poem, which Kipling wrote in praise of Lady
Dufferin’s charitable work, ventriloquized the voices of Indian women
who wished to thank the Vicereine:
How shall she know the worship we would do for her?

The walls are very high and she is very far.
How shall the women’s message reach unto her
Above the tumult of the packed bazaar?53
Kipling’s hagiographic poem presented the Indian women as generally

unable to help themselves, thereby needing the assistance of their imperial
rulers. This common attitude overlooked those Indian women who were
actively engaged with reform issues.
Women’s imperial narratives conveniently erased indigenous contribu-
tions to social and political changes in order to secure their own place in
the colonial mission. To vindicate fully their tentative steps into the public
domain, India had to be seen as a place of arrested development, unable to
help itself and in need of rejuvenation from outside forces. As such, there
was no room in British women’s writing for individuals, like Ramabai, who
developed their own reform projects, especially those who did not wholly
accede to imperial will. As Burton argues, resistance to dominant cultural
ideas was especially difficult for Indian women travellers:
Because Indian women who came to Britain tended to be more dependent

on the financial support of English reformers and philanthropists . . . they
had less structural control over their movements, career plans, and encoun-
ters than did most Indian men.54
Certainly, Kosambi views Ramabai’s conversion to Christianity as partly

the result of coercion by her sponsors and instructors.55 But, there were
certain aspects of the Christian faith that appealed to her. In particular, a
visit to a home for the rehabilitation of ‘fallen women’ emphasized for her
the gender equality inherent in the nature of Christian forgiveness; this
had a profound impact on the Indian widow, whose status in indigenous
society was irredeemable because of the Hindu belief that widowhood was
punishment for sins committed in a previous life.
Ramabai’s conversion was to prove rather antagonistic for some Indian
reformists, who suggested, upon her return to India, that her philanthropic
work disguised and legitimized a colonial evangelical agenda.56 In reality, she

had steadfastly refused to become an evangelical missionary, despite pressure
from her British sponsors. In fact, the conflict over proselytization left Ramabai
rather disillusioned with the metropole, and she left Britain for the USA, a
country that she subsequently cast as an anti-imperial ally.57 It seems that
Ramabai felt constrained as a colonial subject in England whereas, in
America, she felt an affinity for a country that had thrown off its colonial
shackles.58 Indeed, America was to be the main source of income for many
of her missions in India. She set up schools and homes for disenfranchised and
destitute Indian women, without coercing them into religious conversion. It
was, presumably, this break with imperial discourse that led to her erasure from
British histories. It would appear that Britain was happy to endorse and support
the work of this indigenous reformer so long as she did not disrupt the
hierarchical order of imperial patriarchy. Individuals who resisted the conven-
tions of late-nineteenth century colonialism were troubling to an increasingly
fragile empire under threat from a burgeoning women’s movement and a
rising interest in Indian nationalism, and they were relegated to the margins.
The Indian National Congress (INC) was founded in 1885 in a bid to
better represent Indian interests in government and institute certain reforms
in colonial society. To begin with, the British were willing to conciliate the
Indian educated classes and support the formation of this political organiza-
tion. It was only when the INC raised questions about how India should be
governed that this became problematic. There emerged a growing dissatis-
faction with imperial rule and an increasing interest in Indian independence.
By the early decades of the twentieth century, the independence movement
had grown. It began to garner support from a number of British and Irish
men and women. But Indian nationalism, like British imperialism, was
predominantly a male project; it often excluded women, especially Indian
women, who apparently needed protection from contact with male coloni-
zers in the public sphere. As Kosambi iterates, nationalist leaders, such as B.
G. Tilak, argued that ‘Indian women’s confinement to the domestic sphere
and exclusion from the public sphere was intended for their own good,
because the public sphere was the site of direct confrontation with colonial
power and the wielders of that power’.59 This was somewhat hypocritical
because, as Kosambi explains, Tilak strongly supported Annie Besant’s work
on behalf of Indian nationalism:
Besant occupied a somewhat ambivalent location in the Indian nationalist-

reformist discourse. Her British origin placed her beyond the purview of
Indian patriarchy; and her passionate adherence to the cause of Indian

nationalism as well as her conservative stand on issues of women’s education
and widowhood matched Tilak’s own.60
Indian men’s accommodation of Besant did not protect her from the
criticism of male politicians at home. Her political views, particularly in
relation to Indian nationalism, caused great consternation in the metro-
politan centre and made it more difficult for her to return to Britain.
Eventually, she came to regard the Indian outpost as her home, more or
less relinquishing all ties to the metropole.
Besant’s resistance to dominant Victorian ideologies began when she left
the Anglican Church and her husband, who was a clergyman. Rather like a
colonial wife, Besant’s rejection of one patriarchal institution meant rejection
of the other. She then further resisted middle-class gender norms by attempt-
ing to become financially independent and critiquing the patriarchal political
system of Britain through her journalism for the radical newspaper the
National Reformer.61 She also became a vocal supporter of birth control, a
stance that allowed her husband to win custody of their children on the
grounds of his wife’s immorality. By the time she met Madame Helena
Blavatsky and became a theosophist in 1889, she was effectively a single
woman.62 Nancy L. Paxton argues that Besant’s alignment with the
Theosophist Society undoubtedly made it easier for her to pursue a career
outside England and its dominant ideologies; she certainly embraced a more
unique path than the colonial wives examined throughout this book: ‘Besant
chose rebellion rather than complicity and gradually resigned her place in the
patriarchal institutions that she saw as compromising or corrupt’.63 Her
separation from her husband and her children, and her engagement with
Indian spiritualism, as well as an immersion in indigenous languages and
culture, enabled her to transcend some of the ethnocentricism of her con-
temporaries. The Theosophist Society facilitated her rejection of imperial
ideologies; but this did not mean she was wholly autonomous or independent.
She had to submit entirely to the authority of her spiritual teacher; Blavatsky’s
authoritarianism and the influence of prominent male members of the inner
circle also restricted her activities.64 Most notably, her connection with theo-
sophy led to the renunciation of her advocacy of birth control, a position she
maintained until 1927, thirty-six years after Blavatsky’s death. Nonetheless,
during her time as president of the Society, Besant did develop her feminist
ideals, particularly in relation to India. She became outspoken in her criticism
of specific Hindu customs, such as child marriage. In 1917, she joined with
Margaret Cousins and Dorothy Jinarajadasa to establish the Women’s Indian

Association, an organization devoted to women’s suffrage and other feminist
issues.65 Unlike the Countess of Dufferin Fund or Carpenter’s educational
reforms, the Women’s Indian Association was a cross-cultural organization
run by both Indian and British women; this contact with indigenous people
surely encouraged Besant’s anti-imperialism. In later years, her feminism came
second to her strong belief in the need for Indian Home Rule, and it was this
conviction that caused the most controversy in Britain.
The movement for Indian Home Rule grew throughout the early
decades of the twentieth century, and British officials attempted to
quell support, in part by imposing stricter censorship on the press. In
1917, Lord Pentland, Governor of Madras, demanded that Besant
silence her criticism of British policy in her newspaper New India and
return to England or she would be interned in the subcontinent. Besant
refused and was placed under house arrest for ninety-four days for
publishing seditious articles. This domestic confinement was clearly a
fitting punishment for an act of rebellion that developed out of a
dissatisfaction with British patriarchal imperialism. British women had
been invited out of the domestic sphere to contribute to colonial
culture and society, but, as they began to assume public positions and
take up political actions, they also began to forge independent paths
and assert alternative ideas, presenting a challenge to the hegemonic
cultural values of late Victorian society. Gradually, there developed
various opportunities for women to travel outside imperial institutions.
Margaret Noble/Sister Nivedita, for example, journeyed to India under
the guidance of Swami Vivekananda, an Indian Hindu monk whom she
had met in England in 1895.
Sister Nivedita’s interactions with the Swami and her immersion in
Indian culture and society enabled her to integrate aspects of India’s
cultural heritage with a more traditional English education. Without any
ties to the Raj, Sister Nivedita was freer to pursue this cross-cultural path.
As time went by, she became more involved in Indian nationalist politics
and more directly critical of Britain’s relationship with India. She
expressed concern for Lord Curzon’s partition of Bengal in Glimpses of
Famine and Flood in East Bengal in 1906 (1907). She noted the disparities
between the local people and the foreign government with its ‘alien
officialdom’, as well as outlining the tragic consequences of this situa-
tion.66 The famine drew attention to the problems caused by the colonial
system, which, for her, was essentially a form of subjugation:
Over-taxation, the building of railroads, the destruction of native industries,

and the creation of wide-spread famines, – these are so many landmarks, as it
were, in a single process of subordination and exploitation.67
This perspective is hardly surprising given her Irish background and her
awareness of Ireland’s devastating potato famine of the 1840s. Like
Besant, who shared her Irish heritage, Sister Nivedita’s criticism of imperial
ideals meant that she had to accept marginalization from the metropole –
similarly, the subcontinent came to be her home and her final resting place.
Barbara N. Ramusack suggests that marginalization may have been less
daunting to both these women precisely because of their Irishness.68 It is
certainly possible that their peripheral status as political dissenters was less
troubling because they had never been wholly of the centre. Those who
travelled to India as part of the Raj, and who were expected to return to the
home culture, were less likely to express such explicit disapprovals. However,
as seen here, for even the most imperial of women, the Empire encouraged
alternatives to a wholly domestic existence. Several women, whose writing
remained faithful to their celebration of typically feminine characteristics and
activities, clearly enjoyed the additional freedoms that India provided. Their
texts registered great delight when they were able to step outside their
normal domestic constraints and enjoy alternative experiences. In addition
to their philanthropic work, they thrived upon their journeys around the
subcontinent. During these sojourns, they had the opportunity to leave
behind their daily routines and get closer to indigenous spaces.
Imperial women frequently embarked on excursions to familiar land-
marks such as the Memorial site at Cawnpore, the Taj Mahal, the Caves of
Elephanta, and the Temple of Elysium. These sites were generally well
received, particularly the Taj that, by this time, had secured its reputation
as an architectural wonder. Lady Lytton had evidently heard much about
the famous building; she was pleased to report that previous visitors had
not exaggerated its beauty:
Needless to say I was not disappointed, on the contrary it was all the more
striking than I expected, the size and the lovely garden with every sort of
enchanting flowers, trees and shrubs against the spotless white marble build-
ing lit up with such bright sunshine, and deep shadows across the front. I felt I
must kneel before it, as I crossed the entrance and first saw it. The lace work of
the marble slabs inside are so beautiful. I walked about as if in a dream; and
did not wish to speak or hear anything about the measurements and details.69
Mary Curzon had a similarly emotional response to the Taj; she felt totally
unable to do justice to its ‘appalling beauty’. This was markedly different to
her experience at the Memorial Well and the Garden at Cawnpore, where a
‘garrulous guide’ marred her overall experience.70 As discussed in my
Introduction, many British women made a kind of pilgrimage to this con-
tentious space, its popularity indicated here by the very presence of a ‘guide’.
The Angel at Cawnpore gave imperial women a chance to reflect upon the
tragedies of the Sepoy Rebellion. As noted previously, the massacre at
Cawnpore was one of the few colonial incidents that affected women directly
and upon which women felt able to comment. Most women, in the latter
decades of the century, responded to the tragic events without speaking
explicitly to the political issues surrounding the insurrection. They focused
instead upon the ornamental gardens and the discourse of imperial sacrifice
inspired by the angelic statue that stood at the well. For example, when Lady
Dufferin visited Lucknow, she entirely sidestepped the historical narrative:
Of course it would be useless to attempt to give you a real account of what

you can read in books, but I will just go through our walk with General
Wilson and tell you a little about it. . . . At the present moment the
Residency is a very pretty place – gay flowers, picturesque ruins – but it
must have been dried up, barren, and terrible then.71
She negotiated this difficult space by diverting attention from the harsh
realities of Lucknow’s recent past. Instead, she provided a description of
the physical location which she imagined as changed from a barren and
terrible place to a pretty and picturesque site. This approach appeared to
erase any kind of political engagement, but Indira Ghose argues that the
picturesque, like the voyeuristic and the gaze of surveillance, is a variant of
the transcendent observer paradigm: it is, therefore, a way of seeing that
technically removes the female from the physical site of action, without
rendering her passive. Ghose argues that the visual pleasure offered from
this detached picturesque perspective is always linked to a sense of power
and control over the image.72 While this is often the case, there were
occasionally moments when women travellers seemed to delight in a loss
of control during contact with the wilderness of India.
When women ventured off the beaten track, they often enjoyed enga-
ging with the vibrancy of the natural world they encountered. For exam-
ple, when Lady Curzon journeyed from Quilon to Trivandrum she was
simply thrilled with the sights she saw:
[F]or two hours I lay watching the unearthly vegetation of the river
banks: enormous palms and creepers, and flowers as big as your head,
mammoth lilies and orchids all hanging heavy after a night of rain. Here
at last was the India of one’s dreams, and it only needed pythons
suspended from the branches and bison and wild elephants to complete
the picture.73
India’s jungle brought about momentary feelings of independence and

liberty for many women. Beyond colonial spaces, women travellers had
brief opportunities to throw off the shackles of their imperial femininity
and enjoy exotic escapades. For some, this sense of adventure was epito-
mized by their husbands’ shooting excursions, which were an integral part
of the male colonial experience.
The thought of hunting thoroughly excited Mary Caroline Minto.
After reports of a tiger near their camp in the Takari Jungle, she eagerly
accompanied the men in their pursuit of the animal:
It is thrilling to feel one is really in the jungle with wild animals around one, and
though one is supposed to be perfectly safe in one’s machan, there are always
possibilities. The day was perfect; our huge helmets protected us from the sun;
we also wore pads on our backs, and we had some shelter from the trees. The
beaters came along beating tom-toms and drums, and shouting, we could hear
them miles away; and I felt my heart thrill with excitement as I scanned every
shrub hoping to see some movement, and picturing a huge yellow tiger within a
stone’s throw of me. I however was doomed to disappointment.74
Lady Minto rather exaggerated the sense of danger, imaginatively relishing

the chance to engage with India’s wild side and she felt rather annoyed
when she had to leave the hunt for Calcutta, writing of how she was
‘rather oppressed at returning to civilisation’.75
Hunting was a predominantly male pursuit which, according to Mary
A. Procida, was sufficiently emblematic by the end of the century to allow
women to occasionally jettison certain gendered behaviours.76 As Procida
states, this activity was yet another way for the British to come together in
a culturally significant manner:
Hunting framed many of the important social and recreational undertakings

of the imperial community. Although hunting was part of everyday life
primarily for the Anglo-Indian’s living upcountry, it was, for almost all
Anglo-Indians, a symbolically cultural institution.77
This symbolism gave women a chance to engage in a pastime traditionally

associated with masculine attributes, such as bravery, strength, and vitality.
For imperial wives, such expeditions were perhaps not as common as they
might have liked. They clearly enjoyed these interactions with indigenous
people and indigenous spaces, an observation which challenges stereoty-
pical representations of the memsahibs.
Even Marryat took great pleasure in India once she escaped the appar-
ent artificiality of imperial life. She described for her readers the beautiful
scenery she witnessed during a journey up the Neligherry Hills:
I have travelled a great deal in my life-time and witnessed many beautiful

sights; but I do not think that I have ever seen anything to compare to the
appearance of the Seegoor ghaut, as you stand at the foot looking upwards,
preparatory to commencing its ascent.
I cannot describe it: I wish I could; but no pen would be equal to the
task: it is a mass of rocky precipices, romantic waterfalls and lovely eastern
vegetation. It is a scene that at first sight almost takes your breath away; that
almost reconciles you to India.78
Then, once she arrived in the hill station, her narrative resumed its familiar
critical voice:
Ootacamund, which is the principle place there, is built on the banks of a

lake, or rather its English residences are built on the sides of the hills which
surround the lake, which is large and calm and beautiful, but useless except
to look at, as no fish will live in the water.
The ascent to each house and shop is precipitous, and in some instances
quite formidable; and the church sharing this disadvantage with the private
residences, and large crinolines being very much in vogue at the time I paid
my visit to the hills, it was considered rather a sensation on the part of the
gentlemen of the place to go and watch the ladies toiling up to the church
door, though for what reason was best known to themselves.79
Marryat severely criticized the inhabitants of Ootacamund (or Ooty as it is

more commonly known). She reprimanded them for their meaningless
existences and mocked their resolute routines, such as going to the market
place every Tuesday to get their weekly vegetables, or climbing to the
summit of the hill every morning in order to obtain their letters from the
post-office.80 However, as seen above, such habits were necessary for
long-term residents to create a sense of order and consolidate a coherent
NOTES 131
community. The apparently essential, and almost endless, daily tasks

existed partly to keep women busy and to prevent them from descending
into indigenous idleness; but, most importantly, they were there to culti-
vate an important national identity to which everyone could visibly and
verifiably adhere.
NOTES
1. Marian Fowler, Below the Peacock Fan: First Ladies of the Raj (London:
Penguin, 1988), p. 8.
2. For a detailed discussion of women’s work within the home, see Anne
McClintock, Imperial Leather: Race, Gender and Sexuality in the Colonial
Conquest (New York: Routledge, 1995), p. 161.
3. Walter E. Houghton claims that after ‘God’ the most popular word in
Victorian vocabulary was ‘work’. He goes on to say that, for the Victorians,
work was not just the means by which a commercial society could be
realized, it became an end in itself, a virtue in its own right. This
Victorian valorization of work was apparent through influential figures,
like Thomas Carlyle, who were increasingly critical of indolence and inac-
tivity, and who linked business to a Protestant work ethic as well as to the
economic rewards of industrialism. For a detailed discussion, see Walter E.
Houghton, The Victorian Frame of Mind, 1830–1870 (New Haven: Yale
University Press, 1957), pp. 242–43.
A Journal of Life in India in 1857–59, With Some Account of the Way
Thither (London: Longman, Green, Longman, Roberts, and Green
1865), p. 227.
5. The travelogues of Fanny Parks and the paintings of John Frederick Lewis,
for example, depict Eastern women lounging around the zenana in various
tantalizing states of undress.
6. Angelia Poon, Enacting Englishness in the Victorian Period: Colonialism and
the Politics of Performance (Aldershot: Ashgate Publishing, 2008), p. 15.
7. Antoinette Burton, ‘The White Woman’s Burden: British Feminists and The
Indian Woman, 1865–1915’ in Western Women and Imperialism:
Complicity and Resistance, eds. Nupur Chaudhuri and Margaret Strobel
(Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 1992), p. 138.
8. Meera Kosambi, Crossing Thresholds: Feminist Essays in Social History
(Ranikhet: Permanent Black, 2007), p. 6.
9. Antoinette Burton, At the Heart of the Empire: Indians and the Colonial
Encounter in Late-Victorian Britain (Berkeley: University of California
Press, 1998), p. 14.
10. Quoted in Augustus J. C. Hare, The Story of Two Noble Lives: Being
Memorials of Charlotte, Countess Canning and Louisa, Marchioness of
Waterford, 3 vols. (London: George Allen, 1893), 2: 132.
11. Sarah Stickney Ellis, The Women of England: Their Social Duties, and
Domestic Habits (London: Fisher, Son, and Co., 1839), p. 83.
16. Violet Jacob, Diaries and Letters from India 1895–1900, ed. Carol
Anderson (Edinburgh: Canongate 1990), p. 37.
18. Marryat, Gup, pp. 58–59.
22. Houghton, The Victorian Frame of Mind, pp. 64–65.
25. Gillian Rose, Feminism and Geography: The Limits of Geographical
Knowledge (Cambridge: Polity Press, 1993), p. 17.
26. Pierre Bourdieu, Outline of a Theory of Practice (Cambridge: Cambridge
University Press, 1977), pp. 94–95.
27. Bourdieu, Outline of a Theory of Practice, p. 13.
28. Steel and Gardiner, The Complete Indian (1888. London: Heinemann,
1909), p. 208.
29. Poon, Enacting Englishness, p. 27.
30. Hariot Dufferin, Our Viceregal Life: Selections from My Journal, 2 vols.
(London: John Murray, 1889), 1: 14.
33. Flora Annie Steel, The Garden of Fidelity (London: Macmillan, 1929), p. 156.
34. Society for Promoting Christian Knowledge, Glimpses of Anglo-Indian Life
Here and at Home (Madras: S. P. C. K. Press, 1901), p. 4.
36. William Bonner, ‘The English in India’, The Contemporary Review 68
(1895): 565.
37. For a detailed discussion of Mary Carpenter, see Barbara N. Ramusack,
‘Cultural Missionaries, Maternal Imperialists, Feminist Allies: British Women
Activists in India, 1865–1945’ in Western Women and Imperialism: Complicity
NOTES 133
and Resistance, eds. Nupur Chaudhuri and Margaret Strobel (Bloomington:

