| Summary: | This thesis examines the subject positions assumed in the visual and textual representations of India by four nineteenth-century British women: Fanny Parks (17941875), Marianne North (1830-1890), Lady Hariot Dufferin (1843-1936), and Amy Carmichael (1867-1951). Through a post-structuralist, postcolonial and feminist approach, it seeks to examine the double bind of coloniser/colonised that is experienced by white women in empire. The Introduction briefly outlines the history of theoretical approaches to women's travel writing in India and elucidates women's exclusion from the narratives of both travel and imperialism. It draws heavily on the work of Mills and Ghose to set up, what is referred to as, a counter-recuperative study. Chapter One discusses Fanny Parks's publication Wanderings of a Pilgrim in Search of the Picturesque, During Four and Twenty Years in the East; With Revelations of Life in the Zenana. Taking the pilgrim as the dominant subjectivity inscribed by Parks, this chapter uses Leask's analysis of the picturesque, Richard's discussion of imperial archives, and Mulvey's idea of the gaze to examine how Parks negotiates the conflicting aspects of her persona. • Chapter Two looks at Marianne North's paintings, her publication Recollections of a Happy Life, her private letters and unpublished manuscript. It focuses on North's displacement of her desires of sovereignty, sexuality and scientific imperialism onto the colonial landscape, using the work of Mary Louise Pratt, Michel Foucault and Nancy Paxton to create a theoretical context for the use of topography as an imaginative repository. Chapter Three considers Lady Dufferin's unpublished correspondence to her mother, her private collection of photographs and her publication Our Viceregal Life. Through these representations, the Vicereine constructs an authoritative feminine identity that subverts and supports conventional narratives of Victorian women. This is examined through the work of Elizabeth Langland and Nupur Chaudhuri. Chapter Four looks at Amy Carmichael's numerous missionary publications, her private letters and a collection of photographs. Predominantly drawing on Barbara Ramusack's and Antoinette Burton's analyses, this chapter argues that Carmichael assumes a motherly persona in a move that is both imperialist and feminist. Supplied by The British Library - 'The world's knowledge'
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