Imperial Women Writers in Victorian India

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This book is about Victorian women’s representations of colonial life in India. These accounts contributed to imperial rule by exemplifying an idealized middle-class femininity and attesting to the Anglicisation of the subcontinent. Writers described familiarly feminine modes of experience, focusing on the domestic environment, household management, the family, hobbies and pastimes, romance and courtship and their busy social lives. However, this book reveals the extent to which their lives in India bore little resemblance to their lives in Britain and suggests that the acclaimed transportation of the home culture was largely an ideological construct iterated by women writers in the service of the Raj. In this way, they subverted the constraints of Victorian gender discourses and were part of a growing proto-feminism.
This book is about Victorian women’s representations of colonial life in India. These accounts contributed to imperial rule by exemplifying an idealized middle-class femininity and attesting to the Anglicisation of the subcontinent. Writers described familiarly feminine modes of experience, focusing on the domestic environment, household management, the family, hobbies and pastimes, romance and courtship and their busy social lives. However, this book reveals the extent to which their lives in India bore little resemblance to their lives in Britain and suggests that the acclaimed transportation of the home culture was largely an ideological construct iterated by women writers in the service of the Raj. In this way, they subverted the constraints of Victorian gender discourses and were part of a growing proto-feminism.

Draws from a wealth of sources such as letters, memoirs, contemporary and primers Re-energizes the recuperation of women's travel writing Draws upon feminist and post-colonial criticism to suggest that the overlooked narratives examined here have much to offer our understanding of how women contributed to colonial discourse and imperial identity

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Éadaoin Agnew

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“As a work of literary analysis and a study of cultural history, Agnew’s monograph contributes significantly in content and approach to the field of Victorian, postcolonial, and gender studies. Drawing on a substantial body of lesser-known primary works by imperial women writers, and a flourishing subset of secondary scholarship on Empire and women, Agnew produces a volume that is not only critically valuable but also an enjoyable read.” (Shuhita Bhattachargee, English Literature in Transition 1880-1920, Vol. 62 (3), 2019)

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