38. Mary Carpenter, Six Months in India, 2 vols. (London: Longmans, Green,
and Co., 1868), 2: 205.
39. Carpenter, Six Months in India, 2: 83.
40. Burton, ‘The White Woman’s Burden’, p. 148.
41. Billie Melman, Women’s Orients: English Women and the Middle East, 1718–
1918: Sexuality, Religion and Work (London: Macmillan, 1992), p. 7.
42. Rosemary Marangoly George, ‘Homes in the Empire, Empires in the
Home’, Cultural Critique 26 (1993–1994): 115.
43. Chandra Talpade Mohanty, ‘Under Western Eyes: Feminist Scholarship and
Colonial Discourses’ in The Post-Colonial Studies Reader, eds. Bill Ashcroft,
Gareth Griffiths, and Helen Tiffin (London: Routledge, 1995), p. 261.
44. Burton, ‘The White Woman’s Burden’, pp. 137–8.
45. See Antoinette Burton, Burdens of History: British Feminists, Indian Women
and Imperial Culture, 1865–1915 (Chapel Hill: University of North
Carolina, 1994), p. 8.
46. Kosambi, Crossing Thresholds, p. 7.
47. Pandita Ramabai, ‘Stri Dharma Niti’ in Pandita Ramabai: Through her Own
Words, ed. Meera Kosambi (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2000), p. 36.
48. In 1882, Lord Ripon, then Viceroy of India, appointed the first Indian
Education Commission, under the Chairmanship of Sir William Hunter,
to examine the state of primary and secondary education throughout the
subcontinent.
49. For a full discussion of Ramabai and the Hunter Commission, see Kosambi,
Crossing Thresholds, p. 29.
50. Hariot Dufferin, ‘The Women of India’, The Nineteenth Century 29 (1891):
365.
51. For discussions of this famous trial, see Daniel Sanjiv Roberts, ‘“Merely Birds
of Passage”: Lady Hariot Dufferin’s Travel Writing and Medical Work in India
1884–1888’, Women’s History Review 15.3 (2006): 443–457; and Antoinette
Burton, ‘From Child Bride to “Hindoo Lady”: Rukhmabai and the Debate on
Sexual Respectability in Imperial Britain’, The American Historical Review
103.4 (October 1998): 1119–1146.
52. Patrick Brantlinger, Rule of Darkness: British Literature and Imperialism,
1830–1914 (Ithaca: Cornell University Press, 1988), p. 174.
53. Rudyard Kipling, ‘The Song of the Women’ in The Cambridge Edition of the
Poems of Rudyard Kipling, ed. Thomas Pinney (Cambridge: Cambridge
University Press, 2013), p. 101. Lines 1–4.
54. Burton, At the Heart of the Empire, p. 53.
55. Kipling, ‘The Song of the Women’, p. 14.
56. Meera Kosambi, ‘Introduction’ in Pandita Ramabai Through Her Own

Words (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2000), p. 24.
57. For a detailed discussion of Ramabai’s relationship with the USA, see
Kosambi, Crossing Thresholds, p. 223.
58. Kosambi, Introduction, p. 20.
61. For a detailed discussion of Annie Besant, see Nancy L. Paxton, ‘Complicity
and Resistance’ in Western Women and Imperialism: Complicity and
Resistance, eds. Nupur Chaudhuri and Margaret Strobel (Bloomington:
62. Madame Blavatsky (1831–1891) co-founded the Theosophical Society in
1875.
63. Paxton, ‘Complicity and Resistance’, p. 166.
66. Sister Nivedita, Glimpses of Famine and Flood in East Bengal in 1906
(Allahabad: The Indian Press, 1907), p. 53.
67. Sister Nivedita, Glimpses of Famine and Flood, p. 85.
68. Ramusack, ‘Cultural Missionaries’, p. 133.
69. Edith Villiers Bulwer Lytton, India, 1876–1880. (London: privately printed
72. Indira Ghose, Women Travellers in Colonial India: The Power of the Female
Gaze (Delhi: Oxford University Press, 1998), p. 45.
73. Curzon, Lady Curzon’s India, p. 68.
74. Mary Caroline Minto, My Indian Journal, 6 vols. (Calcutta: n.p.,
1905–1910), 1: 61.
75. Minto, My Indian Journal, p. 1: 68.
76. Mary A. Procida, Married to the Empire: Gender, Politics and Imperialism in
India, 1883–1947 (Manchester: Manchester University Press, 2002),
p. 157.
CHAPTER 6
Hot Gossip: Sex and Sexuality

in Victorian India
[I]f my Gossip can lay no claim to being considered either instructive or

amusing, it may at least be passed, by those who have honoured me with
their attention, as harmless. (Florence Marryat, Gup: Sketches of Anglo-
Indian Life and Character, p. 284)
Women’s increasingly visible position in India was a matter of some con-

cern, not least because, as Angelia Poon reminds us, the ideal, middle-class,
Victorian woman was supposed to be self-effacing and inconspicuous.1
Furthermore, because there was an association between visible women
and sexually dangerous women, there developed an anxiety around the
morality of white women in India. This unease gathered force as women
moved into the public spaces of India to carry out philanthropic duties and
engage in social activities because they now shared spaces with their male
counterparts, a move which further disrupted any illusion of separate
spheres for men and women. In the subcontinent, racial segregation took
precedence over gender segregation. British men and women in India were
able to come together freely and frequently in order to create communities
and encourage romantic unions that would preclude interracial relation-
ships. For some, this unfettered intermingling troubled colonial narratives
about the purity and propriety of British women in India.
Colonial legislation had outlawed mixed-race relations in the early nine-
teenth century, an act that left a surplus of young, solvent, single men in

DOI 10.1007/978-3-319-33195-9_6
136 6 HOT GOSSIP: SEX AND SEXUALITY IN VICTORIAN INDIA
India. Subsequently, the British Empire explicitly recruited white women

to travel to India and provide for the sexual desires of colonial employees.
This practice also dealt with the increasing numbers of unmarried women
in Britain, partly a consequence of imperial employment. They were
encouraged to travel to India’s shores in what became known as the
‘fishing fleets’.2 But, when the ‘fishing fleet’ ladies arrived in the subconti-
nent, they found that the loss of private spaces, the difficulties of colonial
life, and the politicization of personal matters altered courtship practices
and cast doubt upon the narrative legacy of the First Indian War of
Independence.
As my Introduction outlines, colonial narratives surrounding the Sepoy
Rebellion pitted rapacious Indian men against pure and virtuous English-
women. The British press circulated atrocious stories about the violent nature
of Indian aggressors; simultaneously, these reports celebrated Victorian
women’s courage and piety in the face of such danger. Some of the most
sensational reports emerged in relation to the Siege of Lucknow and the
subsequent massacre at Cawnpore. Such events were quickly mythologized
and, as Jane Robinson explains, transformed the Englishwoman in India into
‘an angel of Albion whose sacrilegious violation at the hands of the mutineers
became a metaphor for the violation of the Empire’.3 In this context, British
women’s sexual activities were of great political importance and a matter for
public debate rather than personal deliberation. Philippa Levine and Nancy L.
Paxton have shown that the female body became the focus of intense
examination by society and the state.4 Imperial women writers, aligning
themselves with dominant ideologies, participated in this scrutiny. They
observed the behaviour of their peers and criticized inappropriate liaisons or
extra-marital relations. They attempted to place themselves in a position of
power, and, by doing so, they registered an anxiety about India’s ability to
corrupt Britain’s nationalist symbols of passive purity. Significantly, at the
same time, they brought the question of female sexuality into the public
domain.
For the most part, imperial women writers denied that women in India
were any less wholesome than their metropolitan counterparts. Instead, they
claimed that circumstances in the subcontinent were to blame for perceived
infelicities. Whatever the reason, discussions of this issue controversially coun-
tered the complete erasure of female sexuality and recognized tentatively the
fact of female desire. On occasion, there was talk of women’s active role in
pursuing and partaking in pre-marital and extra-marital affairs. By document-
ing these activities, women writers brought taboo issues out into the open. In
HOT GOSSIP: SEX AND SEXUALITY IN VICTORIAN INDIA 137
the name of imperial ideals, they broke a vow of silence and paved the way for
wider, and more public, considerations of female sexuality. In particular, they
created a space in which women could challenge legislation surrounding the
female body. Notably, women did not just write about these matters; in a bold
move, they also took to the streets and entered the courts, thereby encroach-
ing further upon public spaces. This activity was particularly problematic
around the turn of the century as the feminist movement in Britain began to
gather force and feminist figures, like the New Women, came into view.
*****
Mary Caroline Minto’s Indian journal records her organization of the

Fancy Fete in Calcutta; she explained that it was a huge event, the ‘most
important social function of the Calcutta season 1906/7’, encompassing
numerous popular entertainments such as a flower show, a photography
exhibition, and a boxing tournament.5 In addition to these familiar activ-
ities, there was also a lucky bag which, in the subsequent days, became the
subject of much controversy. During the Fete, the lucky bag caused end-
less disappointments because too many people entered the competition
and there were not enough prizes to award to everyone. For those who
were ‘lucky’ enough to claim their reward, there were some interesting
treats: Lord Kitchener won a baby elephant, an unnamed soldier won a
buggy, and a spinster won a bachelor.6
An eligible bachelor had put himself forward as a prize, presumably
hoping to procure a wife, albeit through rather unconventional means.
But, after he was awarded to the winning lady, the bachelor withdrew
from the competition. The organizers informed the unfortunate spinster
and Lady Minto included in her journal the letter she had sent to the
expectant winner:
Dear Madam,
We have to apologise for not having written to you before in connection
with the bachelor whom you drew in the lucky bag. We have for several days
been in active communication with this gentleman, and we regret to say that
a suddenly developed shyness will apparently prevent our negotiations being
brought to a satisfactory issue.7
Regrettably, Lady Minto’s journal does not provide us with any further
reason for the gentleman’s withdrawal, although it does mention that the
fete organizers enclosed fifty rupees with the letter from the bachelor;
apparently this was compensation for any inconvenience the lady experi-
enced as a result of his change of heart.
Clearly not wanting to lose face, the spinster hurriedly replied to the
above letter stating that ‘circumstances have occurred which render it
impossible for me to carry out my previous intention of perhaps giving
my hand to the man who won me’.8 Evidently, there was no happy ending
for this particular couple. It was surely such unorthodox events that
cultivated the impression that, in Victorian India, proper courtship prac-
tices were regularly flouted. Such incidents, combined with the fact that
the subcontinent openly served as a source of single, eligible bachelors for
Britain’s unmarried women, contributed to a growing concern about
morality and virtue. In turn, this drew public attention to previously
private matters, like sex and sexuality.
Until the late eighteenth century, British men had cohabited with, and
married, Indian women without much external interference. However, in
1773, the Regulating Act marked the beginning of parliamentary interfer-
ence with the East India Company and its employees’ personal interactions.
Governor-General Cornwallis put in place various social and political
reforms that monitored the actions of British officials, and brought anxieties
about interracial relations to the forefront of colonial policy. Lord
Cornwallis prohibited mixed-race subjects from entering the civil service
or the military, instituting a piece of legislation that ensured all well-paid
work was reserved for men born and bred in Britain. Such restrictions served
as a reminder of British authority, a point Lord Wellesley enforced when, in
1800, he banned Indians and Britons born in the subcontinent from all
government social functions in Calcutta.9 This practice soon spread to all
other parts of India under British rule. Then, by 1835, the East India
Company prohibited senior employees from marrying Indian women.
Subsequently, the practice of interracial relationships was frowned upon,
although it carried on surreptitiously and in smaller numbers.10
The persistence of mixed-race relations throughout the nineteenth
century, despite state intervention, is evident from the continued exis-
tence of Eurasian children. As Georgiana Theodosia Paget noted in
1857, there was a school in Bombay for soldiers’ children who were
mostly ‘half-castes’.11 In her memoir, she described how this institution
functioned as a marriage market for English soldiers, presumably cater-
ing for men from the lower regiments. If one of the soldiers wanted to
marry, he went to the school where he might be asked three times to tea
in order to meet all the marriageable girls; he was then allowed to select
whichever one took his fancy.12 Generally though, Levine argues, racial
attitudes, particularly among the middle classes, hardened during the
nineteenth century and the prospect of mixed-race progeny became
increasingly unpalatable.13 Levine explains: ‘The collapse of racial differ-
ence – in the scientific parlance of the time, palpably achievable if the
races intermingled sexually – could spell not just the end of European
superiority or distinctiveness but, more pressingly, the end of Empire’.14
As we have seen in previous chapters, fears of contamination and infiltra-
tion were rife. There was a sense that the continued success of the Raj
relied, to some extent, upon the racial and moral purity of the British
people, and the sexual activities of colonial residents had to uphold this
ideal. Hence, imperial ideologies vehemently resisted sexual relations
that did not contribute to future generations of empire builders. Of
course, this simply created a different problem: the colony having out-
lawed mixed-race relations was left with a lot of young, single men. The
government attempted to solve this imbalance by providing these men
with a lot of young, single women from England.
The excess of men in India meant a notable shortage of men in Britain. In
1851 there were approximately 906 men for every 1000 women; only ten
years later, there were only 879 men per 1,000 women.15 This disparity was
particularly problematic because Victorian society was unable to facilitate high
numbers of unmarried women. In the patriarchal culture of Victorian Britain,
women had virtually no rights: they could not vote, own property, or (in many
cases) earn money without losing their position in society. Ultimately, it was
difficult for women to sustain any kind of autonomous existence, unless they
were fortunate enough to have a brother or a father who was willing to
support their independent lifestyles. Occasionally, women, like Marianne
North or Mary Kingsley (1862–1900), gained a semblance of autonomy
when, after the death of their parents, the inheritance of substantial funds
enabled them to travel freely. But, the majority of middle-class women simply
could not afford to remain single. Furthermore, as noted in Chapter 4,
middle-class Victorian culture and society required women to marry and to
procreate, and then to fulfil their primary duty by inculcating Victorian values
within the family unit. British society had created a situation whereby men and
women needed and wanted to be married. As we have seen, this was reinforced
by the conditions of Victorian India, which relied on the exemplification of
companionate matrimonial unions to showcase bourgeois English values, to
provide the next generation of civil servants and colonial soldiers, and to
populate the colonies with a dominant, imperial race. The increasing numbers
of unmarried women in Britain were, therefore, not fulfilling their duty to
society. These women were subsequently represented in rather derogatory
terms. Thus, in addition to the financial implications of spinsterhood, there
was a definite social stigma attached to being a single woman.
Individual spinsters were seen as objects of pity. Their collective presence
was perceived as harmful to the overall wealth and health of the nation.
Victorian commentators even went so far as to suggest there was something
profoundly unnatural about the discrepancy in the British population. Male
critics, such as W. R. Greg, described these single women as an excess or a
surplus, in other words, a problem that needed to be resolved.16 These
negative views put the single woman under immense pressure to find a
husband. And she had to act quickly to avoid being left on the shelf. The
consensus was that a woman should marry or, at the very least get engaged,
by the age of twenty. At the age of twenty-five, the Victorians generally
considered a single lady to be past her sell-by date. Rather than become
resigned to the life of abjection that spinsterhood implied, many young
British women, without romantic prospects at home, packed their bags
and boarded a ship to India to hunt for a husband.
The East India Company, from its early days in the seventeenth cen-
tury, paid respectable women’s passages to the subcontinent in exchange
for the hand of one of their employees. Thus, as Anne De Courcy’s The
Fishing Fleet: Husband-Hunting in the Raj (2012) demonstrates, there is
a long history of official intervention in the private relations of colonial
representatives. The first known shipment of this kind consisted of twenty
women who travelled to Bombay in 1671. According to De Courcy, the
Company clearly divided each consignment of women into ‘gentlewomen
and others’.17 By doing so, the Company made very specific judgements
about the morality of the women it exported. The gentlewomen were
given one set of clothing and were maintained in India for a year, by the
end of which they were expected to be married. The less respectable
‘other’ women on board these ships were also there to provide compa-
nionship, but without the promise of marriage. This form of authorized
prostitution is most commonly associated with the female convicts who
were shipped to New South Wales in Australia throughout the eighteenth
century.18 These ‘floating brothels’ were not as common in India because
British men had been happy to strike up sexual relations with Indian
women until the aforementioned changes to the law gradually made this
a less popular option and the ‘fishing fleets’ came into play.
The ‘fishing fleets’ seemingly solved two problems at once: they dealt
with excess single women in Britain and excess single men in India. Yet,
even with the new arrivals, British men in Victorian India greatly out-
numbered British women. This was, undoubtedly, good news for the
female ingénue because the chance of marital success was rather high.
However, the new arrivals still had to contend with the demands of the
Empire: the British government placed various constraints on personal
relations to ensure young, hot-blooded, colonial men kept their minds on
the job. Colonial employees were not allowed to marry until the age of
thirty, except in special circumstances and with permission. Even when
they came of age, due to the very limited amount of leave awarded to
company employees and military men, they had relatively short windows
of time during which they were free to form romantic relationships.
To make the most of their off-duty time, young men headed to the hill
stations where fishing-fleet ladies congregated and where there were end-
less rounds of social activities that would bring them all together, as
discussed further in Chapter 7. There, as a number of women writers
noted, the pressure to find and maintain a suitable relationship, alongside
the lack of privacy and imposed time constraints, meant that men and
women in India came together in a rather intense environment. Imperial
women’s writing records the extent to which these colonial circumstances
altered gender relations and heightened romantic interactions. The
authors observed that, due to the gender imbalance, British men were
often in competition with one another and that the most attractive women
often found themselves in great demand, courted by more than one
gentleman at any given time. Lady Curzon pointed out that when a
beautiful young girl arrived in the subcontinent, the men hovered around
her like moths to a flame. Of course, there could only be one successful
suitor; the rest, she exclaimed, merely singed their wings in their pursuit of
love.19 Florence Marryat also noted the competitive nature of colonial
courtship. She recalled the English officer who, aware of the shortage of
women, simultaneously sent out three different marriage proposals, pre-
sumably unaware that all three women knew each other.20 Considering
that the colonial community was small and closed, this was particularly
foolish behaviour. The ladies in question quickly discovered the English
officer’s duplicitous behaviour, and he remained single for yet another
season.
More often than not, the male in such situations was free from criti-
cism. Male sexual desire was somewhat acceptable and it was women’s
duty, as the guardians of morality and purity, to deflect such impropri-

