Gendered Transactions: The White Woman in Colonial India, c. 1820–1930: 145 (Studies in Imperialism) - Hardcover

Sen, Indrani

Hardcover

ISBN 10: 071908962X ISBN 13: 9780719089626

Publisher: Manchester University Press, 2017

Synopsis

This book seeks to capture the complex experience of the white woman in colonial India through an exploration of gendered interactions over the nineteenth and early twentieth centuries. It examines representations of gender interactions in missionary and memsahibs' colonial writings, both literary and non-literary, probing their construction of Indian women of different classes and regions, such as zenana women, peasants, ayahs and wet-nurses. 

Also examined are delineations of European female health issues in male-authored colonial medical handbooks, which serve to underline the gender prejudices undergirding this discourse. Giving voice to the Indian woman, this book also scrutinises the fiction of the first generation of western-educated Indian women who wrote in English, exploring their construction of white women and their negotiations with colonial modernities.

This volume is unique in its wide range of themes: 'native' female education, missionary zenana visitation, the female 'gaze' (both colonising and colonised), the colonial home, as well as constructions of white women's reproductive and mental health in colonial medical discourse. Additionally, one of its major strengths is the fascinating diversity of its sources; letters, memoirs, fiction, housekeeping manuals, and forgotten texts from the colonial archives, such as missionary novels, medical manuals, and the largely forgotten 'Indian' short stories of Flora Annie Steel, with their preoccupation with gender issues. 

Gendered transactions will be of interest to the general reader as well as to experts and students of gender studies, colonial history, literary and cultural studies, and the social history of health and medicine.

About this title

About the Author

Indrani Sen is Associate Professor in the Department of English at Sri Venkateswara College, Delhi University -- .

From the Back Cover

This book seeks to capture the complex experience of the white woman in colonial India through an exploration of gendered interactions over the nineteenth and early twentieth centuries. It examines representations of gender interactions in missionary and memsahibs' colonial writings, both literary and non-literary, probing their construction of Indian women of different classes and regions, such as zenana women, peasants, ayahs and wet-nurses.

Also examined are delineations of European female health issues in male-authored colonial medical handbooks, which serve to underline the gender prejudices undergirding this discourse. Giving voice to the Indian woman, this book also scrutinises the fiction of the first generation of western-educated Indian women who wrote in English, exploring their construction of white women and their negotiations with colonial modernities.

This volume is unique in its wide range of themes: 'native' female education, missionary zenana visitation, the female 'gaze' (both colonising and colonised), the colonial home, as well as constructions of white women's reproductive and mental health in colonial medical discourse. Additionally, one of its major strengths is the fascinating diversity of its sources; letters, memoirs, fiction, housekeeping manuals, and forgotten texts from the colonial archives, such as missionary novels, medical manuals, and the largely forgotten 'Indian' short stories of Flora Annie Steel, with their preoccupation with gender issues.

Gendered transactions will be of interest to the general reader as well as to experts and students of gender studies, colonial history, literary and cultural studies, and the social history of health and medicine.

Edition details

• Publisher: Manchester University Press
• Publication date: 2017
• Language: English
• ISBN 10: 071908962X
• ISBN 13: 9780719089626
• Binding: Hardcover
• Number of pages: 240