The Memsahibs

Thousands of British women lived in India during Victorian times. They first went out as wives, mothers, sisters; others followed as teachers, doctors, missionaries. What they did and how they responded to their strange environment were seldom thought worthy of record, and writers have handed down to us a fictional image of the typical 'memsahib' as a frivolous, snobbish and selfish creature flitting from bridge to tennis parties 'in the hills'. For the most part, these clichés bear little resemblance to the truth; many women loyally and stoically accepted their share of the responsibility with endurance, courage and resilience. This story is developed around a number of women who wrote in an entertaining and intelligent fashion about their Indian experiences, starting with the arrival on the scene of one of the wittiest and cleverest of them all - Emily Eden, sister of Lord Auckland who was Governor-General from 1836 to 1842. It ends with Maud Diver, who maintained that the random assertion made by Kipling about the 'lower tone of social morality' in India was unjust and untrue. The dramatis personae of the book include Vicereines, wives of Civil Servants and missionaries struggling to break down the subservience of women throughout the vast sub-continent. Through women's eyes we witness the principal historic events at the time - the Afghan conflicts, the Mutiny - as well as the daily routines in very different cantonments and some of the British personalities who made their mark on nineteenth-century India - Honoria Lawrence, Flora Steel, Lady Sale. In this vivid account, Pat Barr evokes the sights and smells of Victorian India, its teeming masses, its problems so impossible, it seemed, for Englishwomen to solve.

For young Englishwomen stepping off the steamer, the sights and sounds of humid colonial India were like nothing they’d ever experienced. For many, this was the ultimate destination to find a perfect civil servant husband. For still more, however, India offered a chance to fling off the shackles of Victorian social mores. The word ‘memsahib’ conjures up visions of silly aristocrats, well-staffed bungalows and languorous days at the club. Yet these women had sought out the uncertainties of life in Britain’s largest, busiest colony. Memsahibs introduces readers to the likes of Flora Annie Steel, Fanny Parks and Emily Eden, accompanying their husbands on expeditions, travelling solo across dangerous terrain, engaging with political questions, and recording their experiences. Yet the Raj was not all adventure. There was disease, and great risk to young women travelling alone; for colonial wives in far-flung outposts, there was little access to ‘society’. Cut off from modernity and the Western world, many women suffered terrible trauma and depression. From the hill-stations to the capital, this is a sweeping, vividly written anthology of colonial women’s lives across British India. Their honesty and bravery, in their actions and their writings, shine fresh light on this historical world.

The Compassionate Memsahibs refutes the traditional view--perpetuated in the works of writers like Rudyard Kipling--of the memsahibs as a homogeneous group of aloof, pampered women who had little interest in India. Here Mary Ann Lind presents information about the lives of fifteen memsahibs--all of which is previously unpublished--who voluntarily participated in reform and welfare activities in India during the first half of this century. Their activities and experiences placed them outside the more expected lifestyle of the memsahib and offer contemporary social historians a new window through which to view the Raj.

Evoking the lost world of the memsahibs and their households, this book consists of a collection of the popular Anglo-Indian recipes they devised during the 19th and early-20th centuries, updated for cooking today. They are accompanied by the writings of the Bombay-born Edward Hamilton Aitken.

"Tracks the interplay of creativity, competition, desire, and nostalgia in the discrete ways people relate to food and cuisine in different societies"--

Over the last couple of decades there has been a strong academic interest in how individuals interact with each other while en route. Yet, even if various studies have informed us about present-day realities of travel companionships, we know little about the influence of gender both on these realities, as well as on the discourse in which these are being narrated. This book aims to establish an agenda for the study of companionship in travel writing by offering a collection of new essays which study texts that belong to the broad category of pre-modern and modern travel literature. Chapters explore the differences and similarities in the ways that women and men in the past chose to describe their experiences with, and/or their ideas about companionship, and specifically reveals the influence of gender norms, conventions, restrictions, and stereotypes. This is the first book which looks at the long-term, interdisciplinary, and genuinely international history of gendered discourses on companionship in travel writing. It will be of interest to scholars and students from a wide variety of disciplines, including cultural and social history, as well as cultural, literary, gender, travel, and tourism studies.