eties. Charges of promiscuity tended to focus on their behaviour. It is in
response to such gender bias that Maud Diver was keen to defend her
compatriots. She stated that ideas about the lack of female morality in
Victorian India were skewed by misunderstandings about the various
circumstances colonial women faced, most of which were entirely
beyond their control. Diver found that the living conditions in India,
particularly in the hill stations, were totally incompatible with the court-
ship rituals and social protocols of Victorian society.21
As demonstrated in Chapter 3, life in the colony was rather transient.
Women moved around with the seasons and men frequently moved
around with work. According to Marryat, married women in this environ-
ment found it difficult to maintain their relationships:
[W]here a pretty woman has one temptation to be thoughtless in England

she has fifty in India; that she is compelled by the climate to lead a life of so
much idleness that any excitement come to her as a relief; and that in many
cases she is left alone and unprotected for months and even years, whilst her
husband is away on foreign service and she has not one of her own family, or
his, to go to during his absence.22
And for unmarried women, there was simply no time for the prolonged
and protracted calling and courtship rituals of Victorian Britain, the details
of which are explained fully in the next chapter, so colonial society relaxed
certain rules. For example, bachelors in India did not have to wait on an
invitation to visit; they could call on whomever they liked. Many women,
including Marryat, believed these changes to tradition would only lead to
no good:
Bachelors may call at any house the doors of which they choose to enter.
They simply send in their cards as an introduction, and will sometimes sit for
an hour or two in familiar intercourse with a person on whom they have
never set eyes before. This species of free entrance to the houses of their
countrymen has its origins in the spirit of patriotism which draws people of
one nation so strongly together, no less than in a wish to cling to one
another on the part of those who feel themselves to be exiles from a mutually
regretted home. It is very pleasant – very hospitable – and, perhaps, just as it
should be; but it leaves scope for a great deal of familiar intercourse, and the
familiar intercourse added to the idleness before alluded to, leaves scope for
a great deal that had better be left undone.23
Marryat accepted that changes to Victorian social etiquette came about

because of a desire to unify the colonial community in order to create a
cohesive national identity in increasingly difficult circumstances. But,
temporary visitors to Darjeeling, Ootacumund, and Simla were sometimes
shocked by the way men and women interacted in these apparently angli-
cized enclaves.
As my final chapter explains, the hill stations were hives of activities
intended to bring the colonial people together frequently and freely. This
situation, according to Val Prinsep, bred a heady atmosphere:
Simla is like an English watering place gone mad. . . . Real sociability does
not exist. People pair off immediately they arrive at a party. . . . Rinking is
greatly on the increase being the only exercise that many men and all ladies
can take. There is a great crowd and constant collisions occur, and it is not
an uncommon thing to see a young lady throw her arms wildly round a
stranger’s neck to support herself. Of course people gamble and do what
they ought not. They do that everywhere. The play is very high, the whist
execrable. All are bent on enjoying themselves, and champagne flows on
every side. Every evening at eight the roads are full of jampons conveying the
fair sex to the festivities.24
Prinsep believed that the memsahibs carelessly flouted middle-class con-

ventions by openly enjoying male company and male attention. Such
public displays of affection were at odds with typical female behaviour
and did not accord with colonial discourses about the moral superiority of
the imperial woman.
While it was perfectly normal for men to express themselves in the
public sphere, Victorian women were supposed to be virtually invisible.
Respectable ladies kept themselves, their bodies, and their sexuality
secreted away. We need only look at how middle-class women dressed
to remind ourselves of the manner in which they concealed and contained
their bodies. Although the memsahibs generally maintained this modest
appearance in terms of their dress, they assumed an increasingly promi-
nent position in the public spaces of the subcontinent. Poon explains that
this conspicuousness was worrying because, ‘[i]n her desire to be visible,
the modern woman is seen as largely imitative of savages, prostitutes,
madwomen and foreigners’.25 Around the turn of the century, the New
Woman and the suffragettes amplified this association through their
refusal to be contained within the private sphere. Women like Emily
Davison placed themselves at the forefront of huge public events, such as

the Epsom Derby, specifically to attract attention. Even though imperial
women in India were not generally campaigning for the vote, their dis-
cernibility aligned them with these contentious figures at home, as well as
the sexualized women of the East.
In the eighteenth century, racialized ideas about the ‘torrid zones’
posited British morality as antithetical to the sexualized images of ‘other’
women in hotter climates.26 These ideas continued throughout the nine-
teenth century, encouraged by orientalist writers and artists. Pictures of
decadent, scantily clad, Eastern women filled the sketchbooks of peripa-
tetic artists, such as Edward Lear and Frederick Lewis. A focus on exotic
sensuality found its way into early nineteenth-century literature, such as
Sydney Morgan’s The Missionary (1811) and Philip Meadows Taylor’s
Tara (1863).27 Taken together, it seemed as though the soaring tempera-
tures of the East fostered immorality and promiscuity. Certainly, the likes
of Marryat cited the Indian weather as a key contributor to the gradual loss
of English mores and values in Victorian India:
From whence the evil arises, heaven only knows; their minds and energies
must rust and dull from the effects of the climate, or the tone of their morals
become lowered from the want of spiritual instruction, in the up-country
stations; but it is assuredly true that whenever a stranger sees a pretty, healthy,
or fashionable-looking woman amongst them, he invariably finds that she is as
fresh to the place as himself. You might as well transplant a mountain daisy
into a hot-house and expect it to thrive, as look for an English complexion to
last beneath the sun of India, or English customs to hold good in a climate so
different from that for which they were instituted.28
Thus, in addition to breeding ennui, Marryat believed the climate and

culture of India destroyed Victorian values; for her, this was particularly
evident in the interactions between men and women. As we know,
Marryat was very aware of the impact colonial life had on marital relation-
ships. When she was writing Gup she had already returned to England
without her husband, and, in a matter of years, she had embarked on an
extra-marital affair. It was perhaps as a way of exonerating her own
behaviour that she emphasized the extent to which India was responsible
for the breakdown of bourgeois relationships. Nonetheless, in the post-
Rebellion era, when racial segregation relied upon the virtuous behaviour
of British women, this was a rather worrying state of affairs.
We have seen that, during and after the events of 1857, the British
popular press produced a narrative whereby violations of white women’s
honour were treated as the gravest offence and justified brutal and vicious
retaliations against indigenous men. Consequently, Paxton explains, in the
high imperialism of the late nineteenth century, rape became a major trope
of colonial discourse. This rape script, as she calls it, legitimized imperial
and authoritarian policies by tying political subversion to sexual impropri-
ety: ‘it is no accident that the dominance of this particular version of the
colonial rape narrative which makes Englishwomen and their innocent
children into a precious national sacrifice coincides with the most martial
phase of British imperialism’.29 In this context, extra-marital sex emerged
as a potential threat to the bulwarks of empire and civilization and needed
to be restrained; Levine explains:
Colonial environments came to be seen as sexually distinct from Britain:

sexually loose, sometimes predatory, and frequently excessive. Sex in colo-
nial surroundings needed greater regulation and control than in temperate
Britain where reason outswayed passion, and where the curbing of sexual
appetite was, by the nineteenth century, a mark of good breeding and
popular behaviour.30
Imperial women’s writing certainly testified to the fact that, in Victorian

India, there was a concomitant increase in unauthorized sexual activity and
a rise in the level of surveillance of women’s bodies.
We have seen throughout this book how imperial women writers aligned
themselves with hegemonic cultural values in order to assume authority and
autonomy. Therefore, post-1857, many memsahibs carved out a role for
themselves as paragons of virtue who protected the Empire by policing
female sexuality. They named and shamed the perpetrators of infelicitous
incidents in a manner that illustrated their surveillance of the situation. For
example, Hariot Dufferin, as the Vicereine of India and a direct representa-
tive of Queen Victoria, was keen to reassure her readers about the
Englishness of Victorian India in the face of growing concerns about slip-
ping standards. Not long after her arrival in the subcontinent, she con-
fronted the issue of improper male–female relations by addressing the
question of whether ‘flirtations are as rampant as they are reported to
be’.31 She admitted that there was a fashion for dancing in a close embrace,
which was decidedly objectionable, but she blamed this intimacy on bad
teaching, rather than poor morals. She then registered her desire to place
the dancers ‘respectably face to face, and show them that they can dance
without touching each other in that unpleasant way at all’.32 Thus, she
admitted to some small improprieties on behalf of her peers, but denied
widespread problems and cast herself in a positive light as a kind of preven-
tion officer. This carefully measured response was rather typical of imperial
women writers. They felt unable to rebuke entirely the charges of moral
negligence in India because, undeniably, there were modifications made to
specific courtship customs and social interactions. At the same time, because
their access to power and authority rested on their enactment of imperial
femininity, they recruited such instances as evidence of their own moral
superiority and the importance of their role in the subcontinent.
Another example of this kind of rhetorical manipulation can be found
when Lady Dufferin discovered that her son, Terence, was about to
embark on an unchaperoned tea party, as was commonplace in Simla at
this time.33 Normal practice in England demanded that young girls be
accompanied to social occasions by their mother, or some other married
friend, who acted as a sort of protector against youthful transgressions and
offered guidance in the usages of society. Whereas, in Victorian India,
Lady Dufferin explains that chaperones were only required at dances and
dinner parties, not picnics or walks. Unhappy with this lack of supervision,
she intercepted and accompanied the group of boys and girls, thereby
lending the outing ‘an air of propriety’ as she saw it.34 This act reassured
readers that, during her time in India, Victorian codes of conduct were
being upheld.
Similarly, when Lady Curzon’s sisters, Nancy and Daisy Leiter, came to
visit her in India in 1899, she reassured her mother in a letter that, under
her careful watch, every mode of decorum would be upheld:
I will have every possible comfort arranged for the girls and they will come
straight to Simla and there it will be beautiful and cool and I will do
everything to give them a happy summer. And I think there is no-one on
our staff who will be a matrimonial danger and I won’t allow any flirtations
as here I am a kind of Queen of Seringapatam and can’t have flirtations in my
court! George and I are so bottled up that we can never go to any private
house to an entertainment but whenever the girls go to a dance I will have
them chaperoned by Mrs Dawkins.35
Unfortunately for Lady Curzon, even with their chaperones, her sisters
were the cause of various scandals during their sojourn in India. They
refused to adhere to various points of social etiquette, and, defying

the Vicereine’s protests, her sisters married two of Lord Curzon’s
aides-de-camp.36 Clearly, unauthorized romantic liaisons did take place
and they made for rather juicy additions to otherwise rather conservative
narratives.
Similarly, amidst the prevalent explications of her daily routines
and imperial authority, Lady Dufferin related a few salacious incidents
that she was seemingly unable to prevent. One particularly protracted
account concerned the fate of Alice Alger, a nurse in the Viceregal
household and a seemingly upright young girl, who was bound for a
religious life in a convent. One morning in August 1886, the household
discovered that Alice had run away, taking all her clothes with her. The
Dufferins, as related by Lady Dufferin, were quite bewildered. They
initially believed that she had run off to the convent. Then, after some
detective work, they found the address of a Sergeant Maguire, on Alice’s
blotting paper, along with words to the effect that her mother was very
angry and that she was very miserable. They also found letters to the
priest from Alice and one from a man, with the assumed name of
Rodwell. The Dufferins looked into the matter further and discovered
that Alice had been engaged to Maguire when she was sixteen, but that
her parents had objected. As it turned out, in a rather Austen-esque twist
of fate, Maguire was quite the scoundrel. Despite his recent flirtations
with Alice, he had married someone else a week previously. The unfor-
tunate girl was understandably devastated and left in a state of disgrace.
She did not return to the Viceregal house.37
Lady Dufferin, in her narrative, did not pass judgement on Alice’s
actions. There is even a detectable note of amusement in her version of
the events. She appeared to take an almost voyeuristic pleasure in this
scandalous story, perhaps because such anecdotes allowed her to register
the fact of female desire without ruining her own impeccable reputation.
Arguably then, women writers framed their discussions of sex and sexuality
in ways that would circumvent discursive constraints, such as through
amusing and entertaining anecdotes. But, talking about sex in this way
earned them a reputation as gossips. They were accused of bringing private
stories to the public’s attention, provoking an obvious anxiety about what
might be revealed.
Marryat perceived gossiping as a peculiarly pervasive Indian pastime.
She even entitled her memoir Gup, which, as she elucidated in its final
pages, is the Hindustani word for ‘gossip’. While she suggested this was
largely a harmless occupation, she also acknowledged that it was partly to

blame for the perception of colonial women’s immorality:
I believe the charge of extra levity against ladies in India to be unfounded,

and to have taken its rise simply in the reason that there are, comparatively
speaking, so few of them, and those few have so much leisure, that liaisons
and flirtations, that we should not at home have time to talk about, are
considered sufficient to form matter of discussion for a whole cantonment
abroad. Who Mrs. So-and-so is flirting with now, and why Captain Dash is
to be seen constantly at Such-a-one’s house, are untiring themes for inquiry
and decision; and the idle gossip which I have heard repeated about men and
women, who I believe to be entirely innocent of any intention beyond
showing friendship towards one another has sickened me listening to scan-
dal about anyone; particularly as the women who were the fondest of
relating such stories, I generally found to be those most open to suspicion
themselves.38
Marryat implied that when private relationships, rather like private spaces,
were made public, they emerged in distorted and exaggerated ways. She
argued that the behaviour of women in India was really no different to the
behaviour of women in Britain but that, in the metropolitan centre, the
segregation between public and private threw a veil over sexual relations.
Unfortunately, in India, the dissolution of separate spheres meant there
was nowhere to hide.
Open-plan bungalows, fluid campgrounds and cantonments, and an
increasingly social community, meant that private lives were increasingly
fused with public interest. In India, everyone seemed to know everyone
else’s business. Diver warned the memsahib that, even within the home,
she was subject to prying eyes; she was constantly watched by servants,
especially her ayah who was never far away:
[S]he should never forget that the woman from whom little of her social and
domestic life is hid, judges her conduct by Eastern standards, and commu-
nicates those judgements without reserve to an admiring circle of listeners
over her evening hookah. For the ayah is a born-bred gossip; her tongue is a
stranger to the golden fetter of truth.39
Here, Diver implicitly acknowledged that, within the home, certain

improprieties took place; these incidents provided potential source
material for the gossips. Importantly, these transgressions were not the
preserve of so-called dangerous women, like prostitutes and racial others;

they were the actions of ordinary English wives and mothers who had been
placed in unusual situations, as Diver explained:
[I]n a country where men and women are constantly thrown together under
conditions which tend to minimise formalism and conventional restraint,
where leave is plentiful and grass widows – willing and unwilling – abound, it
is scarcely surprising that the complications and conflicting duties of married
life should prove appreciably greater than they are elsewhere.40
Diver did not condone or criticize the grass widows’ explicit wantonness;
she simply acknowledged that women, separated from their husbands for
long periods of time, experienced sexual frustrations. Similarly, Marryat
confessed that women, alone for months on end, might understandably
find companionship in the arms of someone other than their husband.
Through these admissions, Diver and Marryat occasionally resisted the
overarching imperial ideal of marital bliss.
Perhaps unsurprisingly, single women who were not tied to the Raj
were those most likely to debunk romantic representations of colonial
marriage. North, for example, expressed great scepticism at the entire
institution. She was scathing of the relationships and roles it created,
particularly as she saw them being enacted in the British enclaves of
colonial India. She denied the idealization of domestic life and marital
harmony that permeated the writing of many of her married counterparts,
and she registered a longing for sexual fulfilment through her representa-
tions of the Indian landscape.
North’s paintings undoubtedly sexualized the flora and fauna of India,
and her writing frequently used erotic language, such as in this description
of her visit to Narkunda:
I went off to Narkunda – it was a most enjoyable expedition though I had

