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- Title
Women in Purdah: Representation of Indian Women in Women's Travel Writing in Colonial India.
- Authors
Begum, Nurjahan
- Abstract
Representation of Indian women is one of the most significant aspects of nineteenth century travel writing. The purdah (seclusion) aroused great curiosities among colonizers and was often the subject of numerous fantasies and speculations. Almost all the women travel writers in their narratives have extensively discussed the secluded life of Indian women. As women had privileged access to Indian households, their values were of paramount significance in forming popular opinion about women in India. In fact, stories of the harems are the most desired information in most travel writing of the nineteenth century. This paper is an attempt to look at the projection of life of Indian women in the harem by women travel writers in Colonial India, that is, to study the trajectories of everyday life that both these writers highlights in their travelogues. The texts chosen for analysis are -- Anne Elwood's Narratives of a Journey Overland (1830), Fanny Parks' Wanderings of a Pilgrim in search of the Picturesque (1850), and Mary Billington's Woman in India (1895).
- Subjects
WOMEN in literature; INDIANS (Asians) in literature; TRAVEL literature; NARRATIVES of a Journey Overland (Book); WANDERINGS of a Pilgrim in Search of the Picturesque (Book); ELWOOD, Anne; PARKS, Fanny
- Publication
Labyrinth: An International Refereed Journal of Postmodern Studies, 2015, Vol 6, Issue 4, p91
- ISSN
0976-0814
- Publication type
Literary Criticism