Narrating Cultural Encounter: Representations of India by Select Enlightenment Women Writers

This book interrogates and historicises eighteenth-century British women writers’ responses to India through the novel and travel writing to bring out the polyvalent space arising out of their complex negotiation with the colonial discourse.

Though British women enjoyed their privileged racial status as the utilisers of colonial riches, they articulated their voice of dissent when they faced the politics of subordination in their own society and identified them with the marginalised status of the colonised Indians. This brings out the complicity and critique of the colonial discourse of British women writers and foregrounds their ambivalent responses to the colonial project.

This book provides detailed textual analysis of the works of Phebe Gibbes, Elizabeth Hamilton, Lady Morgan, Jemima Kindersley and Eliza Fay through critical insights from the idea of the Enlightenment, postcolonial theory and feminist thought. It also foregrounds new perspectives to colonial discourse vis-à-vis the representation of India by locating the dialogic strain within the British narratives about India.

Arnab Chatterjee works as an Assistant Professor of English at Harishchandrapur College, Malda. Having completed graduate and post-graduate degrees at Visva-Bharati University, Santiniketan, he joined Sabang Sajanikanta Mahavidyalaya, Paschim Medinipur, as a substitute teacher for a term of two years under the UGC Faculty Development Programme. He was awarded a Ph.D by Visva-Bharati University in 2019 for his doctoral dissertation titled ＂Representation of India in Select British Women Novelists and Travel Writers of the Long Eighteenth Century＂. Chatterjee’s areas of interest include literatures of the Enlightenment, travel writing, theatre studies and history of ideas.