some violent rain to go through, there were grand views between whiles and
the whole long range of snow was magnificent in the sunset glow of the 5th,
two great masses being crimson the rest in blue shade – all the vegetation is
changed over that ridge and I went through the most glorious forests of the
Smithiana Pine and some others with carpets of maiden hair and other
exquisite green things under them and great snaking things poking their
poisonous ears and tongues out above them – with a crown of beautiful
leaves below. As the seeds ripen the leaves grow up and hide them from the
eyes of the hungry birds (fact for Darwin!) there are also sky blue wood
anemonies, forgetmenots like sapphires, and potentillas of all the brightest

tints – but the pines are the grand glory of that road – with drooping
branches and Virginia creeper running to their very tops, often 150 feet
high – perhaps 200.41
In this passage, the narrative shifts between the voice of scientific enquiry
and an intensely sensual tone. Her description renders the Indian land-
scape as typically female through a vibrant physicality that is threatened by
a poisonous yet tantalizing phallus.42 It seems that, for North, India was a
space where her fears and desires in relation to female sexuality could be
represented, albeit in symbolic ways. And, the more women began to write
about sex and sexuality, the more acceptable it became to address such
issues directly, rather than through metaphor, imagery, and/or personal
anecdotes. Thus, arguably, the imperial narratives considered here paved
the way for proto-feminists to speak out about sex and sexuality in public
and political forums. Two notable issues that drew their fire were the
Indian Contagious Diseases Act and the Ilbert Bill.
The Indian Contagious Diseases Act of 1868 authorized compulsory
physical examinations of prostitute women in major Indian cities and
seaports. Those found to be carrying venereal disease were held in ‘lock’
hospitals until they were cured. It was hoped this would curb the growing
rates of sexually transmitted diseases. The problem with this approach was
that there was no corresponding investigation of men; this meant sexually
active men continued to infect their sexual partners. The gender bias of the
Act irresponsibly placed the blame for contagion with women and seemed
to legitimize prostitution; this troubled some proto-feminists. Josephine
Butler, for example, was outraged by such recklessness. She campaigned
tirelessly to have the Act repealed. She focused initially on legislation in
England before turning her attention to the Empire and achieving the
repeal in India in 1888.
The repeal crusade in India was, in part, motivated by fears that there
existed in England a counter-movement to reinstate the Contagious
Diseases Act. As Antoinette Burton explains, there was an anxiety that if
the Act stayed in place throughout the British Empire, it could potentially
return to the metropole and this could affect the wellbeing of British
women.43 This prompted Butler, and the Ladies National Association,
to align the female reform cause to the imperial one by claiming that the
Act’s existence in India was sure to generate dissatisfaction from the
indigenous people and possibly engender another Rebellion; this too
would ultimately place Britain, and British women, under threat.44 At the
same time, like Mary Carpenter, Butler was genuinely concerned about
the living conditions of less fortunate Indian women. She sought to
liberate these women from a form of organized prostitution. Unlike
Carpenter, however, Butler never visited India. Nonetheless, as Burton
points out, Butler’s Indian campaign was no less an example of British
imperial feminism in action.45 Burton argues that the Empire became ‘a
vast and uncharted workplace for female reform efforts’; it was, therefore,
a field of opportunity for English women.46 Even for those British proto-
feminists who did not travel, India existed as an imaginative space where
images of downtrodden indigenous women facilitated their campaigns
and bolstered their sense of power and authority.
British proto-feminists succeeded in overturning the Contagious
Diseases Acts, at home and abroad, a success which was somewhat marred
by the fact that sanctioned brothels in India remained. When the American
authors of The Queen’s Daughters in India (1898) approached the subject,
they were explicit about the role played by British men in this unacceptable
practice. Elizabeth W. Andrew and Katharine C. Bushnell exposed the
appalling conditions that prostitutes in India endured in registered broth-
els. According to these campaigners, such brothels had existed in the
subcontinent since 1856. In their Preface, they related the apparent origins
of these institutions: one evening a soldier in India seized the bridle of a
horse being ridden by an upper-class English lady at Umballa. She reported
that his designs were ‘evil’ and ‘earnestly’ protested against his violence; she
apparently ‘remonstrated with him that, besides the wrong to her, to injure
one of her social rank would utterly ruin his entire future’.47 He repented
and offered a justification for his behaviour. He explained that soldiers were
not allowed to get married until they were thirty; as such, there were a lot
of men in India with unsatisfied needs. The English lady, apparently in an
effort to protect other high-rank ladies, took up his plight. She talked to
high military officials and the result was the apportionment of Indian women
to regiments. Andrew and Bushnell report that the government placed about
twelve to fifteen prostitutes within each regiment of about a thousand
soldiers. They dwelt in appointed houses, or tents, as the case might be,
called ‘chaklas’. Under the Cantonment Act of 1864, the Cantonment
Magistrate registered these women and gave them licences which allowed
them to consort with British soldiers only. This system also subjected the
women to periodical examinations to ensure they had not contracted any
contagious diseases.48 The authors lamented the lack of choice given to the
Indian women, but their primary concern was the transmission of sexual
disease and the lack of male responsibility. Women who contracted
diseases were turned out of the cantonment. Unable to return to their
homes because they had broken caste, the women continued to work as
prostitutes; therefore, they were at risk of spreading disease among the
Indian population.49 One response to this problem was the establish-
ment of lock hospitals; but, as noted above, these served as a rather
temporary solution.
Andrew and Bushnell achieved a lot of positive action during their cam-
paign, not least through their rejection of certain myths about race and
sexuality. Although the subcontinent remained the locus of inappropriate
sexual activity in their narrative, they managed to resist certain stereotypes
about the subcontinental climate and acknowledged that, to some extent,
Britain’s colonial structures were to blame for the situation of Indian women:
Life in India does not tend to the elevation of British morals, and this is not
because of the climate, as some contend. The industrial conditions are all
against good morals, and are closely analogous to the conditions that pre-
vailed in the Southern States of America before the Civil War. . . . England
virtually owns a whole nation of slaves in her control of India, and the effect
of this fact upon the morals of that country will depend wholly upon
whether she rules to redeem her subjects or to enrich herself. The worst
feature of all in slavery is the appropriation of women by their masters.50
Perhaps unsurprisingly, Indian women were more vehement in their con-

demnation of Britain’s power structures and the damage it caused to
women than their English counterparts. Pandita Ramabai, for example,
publicized the issue in the British press, and wrote to her friends and
supporters about the atrocities committed against Indian women for the
‘benefit of British soldiers’.51 Evidently, those outside the British system
found it easier to criticize colonial institutions and the men who worked
for them. Women who had married into these power structures, and
whose authority was dependent upon them, were inclined to place the
blame for sexual promiscuity elsewhere. Even so, over the course of three
decades, the increased attention to these issues ensured that sex became a
significant imperial policy issue and a key site of colonial anxieties, as
evinced by the controversial Ilbert Bill.52
The Ilbert Bill, which was passed in 1883, removed restrictions that
prevented qualified Indian judges from trying cases involving European
NOTES 153
and British subjects living outside the presidency towns. The British in
India organized mass protests in response to Lord Ripon’s reform. The
colonial residents focused on incendiary issues, such as that of Indian
judges trying cases that touched on delicate subjects such as race,
marriage or divorce among Europeans. The most hysterical objections
were those that focused on the hypothetical case of an Englishwomen
bringing rape charges against an Indian man and the case being pre-
sided over by an Indian judge. During these debates, the blurred
boundaries between public and private were wholly erased; female
sexuality was openly discussed and an unprecedented number of
women defied strong taboos that usually silenced women on political,
not to mention sexual, issues. The memsahibs organized protests and
letter-writing campaigns to express their vehement objection to these
judicial reforms. Eventually Lord Ripon felt compelled to modify the
bill. Thus, not only did women speak out about sex and sexuality in
Victorian India, they also engaged in direct public and political action,
challenging policies and legislative decisions, and resisting certain
aspects of colonial and patriarchal power.
We can, therefore, see how the gradual dissolution of separate
spheres in India allowed women to take an active role in the colonial
outpost. The loss of private spaces, along with state intervention in
the personal lives of colonial citizens, made women visible; this
affected the way they engaged with the world around them. Once
they were made part of public discourse, they felt enfranchised and
able to engage with political issues. This initially produced support
for imperial patriarchy, but, over time, women developed their own
agendas and ideas; this progress garnered criticism from the metro-
politan centre which was increasingly anxious about the future success
of the Raj.
NOTES
1. Angelia Poon, Enacting Englishness in the Victorian Period: Colonialism and
the Politics of Performance (Aldershot: Ashgate Publishing, 2008), p. 31.
2. These women are the subject of a recent book by Anne De Courcy: The
Fishing Fleet: Husband-Hunting in the Raj (London: Weidenfeld and
Nicolson, 2012).
3. Jane Robinson, Angels of Albion: Women of the Indian Mutiny (London:
Penguin Books, 1996), p. xvii.
4. The intense scrutiny of female sexuality is discussed in detail by Philippa

Levine in Gender and Empire (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2004) and
Nancy L. Paxton in Writing Under the Raj: Gender, Race, and Rape in the
British Colonial Imagination, 1830–1947 (New Brunswick: Rutgers
5. Lady Caroline Mary Minto, My Indian Journal, 6 vols. (Calcutta: n.p.,
1905–10), 2: 35.
6. Minto, My Indian Journal, 2: 42.
9. For a more detailed discussion of the gradual regulation of mixed-race
relations, see Anne De Courcy, The Fishing Fleet and Durba Ghosh, Sex
and the Family in Colonial India: The Making of Empire (Cambridge:
Cambridge University Press, 2006).
10. Levine states that a system of concubinage continued for some time. See,
Gender and Empire, p. 138.
A Journal of Life in India in 1857–59, With Some Account of the Way
Thither (London: Longman, Green, Longman, Roberts, and Green,
1865), p. 105.
13. Levine, Gender and Empire, p. 140.
15. These figures are taken from Judith Flanders, The Victorian House: Domestic
Life from Childbirth to Deathbed (London: HarperCollins, 2004), p. 178.
16. W. R. Greg outlines this view in Why are Women Redundant? (London:
N. Trübner and Co., 1869).
17. De Courcy, The Fishing Fleet, p. 2.
18. For a detailed discussion of the floating brothels, see Siân Rees, The Floating
Brothel: The Extraordinary True Story of an Eighteenth-Century Ship and Its
Cargo of Female Convicts (London: Headline, 2001).
19. Mary Curzon, Lady Curzon’s India: Letters of a Vicereine, ed. John Bradley
(New York: Beaufort Publishers, 1986), p. 69.
21. Maud Diver, The Englishwoman in India, (Edinburgh: William Blackwood
and Sons, 1909), p. 26.
24. Lutyens, Mary. The Lyttons in India: An Account of Lord Lytton’s Viceroyalty,
1876–1880 (London: John Murray, 1979), p. 105.
25. Poon, Enacting Englishness, p. 33.
NOTES 155
26. For a detailed discussion, see Felicity A. Nussbaum, Torrid Zones: Maternity,
Sexuality, and Empire in Eighteenth-Century English Narratives (Baltimore:
The John Hopkins University Press, 1995), p. 8.
27. For a detailed discussion of this orientalist art and literature, see Paxton,
Writing Under the Raj, p. 24.
31. This story appears in Hariot Dufferin’s Ten Printed Journals, 1884–88,
Dufferin and Ava Papers (Public Records Office of Northern Ireland), 1: 58.
36. It must be acknowledged that romantic liaisons between Viceregal family
members and members of the household were not entirely uncommon:
Lord Elgin’s daughter also married an ADC.
37. This story appears in Lady Dufferin’s journals, but does not appear in her
published volumes. See Dufferin, Ten Printed Journals, 3: 175.
41. Marianne North, Letter to Burnell, 17 July 1878. Papers of Marianne
North. Royal Botanic Gardens, Kew, Library and Archives. RM2.
42. For a detailed discussion of North’s displacement of sexual desire, see
Éadaoin Agnew, ‘“An Old Vagabond”: Science and Sexuality in Marianne
North’s Representations of India.’ Nineteenth-Century Gender Studies 7.2
(2011): 1–19. http://www.ncgsjournal.com/issue72/New%20PDFs/
NCGS%20Journal%20Issue%207.2%20-%20An%20Old%20Vagabond%20-
%20Eadaoin%20Agnew.pdf.
43. Antoinette Burton, ‘The White Woman’s Burden: British Feminists and The
Indian Woman. 1865–1915’ in Western Women and Imperialism: Complicity
and Resistance, eds. Nupur Chaudhuri and Margaret Strobel (Bloomington:
44. Burton, ‘The White Woman’s Burden’, pp. 142–3.
45. Burton, ‘The White Woman’s Burden’, p. 139.
46. Burton, The White Woman’s Burden’, p. 143.
47. Elizabeth W. Andrew and Katharine C. Bushnell, The Queen’s Daughters in
India (London: Morgan and Scott, 1899), p. 13.
48. Andrew and Bushnell, The Queen’s Daughters, pp. 15–16.
49. Andrew and Bushnell, The Queen’s Daughters, p. 20.
50. Andrew and Bushnell, The Queen’s Daughters, p. 101.

51. Pandita Ramabai, Pandita Ramabai: Through her Own Words, ed. Meera
Kosambi (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2000), p. 271.
52. For a detailed discussion, see Levine, Gender and Empire, p. 134.
CHAPTER 7
High Society: Hill Stations

and Social Occasions
The real, official, dreadfully social hills. (Violet Jacob, Diaries and
Letters from India, p. 150)
The breakdown between the public and private spheres of Victorian India
culminated, somewhat ironically, in the most anglicized areas of the sub-
continent – the hill stations. In these highly imperial spaces, there was an
explicit attempt to recreate English towns and villages, and many writers
attested to the successful transformations that took place. As Sara Mills
notes, in the hill stations, ‘more than any other area in British India, the
architecture and town planning reflected a concern to recreate a stereo-
typically “British” space’.1 In these places, Mills explains, Indians were
confined to specific areas, emphasizing racial segregation and facilitating a
general impression of Englishness:
Indians were excluded from the clubs and were also forbidden to use the
main thoroughfare, which, as many of the photographs and illustrations of
the hill stations show, was used by the British as a space of socialising.2
We can see from the development of Simla that British colonizers took
ownership of public spaces and marked them out as being specifically and
exclusively British. The mock-Tudor library, the Botanical Gardens, and
the Gothic cathedral all acted as visual reminders of imperial values.

DOI 10.1007/978-3-319-33195-9_7
158 7 HIGH SOCIETY: HILL STATIONS AND SOCIAL OCCASIONS
Consequently, by the late nineteenth century, the hill stations became the
epicentre of colonial life in Victorian India; as such, they feature promi-
nently in women’s writing.
For much of the year, British women lived in isolated areas with limited
social interaction; at these times, as previous chapters show, they imagined
themselves as part of a wider colonial community through reading and
writing about shared experiences. Then, throughout the summer months,
the British congregated in places like Simla and Darjeeling to enjoy clement
temperatures, a vibrant social scene, and the anglicized surroundings. Here,
they could attend to the recreation of British culture; however, as noted in
the Introduction, the desire to assert power and authority over the local
people and places distorted and disturbed this identity, and prompted a
more vigorous and verifiable assertion of Victorian Englishness than took
place at home. As David Cannadine argues in Ornamentalism (2001), by
the turn of the century, colonial India had reached the zenith of its exhibi-
tionism and daily life emerged as a series of public enactments. There was an
emphasis on extravagant social gatherings where the British colonizers
staged an imperial Englishness for the benefit of each other and the Indian
people. Unfortunately, the Raj’s emphasis on these outward-facing perfor-
mances created problems for imperial women, who had to be careful about
their movements. They were excluded from a range of public spaces, such as
the various gentlemen’s clubs, the military barracks, and the offices of the
Indian Civil Service; and, they were not usually found in the jails, courts,
schools, or hospitals. However, as we have seen, imperial discourses some-
times took precedence over the gendered division of space in India; there
also existed ambiguous areas where public and private overlapped and where
women moved freely. Of particular interest in this chapter are the official
residences of the Raj; these buildings were both domestic spaces and political
manifestations of imperial wealth and status, an ambivalence manifested in
their physical structures and noted by women writers.
In the official residences, imperial architecture and interior decoration
assumed a grandiose style because, Cannadine explains, the British believed
India was a place of splendour and extravagance; therefore, ‘it should be ruled
from a palace not a counting house’.3 In these magnificent buildings, the
Vicereines staged colonial society. They organized a plethora of elaborate
gatherings which brought together the upper echelons of English and Indian
society; these events consolidated the status of the Viceroy, and by proxy the
British Empire. Significantly, unifying social activities were not confined to
domestic spaces. Imperial wives also organized gatherings in various public
HIGH SOCIETY: HILL STATIONS AND SOCIAL OCCASIONS 159
venues, such as parks, gardens, race courses, and theatres. This provoked
criticism from those at home in Britain, particularly around the turn of the
century when patriarchal culture was struggling to preserve the gender hier-
archies of Victorian society. Imperial women found themselves in a difficult
position: having been encouraged to become the poster girls for the Raj, they
were now being ushered back into the home by conservative commentators
who feared their authority and autonomy.
*****
When Lord Lytton became Viceroy on 12 April 1876, he immediately

threw himself into the task of organizing a magnificent Durbar in Delhi
to celebrate Queen Victoria’s new title, the Empress of India. The event
took place on 1 January 1877 and was marked by a ceremonial display
that harked back to the rituals of the Mughal Empire. Critics, both at
the time and since, have commented upon the garishness of the
Durbar’s displays and its blatant reinvention of oriental traditions to
suit melodramatic European tastes. Cannadine, for example, describes
the event as a ‘pseudo-medieval spectacular of rank and inequality’ in
which the British in India established a closely defined honorific hier-
archy and asserted an image of their South Asian empire as a kind of
‘feudal order’.4 Certainly, at this event, the Lyttons placed a special
emphasis on securing the continuing loyalty of the ruling princes. They
intended it to symbolize publicly a closer association between India and
the Crown. Thus, the Delhi Durbar initiated a new type of extravagant
imperial rule that came to characterize the latter years of the British Raj.
Lord Lytton even refused to refer to it as a Durbar, preferring to see it as
an Imperial Assemblage because he believed it would be on a much
vaster scale than all previous Durbars.5 One major difference between
this particular event and its predecessors was Lord Lytton’s decision to
allow women to play a prominent part. This was the first time any
female member of a Viceroy’s family had appeared at a public function
or ceremony to which Indians were admitted.6 It had hitherto been
thought that the appearance of the ladies would lower them in indigen-
ous eyes; but, in the latter decades of the nineteenth century, their
presence at public events signified for many the relative freedom of
British women in contrast to the average Indian female.
Although Lady Lytton did not participate in the overtly political
elements of the Durbar, she was a key presence at this incredibly
significant event, and she recorded details of it in her memoir. She

