Eliza Fay book

Building the Raj: The Role of Anglo-Indian Women in British India

In her book Imperial Leather, Anne McClintock speaks of how the female body is seen as a metaphor for the known world. Voyaging and discovery were regarded as male pursuits while the lands discovered were akin to maidens, untouched and up for grabs (22). India too was envisioned as a land of endless imperial possibility, with no strength with which to resist foreign advances. However, if imperial activity was masculinised in this way, it raises the question of what role British women could play in the building and support of the empire.

Traditionally, in Britain, women were given the task of breeding ‘empire builders’ (McClintock 47). While their sex was seen as an impediment to them personally contributing to the imperial endeavours, the cult of exalted maternity allowed them to support the empire vicariously, through sons. Several British women were even paid in the early 18th and 19th centuries to come to India as what was known as ‘the Fishing Fleet’, to find husbands. This had a dual purpose; it ensured these women a status of relative power in the Empire as officers’ wives and enabled the growth of pure British stock (Paxton n.p.). However, European women who remained living in India or travelled in India contributed to the support of the empire in several other ways as well. Some of these were overt, in the case of missionary effort carried out by the wives of British officers and clerics in India. But most imperial power was wielded by British women at a more elusive level. These include their attitude towards India as a geographical and cultural space as well as towards its population, both male and female. The domestic sphere played a large role in the maintenance of power relations between the memsahib and her hirelings. Lastly, even missionary work was not carried out with solely the goal of evangelization but also that of civilization. This paper will explore these various aspects through two works by Anglo Indian women, that is, British women living in India during the British Raj. The first is Eliza Faye’s collection of Original Letters from India and The Englishwoman in India authored anonymously by ‘a lady resident’ published in 1864.

Eliza Faye, a British woman travelling to India with her husband in the late 18th century published a book of her correspondence to her family back in England during her travels entitled Original Letters from India. While her commitment to empire-building is not immediately evident it can be deduced from her letters. For instance, in one letter she uses the word “empire” capitalized even though the sentence in no way relates to the British imperial endeavours. Indeed, the word was only used metaphorically (105). From this example, we realize the all-pervading sense of duty to the cause of empire-building that even women travelling in the British Raj felt.

Faye’s records of her travels show that she appreciated the urban landscape in Madras, comparing it to the marble facades of Italy, an indication of a desire for adventure in the colonies but well within the zone of comfort (Faye 161). Several British women, who travelled and then settled in India, were confused about indigenous cultures and religions. India seemed teeming, unlike the perceived stability and relative homogeneity of England (Chaudhuri 551). This bewilderment led to the exoticization of certain aspects of Indian culture that were unfamiliar. Travelling Englishwoman often wrote accounts of their travels that when read in the home country created a picture of an extravagant, chaotic land that seems to require the mediating effect of British colonization. In The Englishwoman in India the author stresses on the ‘extreme lightness and delicacy of touch’ of the Indian woman, both infantilizing and exoticizing them for the western audience (53). Since Eliza Faye stayed in the homes of local Indians she was able to observe their habits up close and so give a more rounded opinion about their reality. For other Anglo-Indian women however, their interaction with the indigenous population was limited to what was possible from within their homes and regulated social circles.

Western colonial thought, during the 19th century, garnered strength from the theories of social Darwinism. The imperial race was seen as the rational, intellectual, civilized male of the species. Conversely, the colonized races were looked upon as closer to apes than humans. As McClintock elaborates, the natives were regarded as the ‘quintessential zone of sexual aberration’ (22). Two attributes were thus attributed to the native race—that of being female, as well as animalistic and therefore more sexually active. These two would seem to be at odds within a patriarchal colonial perspective but they were the window through which European women viewed the Indian people.

In her poem “The Round Tower at Jhansi”, Christina Rossetti, a well-known poet of the Victorian period, writes a sorrowful tribute to the Englishmen and women who died at the hands of the ‘wretches’—a reference to the Indian revolutionaries. Set during the revolt of 1857, the British man and woman in the poem are seen as passionately in love, thus full of human emotion while the indigenous are portrayed as if as dogs baying at the foot of the tower. In Faye’s account too, she describes Hyder Ali’s men who attack her ship as ‘barbarians’ with ‘terrific countenances’ shouting ‘ao ao’ as if as an unintelligible war call (Faye 118). Thus, the image of the Indian man as an object of fear, prone to being irrational and acting on instinct was propagated by female British writers and travellers.

With regard to the Indian woman, they were seen as the racially inferior, but there existed a ‘simultaneous uneasy identification at the level of gender’ (Menon 101). British women treated Indian woman with an amount of suspicion as their supposed sexual attractiveness as described by male European travellers posed a threat to imperial femininity. Thus, female travel writers often made slighting comments about Indian women and their habits. While Faye describes pleasing interactions with the Indian women that she encounters, she comments that their dress and jewellery was rather too elaborate (Menon 101). She also states explicitly that they spent elaborate amounts of time adorning themselves to please their husbands. Interestingly, Faye does however make some unconscious remarks on the workings of patriarchy with regard especially to how Indian widows were made to commit sati (203). But not to be outdone by her supposedly more primitive sisters in wifely duties, she says that women in England would do the same for their husbands if required to. Here again are indications of the relative threat that Indian woman and their sexuality were perceived to be by the female British traveler.

