The Indian Other: Reactions of Two Anglo-Indian Women Travel Writers, Eliza Fay and A.U.

Abstract

As European imperialism expanded in the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries, the domestic public’s understanding of foreign and seemingly exotic colonies was shaped primarily by published descriptive accounts. Yet while travel purported to provide an accurate description of these distant lands and their peoples, it also reflected the ideas, prejudices, and beliefs of the traveler. As several essays in the present volume suggest, travel writers thus served as interpreters of culture and points of contact between Europeans and the “Other,” and scholars have suggested that the gender of the author can and does shape the way he or she views foreign cultures. Shirley Foster has maintained that the female genre of writing travel narratives is different from that of males. Gender-based connotations have been drawn in several recent works, such as those of Susan Blake, Mary Louise Pratt, Sarah Mills, Susan Morgan, and Inderpal Grewal, among many others, who have analyzed colonial travel narratives primarily written by European women. Pratt’s Imperial Eyes has found that scientific knowledge about flora and fauna of colonized countries is a common theme in the travel literature by women. Mills has claimed that knowledge contained in a travel literature within an imperial context is definitely gendered and that women’s travel narratives should be a part of colonial discourse. Morgan has analyzed the complex relationships between gender, imperialism, and geographical locations. Grewal established a linkage between the culture of travel on social divisions in Britain and India and the impact of imperialism on travel. In her discussion of Mary Hall’s travel, Blake has incorporated an analysis of class differences.