provided readers with pertinent information about who attended this
gathering, what they wore, and how they behaved. From the
Vicereine’s writing, it is clear that the Delhi Durbar was a grossly
elaborate spectacle designed to demonstrate British wealth and imperial
power, a point that she defended in the face of exaggerated reports of Lord
Lytton’s expenditure:
It has got about in England that the Delhi Assemblage is to cost 2 million,
which is absurd as probably it will not come to more than half a million, but
the worry is, the rumour may put the English at home and in India against
the whole thing and prevent its succeeding.7
Half a million pounds was still rather a lot of money to spend on one
occasion; yet, for the Lyttons, the impact of the Durbar could hardly be
measured financially. The Viceregal couple felt it was worth every penny in
terms of what it signified about British rule in India; as Cannadine explains,
this kind of ‘ornamentalism was hierarchy made visible, immanent and
actual’.8
The official celebrations lasted for two weeks, beginning on 23 December
1876 with the Viceroy and Vicereine’s arrival in Delhi and ending on
5 January 1877. To open this ceremonial period, the Lyttons paraded
through the city streets for almost three hours on a highly decorated ele-
phant until they reached their tent, which was part of a canvas camp erected
in the city to house the multitudes of guests. For the next few days, there
was a constant round of state dinners and official events leading up to the
first day of the new year when the Viceroy publicly declared Queen Victoria
to be the Empress of India. That evening there was a state banquet and a
lavish party. Lady Lytton joined in for the evening celebrations. She wore
one of many gowns she had brought to the subcontinent from Worth’s in
Paris; this dress was expressly intended to impress the Indian chiefs and the
upper-class Europeans who attended the Assemblage.9 She embraced the
sumptuous tone of the event and happily toasted its success:
It was very amusing, as there were lots of native chiefs and all the swellest
Europeans, and they all mixed so well. Every one was so cordial also in
congratulating on the success of the whole day; and when we got to my tent
we jumped for joy together, thoroughly satisfied and happy.10
Lady Lytton clearly enjoyed the outward-facing approach of late nineteenth-

century imperialism. The symbolic importance of her imperial identity
enabled her to participate in the Raj’s increasingly public demonstration of
power, even though her prominent position sat in opposition to Victorian
gender discourses.
The Raj’s desire for a visible and verifiable authority was partly respon-
sible for the development of the Indian hill stations, where colonial wives
followed Lady Lytton’s lead and participated in social demonstrations of
imperial power. From the 1830s, the British had settled in mountainous
areas of India that were previously inhabited by remote tribal peoples.
Colonial forces removed the local people and occupied these elevated
landscapes. Next, they created anglicized spaces that would cater specifi-
cally to the needs of the British community. Places like Simla, Darjeeling,
Ootacamund, and Sakesar were consciously differentiated from the
increasingly cosmopolitan and international exoticism of Indian cities
like Calcutta, as described by Lady Wilson:
What a strange medley Calcutta contains! Such crowds of Bengalis as seem

more than the sands of the sea in number; our Eurasian cousins; the business
community; the various ecclesiastical establishments; the officials and law-
yers; and crowding the large Hotels, the strangers who come from the four
quarters of the globe for the winter season.11
In contrast, the hill stations evoked a sense of familiarity and stability; they
were particularly appealing to British colonizers unused to the intense heat
of the plains and in need of the moderate temperatures during the summer
months. Emily Eden declared: ‘like meat we keep better up here’.12 In
these areas, the British felt comfortable, safe, and powerful. Thus, it is no
wonder that between 1831 and 1838, the number of houses in Simla
doubled, and the popular Towelle’s Hand Book and Guide to Simla (1877)
claimed that the hill station ‘began to resemble each year more and more
the fashionable watering places in England’.13 Visitors could imagine
themselves at home through the various transformations that had been
impressed upon the landscape. And, through this process, the British
further imposed a physical and ideological distance between themselves
as colonizers and the Indian people as colonized. As E. M. Collingham
notes, these areas ‘became one of the most powerful symbols of the
separation of the British from the Indians and one of the most significant
indicators of the Britishness of Anglo-Indians’.14
Each year, more and more visitors made the journey to the elevated
Himalayan stations; in turn, the colonizers planted more and more roses
and built more and more homes in order to accommodate the greater
numbers. In Simla, Mr Barrett, a wealthy merchant, erected a library, a
reading room, and a billiard room to keep all these visitors occupied; then
came the church and a hotel.15 Just beyond the borders of the town,
developers transformed the grounds of Annadale into a venue for fairs,
picnic parties, gymkhanas, and races. According to Sir Edward John Buck
in 1925, this area was known as ‘the public playground of Simla’, a phrase
that clearly indicated its purpose as a space of community and recreation.16
It was in this context that it was frequently mentioned in memoirs and
letters; imperial women described the various social events and communal
gatherings they organized and attended in this locale. For example, Mary
Caroline Minto wrote in her journal:
The staff were all playing polo, and we had tea on the lawn in front of the
Club – all this is charming. It was started by Lord Bill Beresford, and
improved by Everard Baring. The race-course goes round the polo-ground
and I believe mountains had to be removed to obtain such a large extent of
flat ground.17
Evidently, the British went to great lengths to domesticate their Indian

environs, and, for those who enjoyed gentrified games of polo on a well-
preserved lawn, the transformation was quite successful.
In 1864, Lord Lawrence, then Viceroy of India, officially declared that
Simla was the new summer capital of India; thus began the annual practice
of bringing the colonial administration of the subcontinent up to the hills in
April and back down to Calcutta in October.18 The Viceroy and Vicereine
resided in the Himalayan hill station during these months, ensuring that, in
the latter decades of the nineteenth century, Simla became the heart of
English culture and society in Victorian India. However, this overt enact-
ment of national identity took on a rather exaggerated form due to its
ideological underpinnings. This was particularly apparent in the elaborate
architectural style that developed at this time, as previously discussed by
Antony D. King and Jan Morris.
It is generally accepted that imperial architecture reflected and repre-
sented colonial wealth and status, but we have overlooked women’s con-
tribution to this very prominent demonstration of imperial power. Even
though British women had little involvement in the architectural planning
of most government buildings, the various Vicereines made significant

contributions to the interior design and decoration of the official resi-
dences, such as Peterhof, the Viceregal house in Simla. When Lady Lytton
first set eyes on this building, she remarked that it was more like a large
rectory than a home.19 Furthermore, she found that this rather prosaic
building was quite dilapidated; large pieces of plaster were coming down
from the ceiling and letting in rain. Thus, she concluded that the house
was unfit for hosting important events, such as the Viceregal dinners, and
so the Lyttons refurbished it in order to make it suitable for both habita-
tion and imperial exemplification.20 It was not long, however, before the
Raj’s increasingly extravagant public displays of power and authority out-
grew Peterhof and rendered it unfit for purpose once again.
Lord Dufferin assumed the Viceregal seat in 1884. His wife was also
unimpressed by the accommodation in Simla. She declared that it was
suitable for any family leading a domestic life, but it was not fit for those in
an official position, not to mention a Viceregal one.21 The Dufferins
decided to build an entirely new structure that would better exemplify
late-imperial discourses. This Viceregal Lodge was seen to reflect Lord
Dufferin’s self-aggrandizement, at home and abroad, but his wife was
equally aware of the symbolic properties of their domestic space, and she
contributed to important decisions about design and decoration.
As discussed in Chapter 2, the Dufferins built their new home on
Observatory Hill, a name that was somewhat indicative of the site’s loca-
tion. It also implied the building’s function and the general purpose of
the hill stations. These mountainous spaces enabled the British colonizers
to look down on the Indian people from a panoramic perspective and
place them under a kind of surveillance, a modern form of control
explored by Michel Foucault in Discipline and Punish (1977). He states
that the preoccupation with surveillance emerged in Europe after the
Enlightenment as a way for those in power to regulate the behaviour of
their citizens. He explains how this works through Jeremy Bentham’s
Panopitcon Prison, a structure which ensured that prisoners could be
seen at all times from a central viewing point.22 In this situation, the
inmate self-regulates because the building induces in him (or her) ‘a
state of conscious and permanent visibility that assures the automatic
functioning of power’. ‘He is seen’, Foucault continues, ‘but does not
see; he is the object of information, never a subject in communication’.23
The observed, therefore, interiorizes the gaze and monitors his or her
behaviour in line with Goffman’s theory of conversion, as discussed in
Chapter 3. This panoptic paradigm, seen through a post-colonial lens,

explains, to some extent, how the West controlled subjugated peoples and
exercised power over colonial countries. The British Empire emphasized
its omniscience in a variety of ways, not least through its narratives, as
David Spurr discusses in The Rhetoric of Empire: Colonial Discourse in
Journalism, Travel Writing and Imperial Administration (1993). Spurr’s
analysis of the explorer Henry Morton Stanley, for example, shows how
Stanley’s characteristic rhetorical strategy was to place himself on some
‘noble coign of vantage’ in order to survey the scene below in a mode that
combined spatial arrangement with strategic, aesthetic, or economic valor-
ization of the landscape.24 Similar ideals surely motivated Lady Dufferin to
seek out lofty spaces with appropriate viewing points. She described one
such effort to reach a lofty peak from where the Viceregal party could gaze
down upon the scene below:
Our horses with pain and difficulty dragged us to the summit, whence
we looked down upon a great plain in one direction, and in the other over
the tableland itself, an undulating grassy slope, with a few picturesque
temples and tombs interspersed among our tents; groups of people sitting
about; squadrons of cavalry for escort duty, elephants, flags, Chinese
lanterns – every sort of life and movement and colour to make the scene
lively and gay.25
It was hoped that these privileged positions would proffer power. But, it
was not only the location of the Viceregal Lodge that asserted the
Dufferins’ imperial might; the building itself stood as a monument to
the preoccupations of late nineteenth-century imperialism.
The Viceregal Lodge in Simla, now the Indian Institute of Advanced
Study, remains as a legacy of both Lord and Lady Dufferin’s time in
India, but their intentions for the Lodge went far beyond personal
ambition. The Dufferins only lived in this home for a brief period before
Lord Dufferin completed his tenure and they returned to the family
estate of Clandeboye in County Down, Northern Ireland. Evidently,
the Dufferins intended their new home to be an ongoing symbol of
British imperialism, standing alongside buildings like the Victoria
Terminus in Mumbai or the Residency at Lucknow. These structures,
Ian Baucom argues, transmitted Englishness to the colonial residents.26
Baucom states that in the Empire, specific locales and individual
buildings had a cohesive function through their submersion in the
collective colonial memory.27 Similarly, the visual language of the

Viceregal Lodge acted as a conduit of colonial values and became a
unifying force, even after the Dufferins’ term in office.
The majestic, sprawling building in Simla, designed by Henry Irwin, is a
huge gothic mansion with Eastern influences. It exemplified for visitors,
and the inhabitants of the hill station, the stateliness and superiority of
British culture while incorporating Indian elements. Cannadine argues
that in the wake of the First War of Indian Independence the British
attempted to match the extravagance of the Indian princes by encouraging
spectacle and splendour, ceremony and display on unparalleled levels; he
refers to this incorporation of Eastern elements as an ornamentalism.28
Certainly, from around the time of the Lyttons’ Viceroyalty, there was a
push for pomp and circumstance, particularly at social gatherings where
upper-caste Indians and upper-class British came together.
The Viceregal couple led this increasingly vibrant social scene and the
various Vicereines commented on their hectic social calendars. Lady
Dufferin noted that during the 1886/87 season ‘in the country’ they had
twelve big dinners with twenty-five to fifty guests, twenty-nine small dinners
(with six to fifteen guests), one state ball, one fancy dress ball, one children’s
fancy dress ball, six dances of about 250 people, two garden parties, and two
evening parties.29 Amazingly, the scale of such events expanded throughout
the early decades of the twentieth century. By the time Lord Minto assumed
the position, official entertainments were hugely lengthy affairs. When the
Prince and Princess of Wales visited India in 1905–06, Lady Minto hosted
social entertainments on an incredibly vast scale. She maintained that, in
order to help her prepare Barrackpore for the arrival of the royal couple, she
hired an extra 700 ‘coolies’; this was in addition to the numerous servants
she already employed. Apparently, nine silver plate cleaners, seven wine
butlers, and ten glass and china cleaners were simply not enough for
entertainments on such an overwhelming scale. She records that during
the ten-day visit there was a levee for 1,258 people, a state dinner for 144
guests, a state ball for 1,800, a garden party for 1,500, and a dinner party for
sixty-nine.30
Of course, for most imperial wives, communal gatherings did not occur
on such a grand scale. Nonetheless, in the hill stations, where large
numbers of unconnected individuals found refuge from the heat on the
plains and respite from their normal routines, some means of cohesion was
necessary. In the absence of the usual unifying agents, such as family,
schools, and parishes, British residents often felt isolated and needed the
social gatherings of the hill stations to act as a stabilizing force. From April
to October, British wives looked for companionship after their isolation
on the dusty plains; mothers pursued distraction from the loss of their
children; fathers and husbands joined their families for brief periods; single
men enjoyed their limited holiday time; and ‘fishing fleet ladies’ sought
out romantic adventures. These disparate groups congregated in the
cooler climes of the mountains, and met one another at the various fairs
and fetes, balls and dinners, tennis parties, badminton parties, tea parties,
theatrical productions, polo matches, picnics, and gymkhanas, all of which
were designed to create a colonial community through a shared sense of
English culture and society.
Many historians, such as Anne De Courcy, have remarked upon the fact
that the hill stations were ‘essentially British in atmosphere’.31 Yet, as seen
throughout this book, the assertion of Englishness in India was an entirely
impossible task and the hill stations were no different. Imperial women
writers frequently documented colonial society as it was enacted in these
spaces, and, ultimately, they revealed its peculiarities. In the first instance,
there were several activities that were entirely unfamiliar to British readers
and had to be explained, such as Gentlemen Tent Pegging, Ladies’ Calling
Race, Education Stakes, and Rumble Tumble Stakes. These games took
place during the popular hill station gymkhanas at Annadale, and Lady
Minto took the time to outline the rules of each of them. The Ladies’
Calling Race, for example, consisted of four boxes placed round the race
course in which each competitor had to drop a card. In Education Stakes,
each gentleman had an envelope with six questions. He had to run to a
nominated lady who answered the questions and then he carried the card
back to the judge. For Rumble Tumble Stakes, women nominated the
ponies and the men rode them.32
Even familiar activities, like the theatre, did not come about in
exactly the same manner as it did in Britain. The fact that there were
no professional theatre companies in India meant that the memsahibs
and the colonial officers took care of everything from erecting the stage,
to painting the scenery, and acting the parts, as Georgiana Theodosia
Paget described:
A pretty little stage has been fitted up in one end of Colonel M—’s bunga-
low, with simple scenery, painted by amateur hands. The merry meetings
have been frequent, almost daily, to settle matters and perfect parts, and
have caused so much fun and amusement, one can hardly believe we were
so nearly involved in the horrors of war but one short month ago! The first
regular performance took place this evening, the pieces selected being,
“A Romance under Difficulties” and “In for a Holiday”; and immediately
afterwards the party adjourned to the mess-house, and merrily danced the
remainder of the evening.33
These productions were important, not only because they offered the
colonizers a social outlet and popular entertainment, but because they
kept people busy and provided a means of reconnecting with the home
culture through specific cultural affirmations.34 The carefully noted titles
referred to well-known farces by the popular English author F. C.
Burnand. Evidently, at these events, the colonial community came
together for a collective experience that united them through shared
sentiments and sensibilities; at the same time, they excluded Indian
onlookers, who did not have the same cultural references.
In Victorian India, the conscious assertion of English culture coloured
even seemingly innocuous activities, such as the evening drive. As a regular
evening pastime and a social outing, the evening drive was mentioned
frequently by women writers who thoroughly enjoyed the experience.
Most stations and cantonments had a bandstand or band garden where a
regimental band played. The colonial residents drove to hear them and to
fraternize with their compatriots, as Paget explained: ‘A band plays twice a
week in the evening, when all the society meet together, and on intervening
evenings, the banks of a large tank are a place of general resort. In short, we
are eminently sociable’.35 Paget’s description also indicated that this social
gathering was an important and deliberate assertion of imperial identity:
The Band-stands are the places of fashionable resort of an evening; and, to a

new comer, the scene is just like one in a theatre. A long procession of
children, attended by Ayahs and bearers, walk round and round the music;
officers in uniform gallop up on tattoos with flowing manes and tails, like
circus-horses, to talk to ladies in light-coloured habits; or others, in bullock
carts, and foreign-looking equipages; while each horse, whether ridden or
driven, is attended by his ghorrawalla, who by the exquisites of society, is
dressed in a kind of livery, of bright colour, with a turban and sash in strong
contrast, while the more humble content themselves with a livery of a white
robe, and red turban and sash. As darkness comes on, lamps are lighted
round the Band-stand, and on the carriages; and when “God save the
Queen” proclaims the finale of the music, people grope their way home in
the dark, as best they may.36
The resounding performance of the national anthem at the end of the evening
was an unequivocal reminder of British rule and colonial conquest to all who
were present, and, as seen above, this included various Indian people.
As previously discussed, the level of racial segregation in Victorian
India was often exaggerated in order to imply the safety, security, and
superiority of the British Empire. Nonetheless, by the end of the nine-
teenth century, there was considerably less integration than during the
decades preceding the First Indian War of Independence. Colonial
histories, such as Ronald Hyam’s Empire and Sexuality: The British
Experience (1990), hold the memsahibs responsible for this shift; appar-
ently, they put in place rigid social rituals that excluded the indigenous
population. In actual fact, Mills argues that many of these rules and
regulations emerged from a wider fear of displacement, precisely because
there was constant contact with the local people:
The social environment within the settled colonies in India was one which
perceived itself to be under constant threat from the indigenous commu-
nities and yet which, at the same time, felt that the colonised terrain was one
which it could and ought to dominate. The community developed elaborate
rituals for social cohesion in the face of a perceived Other, and at the same
time excluded the Other.37
The British felt it was necessary, in order to withstand the influence or

