Abstract
In this paper, I look at travel diaries and letters of two British women, Eliza Fay and Mary Martha Sherwood, who migrated, albeit temporarily, to India along with their husbands during the East India Company’s regime. While Fay embarked on her first voyage to India in 1779, Sherwood sailed in 1805. Sherwood returned to England after a decade, but Fay died in Calcutta in 1816 on her fourth trip. Both Fay and Sherwood wrote letters and diaries recording stories of their passage to and life in India to share mainly with their families and friends in England, but these private papers were published later for a wider audience. Focusing on the oceanic journey chronicled in their writings, I explore impediments the two women faced en route to the new world as well as their discernments about the new land, its people, religions, and culture. My goal is to examine how unstable journeys and volatile cultural encounters of the two women impacted their lives and those of the locals they came into contact with, and how the roles they played, if any, in supporting their husbands’ imperial mission that helped change the course of history. Primary Texts: Fay, Eliza. Original Letters from India. New York: New York Review Books, 2010. Sherwood, Mary Martha. The Life and Times of Mrs. Sherwood (1775–1851): From the Diaries of Captain and Mrs. Sherwood. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2011.
Presenters
Aparna ZambareProfessor, English Bibliographer, Library Research and Instruction, Central Michigan University, Michigan, United States
Details
Presentation Type
Paper Presentation in a Themed Session
Theme
KEYWORDS
Travel narrative, Women, East India Company