Anne McClintock in her book illustrates how imperialism through domesticity and its trappings was an important part of European empire building. She sees it as a ‘civilizing mission’, though not akin to the civilization that missionary activity hoped to bring. Rather, this domestication was an attempt to tame the indigenous and to civilize the colonized according to the western standard (Mclintock 35). We can witness this attempt to ensure a British way of life in the book The Englishwoman in India. The author gives detailed descriptions of how to procure merlot and trimmings for toilet covers in India. She gives her female readers lists of what linen to carry in case of travel to India, as well as what dress is suitable to the climate, down to the last Manchester cotton petticoat. The British woman thus maintained her house and person to reflect the fashions in Britain and to ensure that the colonizer was an example to the colonized even in the domestic sphere.

McClintock also refers to conquistadors and pioneering explorers who were seen as transitional figures on the margins of two societies and hence given to dangerous activities. They were allowed the liberty to rape and pillage the land they discovered (McClintock 24). The conquered land as mentioned before was feminized to remove any fear of retaliation by the colonized from the minds of the invaders. The question may be asked as to whether British women too adopted a certain license to exploit the colonized from their male counterparts in the process of strengthening the Empire.

This is especially evident in the attitude of servility with which British women expected to be treated by the indigenous population. For instance, E. Faye talks of how she prefers to travel by palanquin (167). She makes no mention of those who carry her around but merely assumes they have no purpose other than to serve her, the colonizer. She describes her servants as self-abasing minions and warns her Anglo-Indian sisters against their thieving ways (164).

In the book The Englishwoman in India the author criticizes the Indian ‘dhirzee’ for being unable to darn a stocking and make bonnets (47). This exhibits a lack of concern for the fact that these specialized tasks are alien to the cultural context of the Indian tailor. The colonial mistress demands service without concession. She too gives warnings about thieving servants who pilfer from the stock of groceries. Charities like providing the carriage driver with clothes and making sure the children’s ayah is well fed are only to ensure that they feel indebted and thus serve their employer better (57). Neither of these women makes any mention of bonuses or benefits given to their servants except a marginal sum at Christmas time. There is a note about the servants presenting the master with poultry and vegetables during times of celebration though.

An interesting point to be noted is that British women were used to seeing men only in high visibility domestic jobs, for instance as butlers or footmen. In Britain, domestic service was a job avenue only for women from the lower economic strata. Thus they saw Indian men as feminized as they did what in Britain were considered women’s jobs in the home, and more so took orders from a woman (Chaudhuri 553). British women were quick to punish errant servants sometimes even with flogging and starvation for petty misdeeds. Eliza Faye accounts how she fired her khansaman on account of pilfering groceries and only took him back after in her words, ‘he had salaamed to my foot, that is placed his right hand under my foot…’ (180).Colonial mistresses thus demanded extreme supplication and self-abasement from their servants.

The male colonizer categorized the female land as anachronistic and requiring male intervention in terms of knowledge (McClintock 30). Anglo Indian women collaborated in this endeavour, especially in the case of the missionary work that several women took up. British women in formal missionary roles are well known but the evangelical mission was carried out in more subtle ways as well. Eliza Faye for instance describes the ‘Jaggernaut’ yatra as an esoteric, heathen spectacle for her readers (171). She also makes it a point to say that only those who had accepted the Christian faith deserved to be treated as brothers by her reasoning. Similar disregard for Indian systems of knowledge are seen in the attitude of Anglo Indian writers. One interesting aspect where both faith and empire are especially prominent is in the case of hiring Catholic servants. The British were averse to this as Catholic converts often came from places in India governed by other European powers like the Portuguese. Also, they were keen to spread the Anglican faith as it was essentially British. There was however a fear that once Indians were converted they would have to be treated as brothers (Chaudhuri 557). British women avoided this by never allowing Indian converts or those belonging to the ‘master’s caste’ to work in their houses as is seen in the prescriptions for hiring servants in The Englishwoman in India (55).

This paper has attempted to reveal that Anglo-Indian women were limited by gender norms to their houses or as travelling companions to their husbands in India. However, through their writings and social life they were able to support and forward British imperialism.

Works Cited

Chaudhuri, Nupur. "Memsahibs and their Servants in Nineteenth-century India." Women's History Review (1993): 550-562.

Faye, Eliza. Original Letters From India. New York: The New York Review of Books, 2010.

McClintock, Anne. Imperial Leather: Race,Sexuality and Gender in the Colonial Contest. New York: Routledge, 1995.

Menon, Sindhu. "Constitutive contradictions: Travel Writing & Construction of Native Women in Colonial India." Ed.Mohanty, Sachidananda. Travel Writing and the Empire. New Delhi: Katha, 2003. 100-111.

Paxman, Jeremy. "Jeremy Paxman on the British Empire:Where Men Went to Run Wild." The Telegraph 1 October 2011. Web.28 Dec 2015.

Resident, A Lady. The Englishwoman in India. London: Smith, Elder and Co., 1864.