infiltration of the indigenous community, to assert vehemently an identity
that was different to that of the Indian people. As we have seen in previous
chapters, this produced a strict set of acceptable behaviours to which
everyone attended, or at least aspired. Because imperial women writers
often set out these dictates for their readers, they were held responsible for
the creation of them. But, this was not necessarily the case. As Francis
Hutchins argues, in his study of imperialism in India, ‘It seems more
correct to say that British Indian society caused a narrowing of outlook
among Englishwomen by refusing them the opportunity of pursuing
interests outside its confining limits’.38 Without doubt, many imperial
women writers felt constrained by the rules, rituals, and regulations of
colonial society.
Violet Jacob found the constant rounds of entertainments and engage-
ments in the hill stations rather exhausting. She endured, rather than
enjoyed, the annual retreat. She remarked that even the thought of having
to go to Simla for a single season filled her with dread.39 Lady Curzon
referred to her social duties as ‘slavery’; Flora Annie Steel found them
monotonous; and Lady Wilson went so far as to claim that entertaining
was a ‘sacred duty’.40 This kind of language implied that social activities
were another facet of their imperial role, another aspect of their white
woman’s burden. For, while they may have enjoyed the prominence and
power that came with such gatherings, they were still subject to colonial
ideals that underpinned gender discourses in Victorian India. In particular,
they could not escape the confines of the Warrant of Precedence, a social
stratification that existed long before British women assumed a more
central role in colonial society.
The Warrant was a governmentally published, and periodically revised,
document that outlined the position of every government official and
military officer in a graded list. It was extremely important in Victorian
India because the colonial community was broadly classless and, for a body
of people who used status as a way of understanding their own place
within society, this apparent lack of hierarchy was unsettling. From the
early days of the Indian Empire, the British felt the need to enforce a
ranking system; it was initially based upon the internal stratifications of the
military and the East India Company. Then, when women began to arrive
in India, their status was derived from the rank of their closest male
relative, be that her brother, father or husband.
As the British Empire in India expanded, and the number of colonial
residents increased, it was harder to keep a track of who was who, which
position in the Civil Service was afforded the highest rank, and what was
the correct arrangement of guests at a function. The Warrant of
Precedence answered these difficult questions by setting out definitive
lists of everyone’s status, from the high-ranking Viceroy to the govern-
ment astronomer in Madras, and the superintendent of the Royal
Botanical Gardens in Calcutta to the sub-deputy opium agents.41 At the
beginning of every season in Simla, each person was required to sign in so
that they could be ranked, according to the Warrant, in published guides,
such as Towelle’s Hand Book and Guide to Simla. This publication pro-
vided a complete list of residents and visitors to Simla for the season,
ensuring that there was no excuse for not knowing where a particular
individual stood in the imperial hierarchy. Thus, it became a grave offence
to put someone in the wrong position or to neglect to offer an individual
the proper privileges. The rigidity of the rules and regulations meant that
all women, regardless of their attitude to social gradients, were subject to
its signifying properties.
When Lady Wilson first arrived in India, she admitted to being rather
flummoxed by the strict organization of society. She was quite bemused by
those people who alluded to rank and file at every opportunity:
I think I deserve some pity for being an inaccurate Celt, without any bump
for officialdom or ability to remember any one’s official position or title, far
less their “grades” and “steps” which is often a dreadful handicap. I don’t
even possess a copy of the Indian bible of precedence, which I suppose
I ought to study, as it tells us all where our proper place, socially or
otherwise, is in the official hierarchy. I expect I shall learn all about that
however, sooner or later, as everybody apparently knows everybody’s post
and pay, and frank allusions are made to both upon all occasions; rather a
novelty, as so many people at home have the same kind of scruple about
summing up your income for you as they would have about decrying your
pedigree.42
The Warrant made status and salary, like everything else in the colony,
public knowledge. While this may have encouraged a greater concern
with rank and standing, it also made social stratification transparent.
Some women found the potential for meritocracy quite refreshing; but,
to certain critics, this system seemed more vulgar than the discreet nature
of British class snobbery.
Victorian India was, undoubtedly, a hugely hierarchical society; at the
same time, because individuals derived their status from their job, their
position within the military, or the Indian Civil Service, one’s social situa-
tion was less obviously to do with family background or inherited financial
position, although these remained an integral part of certain colonial roles.
As a result, Florence Marryat complained that rank was not an appropriate
way to structure society because it was not an indication of good blood. She
opined that it was much more foolish to be interested in money and status
than a person’s heritage.43 Such objections clearly emerged from displaced
fears about the dissolution of an old aristocratic order. Apparently, in this
new environment, with its new rules, there was greater potential for indivi-
duals to transcend their position in society; this possibility unsettled those in
the upper echelons of the social hierarchy. The prospect of social climbing
created an insecurity amongst the upper classes, who occasionally attempted
to reinstate their control over the lower levels of the colonial community;
this was not always easy in a context where the normal markers of status
were broadly absent and the rules of engagement were different.
As noted above, the various stratums of British society converged in the

various hill stations and cantonments in India. Imperial women writers
expressed concerns about the lower classes’ attempts, and indeed ability,
to sometimes rise above their designated place in society. It seems that,
occasionally, traditional social boundaries were transgressed, much to the
irritation of E. Augusta King:
We overtook the advance guard two miles from Mussoorie, and our boxes
even sooner, so we had nothing up with us when we reached the hotel,
having got up in exactly two hours. Table d’hote was at 7.30, and I had to
appear in my riding-habit for lack of anything else. Such a curious set of
people at table, and such curious English to be heard; a few ladies (save the
mark !) looking and behaving as much like barmaids as they could. The
influence of fashionable manners in high places is not happy in its effect on
the manner of those who are not in high places, however faithful they may
try to make the imitation.44
The problem, for King, was the lack of obvious distinction between the
classes of people present at the dinner. The ‘ladies’ identified by King were
mimicking upper-middle-class culture and enjoying the concomitant enter-
tainments; but, for her, their imitation of middle-class demeanours simply
exposed their lack of breeding. Thus, through her writing, she attempted to
secure her own position of power by inferiorizing those around her.
In order to minimise the potential for such disruptions, and as a means of
controlling the ever expanding colonial community, the colonizers intro-
duced the Victorian system of calling to the subcontinent. Calling was
originally established as a way of keeping in touch with a wide circle of
social equals, of establishing oneself in society, or of rising within it (if one’s
call was accepted). Furthermore, it was a useful way of keeping unsuitable
members of society at bay.45 As Marryat remarked, it could prevent objec-
tionable ladies from coming into contact with respectable families.46 But, as
colonial society expanded, Lady Wilson found the system became rather
unwieldy:
I am told that everyone calls on every one else in Simla, including the
inhabitants of all the hotels, and that it is incumbent on every house-
holder who receives such a call to acknowledge the civility by an invita-
tion to luncheon, dinner or tea, a custom which has survived the days
when conditions were totally different, before India was dreamt of as an
alternative to the grand tour, or even to a winter in Egypt and the
population of Simla amounted to about a fifth of its present numbers. I

cannot help thinking, therefore, that this multitudinous exchange of
hospitalities must have become rather a strain to both the entertainers
and the entertained.47
In the very popular hill stations, these arrangements were particularly

draining. As King noted, she had an average list of about eighty names,
which represented about 110 people, in her book of house calls; this was a
lot of people to visit and be visited by.48 It is no wonder that, by the end of
the century, the British decided to simplify the system.
The ever increasing population made it totally unfeasible for every
newcomer to call to each and every home, and so the colonial residents
reduced the initial visit to the depositing of a card in a box. When visitors
called to a house, a servant answered the door and, if the lady was not
receiving, a box was brought out with the inscription ‘Mrs. X is not at
home’. The caller dropped their card in the box and went on to the next
bungalow. If the lady was receiving, you were invited in; but, in late
Victorian India, this was rather unusual. Instead, the gentleman visitor
simply set off around town with a list of names and a box of cards. By
1914, the system was simplified further so the caller only had to drop his
cards into a box which hung outside the door. In due course, these initial
calls were returned by the husbands of the ladies who were called upon;
this visit facilitated entrance to society and to the various clubs. Yet, even
with all these safeguards in place, occasionally the wrong sorts of people
managed to slip through the net, and women writers registered their
anxiety about such occasions.
Lady Dufferin recalled an incident at the State Ball in 1887 when one
poor lady was asked to leave because her reputation was not quite up to
the mark. Apparently, she had received the invitation by mistake: it was
intended for someone else with the same name. Unfortunately, she was
found out because she was dancing next to the 9th Lancers, a smart and
popular regiment which attracted much attention, and it was ‘impossible
not to see her’.49 Although Lady Dufferin does not say how exactly the
error was discovered, we might assume the lady’s gown gave her away.
Elizabeth Langland explains that, in the Victorian era, dress worked as
an important signifier.50 In colonial India, without many other markers
of class, it surely acted as a helpful indication of a person’s rank; with this
in mind, women writers frequently commented on the appearance
of other memsahibs. Such details provided contemporary readers with
some idea of an individual’s character and status. Without stating it

directly, an author could use a person’s dress, in the same manner as
their home, to imply character. For example, Lady Curzon illustrated
the unpleasant nature of some of her guests at a Ball in Government
House by drawing attention to their inappropriate attire:
Some awful people insisted on being asked to the ball at Gov House last
Thursday, a Mr and Mrs Jack Latta of Chicago. They got the American
Consul to write and say they expected to be asked just as though I were the
wife of an American Minister abroad upon whom they looked as a creature
paid to entertain them. They appeared, Mrs Latta wearing an immense
Scotch plaid day dress turned in at the neck. I had seen her at polo with
the same dress in the afternoon.51
As seen through Lady Curzon’s use of italics, Mrs Latta had made a
number of fashion faux pas. Similarly, Lady Lytton recounted an occasion
when two Frenchmen turned up one morning with introductory letters.
As was the custom, the gentlemen were invited to return for dinner.
Unfortunately, they arrived for the evening meal having mistaken the
directive ‘undress’ for morning shooting jackets. They were promptly
turned away without their dinner.52
The focus on social occasions and superficial appearances led visitors
to the hill stations to conclude that the colonial residents were far too
interested in frolicking and fashion. Marianne North, for example, found
such seemingly artificial preoccupations particularly abominable in the
face of so much natural beauty. The globetrotting artist was so irritated
by the memsahibs that she could scarcely bear to stay too long in the
hill stations: ‘It would have been rather trying to have been locked up in
the clouds for an unlimited period with a lady who made her husband
pay £120 for a ball dress for the Prince’s visit!’.53 Of course, for those
who lived in India all year round, social occasions such as Prince Albert’s
visit were high points in the colonial calendar; these events not only
held wide political significance, they offered important opportunities for
women to participate in the advertisement of Britain’s imperial power
and wealth.
At prestigious events, like the prince’s visit, where Indian people were
present, wearing the appropriate clothing was hugely important because
the indigenous rulers also used dress as a means of exemplifying their
status. The Maharajah Tukoji Rao Holkar ll, for example, made quite an
impression when he met Lord and Lady Dufferin in his court dress at
Jodhpore. The Vicereine described his clothes in great detail:
The petticoats are in thick folds, and are all made of pink muslin; halfway down
the skirt they are tied in with a scarf, so that at the bottom they stand straight
out and sway about as the wearer moves. They are so full that when a man rides
in them they fall quite naturally over each leg as if they were “divided”, but in a
carriage they are most awkward, and no ball dress was ever so difficult to tuck
in as was the Maharajah’s skirt when he followed the Viceroy into the beautiful
yellow carriage awaiting him. The headdress worn with this is also very
peculiar. It is red and yellow, and rather pointed. The Maharajah wore the
Star of India collar and ribbon. . . . I had a delightful companion in my carriage
– the heir-apparent, aged six, dressed in red court petticoats, which he told me
he found hot, and which he had only put on to show me.54
The Maharajah provided Lady Dufferin with an archetypal image of oriental

opulence, which in the late nineteenth century was commodified and com-
mercialized, specifically through photographic images taken by the likes of
Bourne and Shepherd.55 Over time, the British preference for orientalized
spectacles became institutionalized within the colonial framework. In
response to this, Cannadine identifies the commanding force of British
requests for indigenous princes to don traditional dress; he argues that the
Indians resented such demands, that they donned the outfits only in order to
please and pacify.56 Without acknowledging any resentment, Lady Dufferin
accepted that high-ranking Indians dressed in their best finery in order to
impress her. She returned the favour by similarly seeking to make an impact
through her appearance. In ceremonial circumstances, she wore her best
apparel in order to present her persona in the appropriate manner.
Lady Dufferin was acutely aware of the way in which imperial life was
made increasingly public. As such, she treated her appearances as a per-
formance. Her writing is littered with allusions to the theatricality of her
social engagements. She described the events as ‘scenes’, and admitted
that she enacted the role of the Queen, feeling like an actress in a play.57
Through this dramatic frame, Lady Dufferin distanced her textual repre-
sentation of India from any kind of stylistic realism; instead, she fostered a
sense of artificiality:
The mise en scene is very superior to that of the station; here a magnificent
river, filled with splendid ships, all dressed with flags, and every variety of
boat and launch flying about, Calcutta itself on either bank, and the Ghat
covered with red cloth, flags, and smart spectators.58
She represented this elaborate occasion as though she witnessed it through

the proscenium arch. She brought all the aspects of the scene together into
a single theatrical vignette that revelled in the luxuriance and opulence of
the East, and emphasized an outward-facing ruling model influenced and
facilitated by the magnificence of the orientalized images of Indian
princes. But, the downside of placing herself centre stage was that she
invited those around her to gaze upon her and assess her performance.
As the Vicereine, Lady Dufferin attracted a lot of attention from the
general public, as well as from journalists and photographers, who con-
stantly observed and recorded her actions. During the Dufferins’ Viceregal
term, the eminent photographer Lala Deen Dayal documented their daily
life through a series of images.59 Lady Dufferin became extremely aware of
being under constant surveillance. She clearly disliked the fact that she was
being watched:
The number of frightful caricatures of us which is being called into existence

is fearful, for we never move anywhere that we don’t see a photographer
pointing at us from the top of a carriage, or from some unexpected vantage
ground.60
Lady Dufferin was conscious of how she appeared to people at home. She
was familiar with the fact that the British people felt perfectly comfortable
commenting on and criticizing her actions. In one instance, she received
an anonymous letter that berated her for interacting with indigenous
women too much.61 We can presume that the note referred to Lady
Dufferin’s philanthropic work, which was widely covered in the British
press; nonetheless, the letter exemplified the pressure there was on imper-
ial women to conform to a public persona that accorded with their hus-
band’s career, the dominant ideologies, and the wider public, rather than
simply fulfil their own aspirations of power and authority.
By the late nineteenth century, imperial women were only too aware
that the public nature of colonial life meant their conduct was under
close observation; thus, if they wished to procure for themselves a
powerful position in British culture and society, they could not stray
too far from particular conventions and traditions set out by the Raj.
As we have seen, these customs emerged from a very Victorian version
of Englishness. While life in Britain progressed and developed, there

was increasing pressure on the colonial community to remain attendant
to these traditional social structures. As a result, historians, like
Lawrence James, see Simla at the turn of the twentieth century as
being stuck in a kind of social stasis.62
James’s comprehensive history of the Raj argues that the colonial
population was made up mainly of people who had left Britain some
time ago. During their long sojourns in India, they had little percep-
tion of the ways in which the world at home was changing. Compared
to Britain, where there was a constant influx of difference, he argues
that there was a slower evolution of ideas in British India, which
produced a social stagnation. Indira Ghose offers support for this
analysis; she points out that, for some visitors to India, it seemed as
though the gap between British culture and colonial culture was con-
stantly widening.63 Lady Wilson certainly found that the rules and
regulations surrounding social engagements made Simla increasingly
static and stagnant:
What has become of the many original experiences we have had in

Simla, the diplomatic dinners, the dances by torchlight under the
pines, the musical fetes on moonlit lawns, the pageants of Viceregal
Lodge, its pleasant dinner parties and brilliant balls? Where else have we
met so many interesting personalities, travellers, diplomats, patriots of
the desert, soldiers, men of science, not to speak of dear women and
winsome girls, such crowds of people who are kind and good as they
have opportunity?64
Lady Wilson believed that the snobbish attitude of her compatriots

excluded interesting individuals from society, despite the fact that
Simla had grown exponentially in size. However, I would argue that
this homogenization took place because late Victorian fears about the
future of the Raj made it most important for British exiles to enact a
singular colonial identity, regardless of personal perspective. Hence,
James’s explanation of this static and exclusive Indian society is a little
simplistic; it does not take account of the conscious enactment of a
peculiarly imperial Englishness.
Every year, children who had spent their formative years at school in
England, along with English children, returned to India to live out their
adult lives; these individuals were exposed to the same range of ideas as all
other English children. When they returned to India, they brought with
them all they had learnt in the metropolitan centre. At the same time, an
endless trail of tourists, artists, feminists, philanthropists, and adventurers
visited Victorian India. Imperial women’s memoirs took note of the various
unusual characters who joined their dinner tables and stayed in their homes.
At one particular social engagement, Lady Dufferin was extremely surprised
to be dining with a set of theosophists and vegetarians.65 These transient
figures, and sometimes transgressive figures, were free to explore and exem-
plify unconventional lives; however, Lady Dufferin knew that, as a repre-
sentative of Victorian imperial culture, she was not able to exercise such
alternative views:
Mr. Lane Fox is also a great Radical (mad as a hatter), and hopes Miss Helen
Taylor will get into Parliament, while I maintained that men and women
were different creatures, and had different functions in life, and that
Parliament was a purely masculine institution; very conservative views, but
then I believe I am serving under a Conservative Government just now,
which may account for it.66
Lady Dufferin made it clear that she supported the status quo because this
was what was expected of her in an imperial role. The very fact that she
uttered such a statement indicated that, in another situation, she might
have chosen to exercise other beliefs. Even this admission was considered
problematic, and it was not included in her published memoir.
Arguably, then, imperial women found their identities produced for
them. As I have suggested, in many respects, this identity was funda-
mental to colonial rule and was therefore empowering. But, this access to
power also meant their behaviours were monitored through a constant
pressure to comply, and women writers sometimes found this oppressive.
Lady Wilson complained that she lived ‘so constantly in public in Simla’.
She delighted in her ability to escape from this persistent observation by
taking refuge in the solitude of unknown crowds in the city.67 Other
women found anonymity through hosting and attending fancy dress
parties where they could don costumes and temporarily enact another
role. Indeed, from the moment the memsahibs boarded the ships that
brought them to India, fancy dress was a favoured form of entertainment.
Lady Dufferin was especially excited at the prospect of her first fancy dress
ball as she sailed from Aden to Bombay. At the event, most people
dressed in costumes influenced in some way by the British Empire and
colonial adventures. There were Turkish ladies, a beautiful Britannia, an
ancient Gaul, a Red Indian, and an Arab Chief.68 And this was not an
isolated incident. Imperial women expressed a definite proclivity for dres-
sing up as colonial figures at fancy dress parties. By acting out the various
roles within imperial societies, from the noble savage to nationalist icon,
the British demonstrated the extent to which they could, and would,
appropriate the Empire for entertainment purposes. However, what is of
interest here is the fact that, for some women, the fancy dress balls also
afforded a welcome sense of invisibility in the very public world of the
British Empire.
Tired of living so constantly under the spotlight, the act of putting on a
costume offered a welcome opportunity to enjoy a little obscurity. For
example, Lady Minto articulated her desire to experience a social occasion
without feeling the weight of enquiring eyes. She related in her journal
how she went undercover to a masked ball given by the Black Hearts. Her
daughters, Eileen and Ruby, were attending with a chaperone, because her
husband had refused to go. Initially, Lady Minto did not want to go alone;
but, after a time, she reconsidered. She thought that it would be most
amusing ‘to be allowed to become an ordinary mortal for a short time’.69
So, Lady Minto dressed up and exited the house via the fire escape. She
danced with a Frenchman whom she did not know, and she told him all
kinds of untruths about her identity. He took quite a shine to her and tried
to entice her back to his hotel so they could unmask each other in private!
An amused Lady Minto eventually managed to escape into the streets of
Simla, where she found herself quite alone for the first time: ‘Being
accustomed to red carpets and an ADC hat in hand, it was a new experi-
ence for me to find myself alone in the high street of Simla surrounded by
rickshaw coolies’.70 Perhaps surprisingly, she did not express fear or
anxiety when in close proximity to the Indian rickshaw drivers. In fact, it
would appear that Lady Minto thoroughly enjoyed her whole undercover
adventure. For the most part, she was more than happy to enact the part of
the Vicereine, but, at times, she found the performance hard to sustain and
sought solace from those who observed it.
Without doubt, the Vicereines were most affected by the demands of
colonial society; but the constant round of social engagements, particu-
larly in the hill stations, took its toll on the majority of the memsahibs.
Even for those women outside the elite, social obligations were persistent.
NOTES 179
And, no matter how important these functions and gatherings were,

they posed a problem for conservative onlookers because they removed
women from their primary duties within the home by encouraging
apparently inappropriate activities and attitudes. There was a fear that
the changes to British gender roles could potentially lead to the down-
fall of the Empire. For women in India, this would mean a loss of
status rather than an acquisition of power; thus, as can be seen in their
writing, imperial women writers attempted to sustain a semblance of
Victorian femininity, long after such notions existed for them in any
real terms. Their efforts to express this imperial identity contributed to
colonial power and increased their visibility, exposing the ways in
which their enactments were almost the same, but not quite. The
Empire had altered the sphere of their experience and allowed them
to break down the public/private divide. Therefore, as seen through-
out this book, colonial women’s lives, and the representations of those
lives, played an important part in the formation of British imperial
discourse and a growing feminist movement.
NOTES
Press, 2005), p. 109.
3. David Cannadine, Ornamentalism: How the British Saw their Empire
(London: Penguin Books), 2001.
4. Cannadine, Ornamentalism, p. 46.
5. Marian Fowler includes material from Lord Lytton’s personal correspon-
dence on this matter. See Fowler, Below the Peacock Fan: First Ladies of the
Raj (London: Penguin, 1988), p. 193.
6. Mary Lutyens, The Lyttons in India: An Account of Lord Lytton’s Viceroyalty,
1876–1880 (London: John Murray, 1979), p. 86.
7. Edith Bulwer Villiers Lytton, India, 1876–1880, (London: privately printed
9. Charles Frederick Worth was a British designer who relocated to Paris in
1845 and dominated the fashion scene in the latter half of the nineteenth
century. His designs were renowned for their lavish fabrics and trimmings.
11. Anne C. Wilson, Letters from India (London: Century Publishing
Company, 1911), p. 290.
12. Emily Eden, Up the Country: Letters from India (1866. London: Virago
Press, 1983), p. 130.
13. W. Martin Towelle, Towelle’s Hand Book and Guide to Simla (Simla: Station
Press, 1877), p. 24.
14. E. M. Collingham, Imperial Bodies: The Physical Experience of the Raj
(Cambridge: Polity Press, 2001), p. 86.
15. For a detailed description, see Towelle, Towelle’s Hand Book, p. 24.
16. Sir Edward John Buck, Simla, Past and Present (Calcutta: Thacker, Spink
and Co., 1904), p. 96.
17. Caroline Mary Minto, My Indian Journal, 6 vols. (Calcutta: n.p., 1905–
1910), 1: 124.
18. Calcutta was the seat of British government until 1911. The annual retreat
to Simla actually made much more sense when the administrative capital was
changed to Delhi as it was much closer to the hill station.
21. Hariot Dufferin, Ten Printed Journals, 1884–88, Dufferin and Ava Papers
(Public Records Office of Northern Ireland), 1: 131.
22. Michel Foucault, Discipline and Punish: The Birth of the Prison (New York:
Vintage Books, (1977) 1995), p. 200.
23. Foucault, Discipline and Punish, p. 200.
24. David Spurr, The Rhetoric of Empire (Durham: Duke University Press,
1993), p. 17.
25. Hariot Dufferin, Our Viceregal Life. Selections from My Journal (London:
John Murray, 1889), 2:70.
26. Ian Baucom, Out of Place: Englishness, Empire, and the Locations of Identity
(Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1999), p. 4.
27. Baucom, Out of Place, p. 4.
29. Lady Dufferin, Ten Printed Journals, 3: 110.
31. Anne De Courcy, The Fishing Fleet: Husband-Hunting in the Raj (London:
Weidenfeld and Nicolson 2012), p. 185.
Journal of Life in India in 1857–59, With Some Account of the Way Thither
34. The carefully noted titles would have been familiar to her English readers,
referring to farces by the popular author F. C. Burnand and so reiterated
attention to the home culture.
NOTES 181
37. Sara Mills, Discourses of Difference (Manchester: Manchester University

Press, 2005), p. 103.
38. Francis G. Hutchins, The Illusion of Permanence: British Imperialism in
India (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1967), p. 107.
40. Lady Curzon, Lady Curzon’s India: Letters of a Vicereine, ed. John Lewis
Bradley (New York: Beaufort Publishers, 1986), p. 56; Flora Annie Steel,
Garden of Fidelity, Being the Autobiography of Flora Annie Steel, 1847–1929
(London: Macmillan and Co., 1929), p. 122; Wilson, Letters from India,
p. 370.
41. For a more detailed discussion of the Warrant of Precedence, see Cannadine,
Ornamentalism, p. 43.
44. E. Augusta King, Diary of A Civilian’s Wife, 1877–1882 (London: Bentley
and Son, 1884), 1: 141.
45. For a more detailed discussion of the calling system, see De Courcy, The
Fishing Fleet, p. 94.
48. King, Diary of a Civilian’s Wife, 1: 87.
p. 34.
53. Marianne North, Letter to Burnell, 5 January 1878. Papers of Marianne
North. Royal Botanic Gardens, Kew, Library and Archives. RM2.
54. Dufferin, Our Viceregal Life, 1: 234–35.
55. Samuel Bourne and Charles Shepherd established a photographic firm in
Simla in 1864.
59. Unfortunately, this album of photographs is unavailable for public consulta-
tion; it is in the private family collection at the estate in Clandeboye, County
Down. Lala Deen Dayal was appointed as photographer to the Viceroy in
1885.
62. Lawrence James, The Making of British India (London: Abacus, 1998),
p. 167.
63. Indira Ghose, Memsahibs Abroad: Writings by Women Travellers in
Nineteenth-Century India (Dehli: Oxford University Press, 1998), p. 6.
CHAPTER 8
Epilogue
On the eve of India’s independence, the residents of the city of Cawnpore

attempted to enter the Memorial Garden and take down the white marble
angel erected by the British government. Clearly, the indigenous people
resented the way this site had been memorialized. They wished to reclaim
this space from which they been excluded for almost 100 years. Before
long, they had replaced Carlo Marochetti’s marble angel with a statue of
Tantia Tope, the rebel leader who served as Nana Sahib’s lieutenant, and
the Gardens were renamed Nano Rao Park. The angel was then installed in
the nearby grounds of the All Souls Memorial Church.
The removal of the Angel of the Resurrection and the recovery of this
contentious space is entirely justified. Nonetheless, the relegation of the
statue also symbolises the extent to which British women’s role in colonial
history was once more assigned to the margins of martial and/or masculine
narratives. British-built churches, railway stations, and official residences
remained as they were, even after independence, while the monument to
women’s imperial identity became an aside to the more dominant dis-
courses of colonialism and nationalism. Until recent times, there has been
very little interest in the wives of the Raj as anything but adjuncts to the
story of empire; but, if we are to fully understand British colonial power, we
must remember that they too played a great part in supporting and dis-
seminating imperial ideologies, as well as contributing to the feminist

DOI 10.1007/978-3-319-33195-9_8
184 8 EPILOGUE
movement. As Elizabeth Langland notes, power can be even more effective

when it appears inconsequential and insignificant.1
Sara Mills argues that, ‘it is clear that a wide range of activities that have
been glossed by dominant discourses as fairly trivial serve as the supports
for the imperial enterprise’.2 This book has paid close attention to the
representation of these seemingly trivial activities in order to demonstrate
the extent to which private lives in India were part of a public and imperial
narrative, and to show that women’s imperial writing troubled the separate
spheres ideology. As such, we see how Victorian India became a kind of
interstitial space, wherein women had a degree of cultural power. Initially,
as has been shown here, women often achieved this power by aligning
themselves with the dominant colonial ideologies; however, as they
assumed an increasingly public and political position, they found them-
selves able to offer alternatives to the dominant ideals of Victorian femi-
ninity, and, in both respects, they deserve to be remembered.
NOTES
Ideology in Victorian Culture (Ithaca: Cornell University Press, 1995), p. 8.
Press, 2005), p. 15.
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INDEX
A Ayah, 36, 60, 63, 69, 76, 85–87, 148

All India Women’s Conference, 97 See also Breast-feeding; Servants
Anderson, Benedict, 3, 4, 14,
19n8, 72n30
Imagined Communities: Reflections B
on the Origin and Spread of Bangalore, 43
Nationalism, 3, 19n8, 72n30 Barnes, Irene H., 94, 102n66
Andrew, Elizabeth W., 151, 152, Bassnett, Susan, 7, 19n21
155n47 Beeton, Isabella, 56, 71n18
The Queen’s Daughters in The Book of Household Management,
India, 151, 155n47 Comprising Information for the
Angel at Cawnpore, 3, 43, 128 Mistress, Housekeeper, Cook, 56,
See also Cawnpore 71n18
Anglicization, 5, 21, 29, 34, 35, 52, Bengal, 2, 31, 126
54, 88, 110 Benson, Mrs. R. S., 13, 20n36
Anglo-Indian, 10, 20n29, 31, 43, 75, Bentham, Jeremy, 163
79, 82, 92, 116, 161 Besant, Annie, 13, 20n37, 82, 107,
Annadale, 162, 166 124–127, 134n61
Architecture Bhabha, Homi K., 5, 9–11, 14,
colonial, 22, 33, 35 19n15, 50n78
domestic, 22 Blavatsky, Helena, 125, 134n62
imperial, 158, 162 Blunt, Alison, 8, 19n24, 22, 35, 47n3,
See also Homes 77, 100n10
Armstrong, Nancy, 52 Bombay, 2, 26, 64, 138, 140, 178
Atkinson, George Francklin, 9 Bonnar, William, 116
‘Curry & Rice’ on Forty Plates; Or Bourdieu, Pierre, 76, 87, 100n6, 106,
the Ingredients of Social Life at 114, 115, 132n26
‘Our Station’ in India, 9 Bourne and Shepherd, 174

DOI 10.1007/978-3-319-33195-9
196 INDEX
Brahmo Samaj, 12, 20n35, 117, Butler, Josephine, 150, 151

199–120 See also Contagious Disease Act;
Brantlinger, Patrick, 2, 18n4, 122, Indian Contagious Diseases Act
133n52
Breastfeeding, 86, 87
See also Ayah; Children; C
Motherhood Calcutta, 36, 39, 44, 64, 81, 129, 137,
Britain, 3–5, 9–12, 15–17, 24, 26, 28, 139, 161, 162, 169, 180n18
29, 33, 34, 36, 39, 44–46, 52, 54, Calling, 142, 166, 171
56–59, 61, 63, 66, 76, 77, 81, 89, Cannadine, David, 158–160, 165,
91, 97–99, 102n64, 106–108, 113, 174, 179n3
120, 122, 124–126, 136–141, 148, Ornamentalism, 158, 160, 165,
151, 152, 159, 166, 173, 176 179n3
British Empire, 4, 8, 12, 17, 24, 32, Canning, Charles, 1st Earl of, 78
67, 82, 84, 88, 89, 92, 107, 112, Canning, Lady Charlotte, 1, 3, 5,
136, 150, 158, 164, 168, 19n8, 42, 49n65, 107, 108
169, 178 Cantonment Act 1864, 151
British women, 3, 4, 6–9, 11–17, 21, Carmichael, Amy, 12, 96, 98, 103n72
22, 24, 27, 33, 37, 40, 43, 52–54, Carpenter, Mary, 12, 107, 117–119,
56, 58, 60, 61, 63, 77, 85, 86, 94, 126, 132n37, 133n38, 151
95, 97, 99, 106, 107, 110–112, Six Months in India, 117, 133n38
118, 119, 122, 123, 126, 128, Caste system, 65
135, 136, 140, 141, 144, Cawnpore
150–151, 158, 159, 162, Cawnpore Memorial, 2
169, 183 massacre at Cawnpore, 2, 128, 136
in India, 3, 7, 14, 15, 33, 40, 54, 56, See also Angel at Cawnpore
61, 111, 135 Chaudhuri, Nupur, 52, 56, 58, 60,
Buck, Edward John, 162, 180n16 71n4, 71n19, 103n77, 131n7,
Burma 133n37, 134n61, 155n43
annexation of, 38, 45 Children
See also Mandalay Childbirth, 93, 94
Burnell, A. C., 31, 48n29 See also Breastfeeding; Family;
Hobson-Jobson: The Anglo-Indian Motherhood
Dictionary, 31, 48n29 Church, Thomas Ross, 31, 82
Burton, Antoinette, 14, 95, 103n68, Civilizing mission, 12, 13, 15, 77, 98,
107, 118, 119, 123, 131n7, 116, 119
131n9, 133n45, 133n51, 150, Clandeboye, 46, 164, 181n59
151, 157n43 Collingham, E. M., 76, 87, 100n7,
Bushnell, Katharine C., 151, 152, 161, 180n14
155n47 Imperial Bodies: The Physical
The Queen’s Daughters in Experience of the Raj, c.
India, 153, 157n47 1800-1947, 76, 100n7, 180n14
INDEX 197
Colonialism, 24, 77, 87, 115, 116, Degeneration, 76, 88, 112
124, 183 See also Max Nordau
Contact zone, 10, 20n30, 60 Delhi Durbar, 86, 159, 160, See
See also Mary Louise Pratt Imperial Assemblage
Contagious Disease Act, 150, 151 Devadasi, 96–98, 103n73
Conversion, 15, 69, 70, D-H. A. K., 55, 72n47, 89, 101n44
123–124, 163 The Memsahib’s Manual: Being an
See also Erving Goffman Easy Guide to Learning
Cornwallis, Governor-General Hindustani, With Some Advice
Charles, 138 on Health and the
Countess of Dufferin Fund, 16, Household, 55, 72n47, 89,
121, 126 101n44
Courtship, 17, 136, 138, 141, Diver, Maud, 6, 16, 17, 54, 71n13,
142, 146 89, 95, 108, 109, 110, 112, 116,
Cousins, Margaret, 126 142, 148, 149, 154N21
Cult of domesticity, 52 The Englishwoman in India, 54,
Cultural superiority, 4, 39, 52, 58, 71n13, 101n46,
87, 119 108, 136
Cumming, Constance Gordon, 12, Dohnavur Fellowship, 96
43, 50n70 See also Amy Carmichael; Devadasi
Cunningham, Henry Stewart, 109 Domesticity
Chronicles of Dustypore: A Tale Domestic manuals, 54, 57, 58, 65
of Modern Anglo-Indian Domestic routines, 51, 112, 113
Society, 109 See also Housekeeping
Curzon, Mary, Lady, 65, 66, 73n56, Donaldson, Laura E., 26, 47n13
128, 141, 146–147, 154n19, Dufferin, Hariot, 1, 6, 14–16, 36,
168, 173, 181n40 37–39, 42, 44–46, 65, 66, 95,
Custody of Infants Act of 1839, 99 102n65, 115, 121–123, 126,
128, 145–147, 164, 165, 172,
174, 175, 177, 180n21
D Our Viceregal Life in India:
Darjeeling, 143, 158, 161 Selections from My Journal,
See also Hill stations 1884-1888, 18n2, 38, 48n48,
David, Deirdre, 44, 50n74, 77, 73n57
100n11
Rule Britannia: Women, Empire,
and Victorian Writing, 44, E
50n74, 100n11 East India Company, 24, 31, 138,
Davin, Anna, 85, 101n30 140, 169
Dayal, Lala Deen, 175, 181n59 Eastlake, Charles L., 39, 49n58
De Courcy, Anne, 140, 153n2, Eastlake, Elizabeth, 24, 47n6
154n9, 166, 180n31 Eden, Emily, 161, 181n41
198 INDEX
Ellis, Sarah Stickney, 7, 19n19, 25, fishing fleet ladies, 136, 141, 166
47n7, 80, 93, 100n18, 108, Foucault, Michel, 163, 180n22
132n11 Discipline and Punish: The Birth of
The Wives of England, their Relative the Prison, 163, 180n22
Duties, Domestic Influence, and Fowler, Marian, 105, 106,
Social Obligations, 80, 100n18, 131n1, 179n5
108
The Women of England: Their Social G
Duties and Domestic Gardens
Habits, 19n19, 47n7, 132n11 botanical, 41, 157, 169
Elwood, Anne, 44, 50n74 domestic, 22, 41
England, 13, 22, 24, 32, 43, 44, 53, Kew Gardens, 11, 44
54, 68, 82, 88–90, 92, 109, 117, Gardiner, Grace, 6, 15, 16, 47n17, 51,
119, 124–126, 139, 144, 146, 54, 58, 59, 61, 63, 66, 68, 69,
150, 161, 176 70n1, 86, 87, 114, 115
English culture, 5, 13, 17, 44, 46, The Complete Indian Housekeeper
119, 162, 166, 167 and Cook, 15, 47n17, 51,
Englishness 70n1, 71n9, 101n33
in India, 10, 44, 57, 166 Gender
See also National identity discourse, 16, 18, 22, 24, 75, 107,
Ennui, 111–112, 144 114, 117, 161, 169
identity, 13, 14, 22, 52, 75
segregation, 95, 119, 121, 135
F George, Rosemary Marangoly, 52,
Family, 12, 15, 16, 24, 33, 36, 38, 40, 71n5, 118, 133n42
53, 61, 69, 75–103, 108, 110, Ghose, Indira, 5, 19n16, 128,
117, 139, 163, 164, 165, 170 134n72, 176, 182n63
See also Children; Marriage; Gilman, Charlotte Perkins, 23, 47n5
Motherhood Gilpin, Mrs. John, 14, 60, 61, 72n43
Femininity, 2, 4, 6, 8–12, 16, 17, 24, Pakwān-ki-kitāb: Memsahib's Guide
25, 52, 76, 92, 93, 108, 129, to Cookery in India Glimpses of
146, 179, 184 Anglo-Indian Life Here and at
Feminism Home, 60, 72n43
feminist reform, 107 Goffman, Erving, 69, 163
in India, 13, 126 Asylums: Essays on the Social
proto-feminism, 95, 122 Situation of Mental Patients
Western feminism, 13 and Other Inmates, 69
First Indian War of Independence, 4, See also Conversion
14, 18n1, 43, 116, 136, 168 Going native, 85
See also Massacre at Cawnpore; Gossip, 108, 135–153
Lucknow Grass widows, 83, 149
Fishing fleet, 136, 140, 141, 166 Greg, W. R., 140, 154n16
INDEX 199
H 90, 93, 94, 98, 106, 112, 114,

Habitus, 76, 87, 88, 106 116, 119, 136, 145, 146, 166,
See also National habitus 168, 171, 179
Handbook for Travellers in India, India
Burma, and Ceylon Including the and independence, 2, 4, 124, 183
Provinces of Bengal, Bombay, and Indian Home Rule, 126
Madras… Etc, A, 2, 18n5 Victorian India, 1–18, 21–46, 52,
Hill Stations, 17, 31, 46, 69, 83, 111, 54, 56, 60, 62, 67, 79, 81, 82,
130, 141–143, 157–179 108–110, 113–115, 135–153,
See also under individual place names 157, 158, 162, 167–170, 172,
Homes 177, 184
bungalows, 15, 28, 31, 32, 34, 35, See also Subcontinent; individual
38, 42, 45, 46, 51, 69, 81, 89, place names
148, 172 Indian Civil Service, 53, 158, 170
in England, 109 Indian Contagious Diseases Act, 150
government House, Indian National Congress, 10, 124
Barrackpore, 41 Indian women, 12, 13, 16, 25, 57,
government House, Calcutta, 39 75–77, 79, 86, 87, 93–97, 99,
in India, 14, 27, 63, 80 106–108, 116–124, 138, 140,
interior decoration, 36, 53, 108 151, 152
Peterhof, 44, 163 Interracial, 6, 33, 135, 138
tents, 29, 81, 151 Ireland, 127, 164
Viceregal Lodge, Simla, 38, 44, 164 Irishness, 127
See also Architecture, domestic Irwin, Henry, 165
Housekeeping, 14, 15, 51–70, 114
household management, 51–70
J
Hughes, Kathryn, 33, 48n35
Jacob, Violet, 34, 36, 48n39, 57,
Hunter Commission, 121, 133n49
69, 71n25, 110, 111, 132n16,
See also Pandita Ramabai
168
Hutchins, Francis G., 168, 181n38
James, Lawrence, 176, 182n62
Hyam, Ronald, 168
Jinarajadasa, Dorothy, 126
Hybridity, 10, 11, 87
K
I King, Anthony D., 22, 162
Ilbert Bill, 150, 152 King, E. Augusta, 46n1, 171, 181n44
Imperial Assemblage, 85, 159 Kingsley, Mary, 139
Imperialism, 10, 15, 16, 22, 76, 77, Kipling, Rudyard
82, 90, 93, 117, 124, 126, 145, Plain Tales from the Hills, 9, 109
161, 164, 168 The Song of Women, 122
Imperial women writers, 1–18, 25, 26, Kosambi, Meera, 107, 120, 123, 124,
28, 34, 66, 68, 76, 77, 79, 84, 87, 131n8, 134n56
200 INDEX
L McKnight, Natalie J., 93, 102n61

Ladies National Association, 150 Melman, Billie, 118, 133n41
Langland, Elizabeth, 14, 52, 55, 70, Memsahibs
70n2, 92, 102n60, 172, 181n50, Mills, Sara, 7–9, 14, 22, 25, 33, 35,
184, 184n1 46n3, 157, 168, 181n37, 184
Lear, Edward, 144 Gender and Colonial Space, 19n25,
Levine, Philippa, 14, 98, 103n75, 136, 33, 46n3, 179n1
139, 145, 154n10 Mimicry, 10, 17, 46, 82
Lewis, Frederick, 131n5, 144 mimic men, 5, 9
Lloyd, H., 95, 103n70 Minto, Mary Caroline, 6, 64, 73n52,
Hindu Women: With Glimpses into 99n1, 137, 162, 180n17
their Life and Zenanas, 103n70 Miscegenation, 76, 88
London, 44, 69, 82 Missionaries
Lucknow, 57, 128, 136, 164 Church of England Zenana
Siege of Lucknow, 136 Missionary Society, 12,
Lytton, Edith Villiers, Countess of, 6, 102n67
40, 64, 85–86, 163 Church Missionary Society, 12
Lytton, Robert Bulwer-Lytton, Earl See also Rachael Piggott; Amy
of, 5, 85–86, 159, 160, 163 Carmichael
Mohanty, Chadra Talpade, 118,
133n43
M Moodie, Susanna, 28, 47n22
Macaulay, Thomas Babington, 4–5 Morris, Jan, 49n55, 162
‘Minute on Indian Education’, 5 Motherhood
MacMillan, Margaret, 8 imperial maternalism, 96
Macmillan, Mona, 9, 19n27 maternal duties, 86
Maharajah Tukoji Rao Holkar ll, 173 maternalism, 93
Mandalay, 38, 45 See also Children; Family
Marochetti, Carlo, 1, 183 Mysore, 34
Marriage, 12, 23, 76, 81, 82, 84, 92,
95, 97–99, 107, 122, 138, 140,
149, 153 N
Married Women’s Property Acts 1870 Nana Sahib, 1, 5–6, 183
and 1882, 99 National Association for Supplying
Marryat, Florence Female Medical Aid to the
Gup: Sketches of Anglo-Indian Life Women of India, 94, 121
and Character, 43, 82 See also Countess of Dufferin Fund
Véronique: A Romance Marriage, 83 National habitus, 106
Matrimonial Causes Acts, 99 National Indian Association, 119
McClintock, Anne Nationalism
cult of domesticity, 52 English, 3
Imperial Leather, 67 Indian, 124, 125
INDEX 201
National identity, 3, 4, 6, 7, 10, 15, Paxton, Nancy L., 14, 75, 89–90,
18n3, 39, 44, 46, 51, 52, 99n2, 103n77, 125, 134n61,
75–77, 90, 96, 106, 108, 110, 136, 145, 154n4
113, 114, 131, 143, 162 Peterson, Kirstin H., 40, 49n60
Neligherry Hills, 130 Philanthropy
See also Hill stations philanthropic duties, 116–128
New India, 126 philanthropic movement,
New Woman, 13, 17, 143 95, 117
Nobel, Margaret, 13, See Sister Piggott, Rachael, 94, 95, 102n67
Nivedita Poon, Angelia, 106, 114, 115, 131n6,
Nordau, Max, 88 135, 143, 153n1
Degeneration, 88 See also National habitus
North, Marianne, 11, 12, 20n34, Pratt, Mary Louise, 10, 20n30,
155n41, 173, 181n53 60, 72n40
See also Contact zone
Prinsep, Val, 143
O Procida, Mary A, 14, 18, 20n39, 75,
Ootacumund, 143 70, 91, 100n4, 129, 134n76
Orientalism, 72n35 Prostitution
Owenson, Sydney in Britain, 17, 97
The Missionary, 144 in India, 17, 97, 140, 151
Purdah, 95, 121
See also Zenana
P
Paget, Georgiana Theodosia
Fitzmoor-Halsey, 48n46, 71n23, R
100n12, 131n4, 154n11, 180n33 Race
Camp and Cantonment: A Journal racial purity, 6, 76, 87
of Life in India in 1857-1859, racial segregation, 4, 6, 15, 68, 86,
With Some Account of the Way 135, 144, 157, 168
Thither, 48n46, 71n23, 77, relations, 135, 138–139, 154n9
100n12, 131n4, 154n11, Raj, the, 6, 8, 12, 18, 19n17, 19n22,
180n33 21, 28, 39, 49n54, 49n55, 69,
Panopticon 75, 76, 82, 84, 94, 99n2, 100n7,
surveillance, 163 105, 107, 126, 127, 131n1, 139,
See also Jeremy Bentham 140, 149, 153, 153n2, 154n4,
Patmore, Coventry, 2 155n27, 158, 159, 175, 176,
The Angel in the House, 2 179n5, 183
Patriarchy, 8, 13, 22, 70, 82, 98, 107, Rakhmabai, Dr., 122
113, 124, 153 Ramabai, Pandita
imperial patriarchy, 13, 22, 70, Stri Dharma Niti, 120, 133n47
124, 155 See also Hunter Commission
202 INDEX
Ramusack, Barbara N., 77, 93, 100n9, Social reform

127, 132n37 British, 16, 97
See also Maternal imperialism Indian, 16, 97
Rangoon, 32, 111 white woman’s burden, 169
Ray, Romita, 41, 49n64 Society for Promoting Christian
Reddi, Muthulakshmi, 97, 99 Knowledge, 116, 132n34
Regulating Act 1773, 138 Spurr, David, 5, 19n14, 164,
Ripon, George Robinson, 1st 180n24
Marquess of, 133n48, 153 The Rhetoric of Empire, 19n14, 164,
Robinson, Jane, 18n6, 19n13, 136, 180n24
153n3 Sreenivas, Mytheli, 97, 103n73
Rose, Gillian, 22, 35, 47n3, 113, Srinivasan, Amrit, 97, 103n73
132n25 Staley, Mildred E., 14, 68, 73n66, 80,
Roy, Raja Rammohun, 12, 89, 100n19
20n35, 117 Handbook for Wives and Mothers in
Ruskin, John, 32, 33, 48n34 India, 73n66, 80,
100n19
Stanley, Henry Morton, 164
S Steel, Flora Annie
Sakesar, 41, 81, 161 Complete Indian Housekeeper and
Satthianadhan, Krupabai, 13, 20n36 Cook, 15, 47n17, 53, 70n1,
Saguna, 13, 20n36 71n9, 101n33
Sen, Keshub Chandra, 119 Garden of Fidelity, 53,
Separate spheres, 7, 8, 18, 26, 32–36, 71n6, 102n57,
81, 93, 135, 148, 153, 184 132n33, 181n40
public and private, 4, 9, 33, 157 The Modern Marriage Market, 99,
Sepoy Rebellion, See First Indian War 103n76
of Independence Swami Vivekananda, 126
Servants, 15, 29–31, 36–37, 51–55,
58–70, 87–89, 93, 108, 110,
112, 139, 148, 165 T
See also Ayah Taj Mahal, 127
Shahpur, 28, 31 Taylor, Philip Meadows, 144
Simla, 38, 44, 46, 143, 146, 157, 158, Tara, 144
161–165, 168, 169, 176–178, Temple Children, see Devadasi
180n18 Temple-Wright, Mrs. R., 54
Sister Nivedita, 13, 20n37, 126, 127, Baker and Cook: A Domestic
134n66 Manual for India, 54
Glimpses of Famine and Flood in Theosophy Society, 125
East Bengal in 1906, 126, Thibaw, King, 50n76
134n66 Tilak, B. G., 124
Social Darwinism, 60 Times of India, 122
INDEX 203
Tosh, Josh, 81, 100n20 Letters from India, 26, 47n11,

Towelle, W. Martin, 180n13 72n29, 100n21, 180n12,
Towelle’s Hand Book and Guide to 181n40
Simla, 180n13 Love and the Fulfilling of the Law:
Extracts From the Writings of
Norman Macleod, 24
V Winterhalter, Franz Xaver, 92
Verandah, 27, 33–35, 64, 69, 108 The Family of Queen Victoria, 92
Victoria, Queen, 77, 92, 93, 102n58, Women’s Indian Association, 97, 126
121, 122, 145, 160 Women travellers, 8, 11, 12, 19n16,
See also Empress of India 19n22, 24, 27, 70, 123, 128,
129, 134n72, 184n63
Woolf, Virginia, 23, 47n4
A Room of One’s Own, 23, 47n4
W
Wagner, Tamara S., 21, 22, 46n2,
47n22, 49n60
Warrant of Precedence, 169, 181n41 Y
Wellesley, Governor-General Yeğenoğlu, Meyda, 59, 72n35
Richard, 39, 42, 138 Yule, Henry, 31, 48n29
White solipsism, 26 Hobson-Jobson: The Anglo-Indian
See also Laura E. Donaldson Dictionary, 31, 48n29
Wilson, Anne C.
After Five Years in India: Or, Life
and Work in a Punjaub Z
District, 23, 72n34 Zenana, 12, 95, 102n67, 103n70,
Hints for the First Years of Residence 106, 116, 131n5
in India, 25, 47n10, 72n39 See also Purdah

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Palgrave Studies in Nineteenth-Century

Writing and Culture

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Palgrave Studies in Nineteenth-Century Writing and Culture

Library of Congress Control Number: 2016958520

© The Editor(s) (if applicable) and The Author(s) 2017

Cover illustration © The Keasbury-Gordon Photograph Archive /Alamy Stock Photo

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This Palgrave Macmillan imprint is published by Springer Nature

1 Introduction: Imperial Women Writers in Victorian India 1

2 There’s No Place Like Home: Homes and Gardens

3 Good Housekeeping: Household Management

4 Family Ties: Imperial Women as Wives and Mothers 75

5 Ladies of Leisure: Pastimes, Daily Routines,

6 Hot Gossip: Sex and Sexuality in Victorian India 135

7 High Society: Hill Stations and Social Occasions 157

Introduction: Imperial Women Writers

© The Author(s) 2017 1

The Cawnpore Memorial contributed to this mystiﬁcation by visually

Anderson’s discussion of the origins and power of nationalism in mod-

Macaulay in his infamous Minute on Indian Education (1835). They had

This threat to colonial authority was acknowledged by Robert Bulwer-

horrors committed by this man are too dreadful to relate’.18 In fact, it

[W]hen it is considered that the appropriate business of men is to direct, and

Indeed, Victorian women travellers are fascinating for their ability to

Women travel writers constructed their texts within a range of power

These power structures manifested themselves in a variety of ways and

[C]olonial space troubles some of the simple binary oppositions of public

The exempliﬁcation of Victorian femininity, alongside the material differ-

encountered. Similarly, Constance Gordon Cumming (1827–1924)

identities that sat in opposition to the gendered roles ascribed to them.

‘natural’ maternal instincts to less fortunate indigenous women. By doing

gender and imperial discourses. Hence, despite the separate spheres

In constructing what it meant to be English, a further claim was con-

4. Patrick Brantlinger, Rule of Darkness: British Literature and Imperialism,

8. Benedict Anderson, Imagined Communities: Reﬂections on the Origin and

28. Bhabha, The Location of Culture, p. 125.

There’s No Place Like Home: Homes

There is no place like home, up to about 85°! Love of home fades

It is a well-known fact that British women who travelled to India as part of

In the context of settler colonialism, traditional gender roles experienced

© The Author(s) 2017 21

Anne C. Wilson arrived in the Indian subcontinent in 1888 not long

home through a narrative of moral responsibility. Domestic writers, such as

[T]he customs of English society have so constituted women the guardians

Ellis purported that domestic failings spoke directly to a woman’s char-

Thus, because domestic spaces seemed to reﬂect the superiority of

By referring to herself as ‘mother’, a conﬁguration which is discussed

Lady Wilson’s description of the camel parade emerged as an evocative

terrains could be made to submit to the civilizing forces of colonial

The deliberate mention of the ﬂowers, books, and musical instruments

There is evidence here of some engagement with the local environment,

to which the replication of Victorian domesticity was an imaginary construct

verandah sat in marked opposition to Victorian architectural trends that

Marryat cast the ever troublesome verandah in the image of a Victorian

Domestic descriptions might, therefore, require a closer look to reveal

Private life was lived as if always in public, as if colonial superiority had to be

Private practices frequently took place in a public environment, and,

bedroom was at one end of the house, with a bath-room, containing

We each have a “jemadar”, or body servant, who attends to us at other

The persistent presence of Indian servants was an unalterable fact of

The dressing operations in this country appear to be conducted in the most

ability to exemplify her attendance to imperial identity, even while in her

Domestic considerations, such as inviting guests for dinner, were no