Saturday, April 25, 2020

Where Have All the Babes Gone?

Between 2016 and 2018, Historical Babes filled a writing hole in my life. At the time I was between projects. My YA historical novel about Iraqi Jews was collecting virtual dust while I searched for a publisher. Meanwhile, my attempts to write science fiction and fantasy novels were all floundering. I needed a way to keep myself writing on a regular basis in order to get my mojo back. This blog did the trick.
Not only did this blog challenge me to write on a (semi) regular basis, but I also learned about a wide array of topics previously unknown to me. My research helped me develop a critical historical perspective that continues to inspire the lessons I teach in my day job as a high school history teacher. Despite all the good this blog did me, a few things happened that caused my commitment to waver.
First, I was spending so much more time researching than I had originally planned and the time required for each post became more than I was willing to spend. You know, sometimes after teaching history all day, coming home to do historical research is not an appealing proposition.
Second, I learned that Jason Porath, creator of Rejected Princesses, was covering the same territory with a lot more regularity and flare than I could muster.  
Third, and most importantly, I got back into writing my novels! Since I stopped posting for Historical Babes, I have embarked on serious revisions of my historical novel (the one about the Iraqi Jews) and will soon re-start my submission process. I’ve learned a lot about how to write and how to make writing fit into my life. I’ve gotten back on the horse of writing new science fiction and fantasy projects. Historical Babes served a critical role in my writing career – but it is a purpose I no longer need it to serve.
Does this mean I will never write another post again? Not necessarily. But for now, my writing energies are best spent on other projects.
The babes are still out there and are increasingly visible if you know where to look. (Some of my favorite places to learn about them are the aforementioned Rejected Princesses and the podcast Stuff You Missed in History Class.) Someday, perhaps, we will live in a world where we won’t need special forums to celebrate the historical contributions of women and people of color because their stories will be given their due in the heart of the historical narrative. Someday, perhaps, their stories will be as well-known and respected as the stories of the white men who have dominated for the past several centuries. The more we seek out and share these stories, the closer we get to that world.
I hope to see you all there.

Friday, January 26, 2018

Women of the Raj: A Book Review by Me

It has been eons since I posted!
One of the many things that I have learned during the last year and a half of writing this blog is that I can either post consistently or I can make steady work on my fiction projects. I can’t seem to manage both at the same time – even in the summer when I’m not teaching! So, I’ve decided to try and be content with whichever one is working, as long as I spend some time every day, butt in chair, writing something.
Lately, when I come home from a long day of teaching and all I want to do is lie on the couch binge watching old episodes of the Great British Bake Off and dreaming of a massive ice cream sundae, it’s a lot easier to dig up the energy to work on my silly little fantasy novel that requires no research than to churn out a blog post.
In 2017, in addition to writing more, I set a goal for myself to read 25 books – and, by the skin of my teeth, I succeeded, finishing my last book around 1 am on December 31. That last book was Women of the Raj: The Mothers, Wives, and Daughters of the British Empire in India, by Margaret MacMillan. I was drawn to this book not only because it is clearly about babes, but also because Margaret MacMillan is one of my favorite historians. Her writing is lucid and she is able to produce a compelling narrative without (in my opinion) sacrificing the historical value of her work. She also tends to write about topics I find interesting – in addition to Women of the Raj, I have also enjoyed Paris, 1919 and Dangerous Games. Plus, she’s a good idol for any writer: despite the fact that most publishers weren’t initially interested in the topics she chose to write about, she kept on researching and writing about the topics that interested her.
Women of the Raj did not disappoint.
I you ever learned anything about British women in India when you were in school, it might have been this:
In the eighteenth century, when the British East India Company (Notorious BEIC) was just beginning to wrap its tentacles around the Indian subcontinent, most of the British living in India were men. Company jobs, after all, were exclusively for men. The journey from Britain to India was long, difficult, and dangerous. It wasn’t the sort of trip a respectable girl was expected to undertake – and why would they? The company employed some disreputable dudes: they weren’t exactly husband material. As a result of there being few British women around, British men followed the centuries old tradition of all other merchants who traded on the Indian Ocean: they messed around with/married Indian women. The result was a period of cultural hybridity and exchange, the echoes of which can still be heard in Anglophone culture: for example, the word (and practice) shampoo. (Eighteenth century Europeans had notoriously bad hygiene, while purity and cleanliness were important parts of both Hindu and Muslim culture. You can fill in the blanks.)
A portrait of Robert Clive, edited by me

What put an end to this era of hybridity? According to some narratives, it was the women.
Certain versions of the story give one the impression that in the nineteenth century, British women fell from the sky, like dour, stern, uninvited Mary Poppinses; they dragged their men out of the bibighar and into the bungalow, insisting in strict separation of British and Indian, forever poisoning relations between ruler and ruled.



As you no doubt know, the truth is more complicated.
            It is true that over the course of the 19th century, more and more British women began to settle in India, in part because new technology (the steamship, and later, the Suez Canal) made the journey safer and easier. But unlike the impression one might get from narratives like the one in the linked video, these women did not come as an unbidden wave of fun-killing banshees. MacMillan points out in her book that it is unfair to blame women entirely for the deteriorating relations between the British and Indians. After all, these women lived in a patriarchal society, and came to India in such droves because the British company men had become more interested in European wives. Therefore, the arrival of the memsahibs was a symptom of changing British attitudes, not the cause.
             There is a lot NOT to admire about these women. They were, after all, quite racist, believing that Indians were made perpetually infantile by the damagingly hot climate in which they were unfortunate enough to have been born. They were suspicious of Indian men, seeing Hinduism not only as idolatrous, but also overtly and dangerously sexual, compared to chaste, Victorian virtues. (Highly ironic given chastity and monogamy for women actually is an important virtue in Hinduism.) These women lived vapid, gossipy, insular lives, never venturing beyond the confines of their British enclaves.
            Given these tendencies, it is easy to understand why the memsahibs don’t have a great historical reputation. And yet, there are more layers underneath that MacMillan meticulously peels away in her book.
            To start with, what would inspire a young British woman of the nineteenth century to go all the way to India? The trip was no simple jaunt, after all, even after the advent of the steam ship. India offered Britain’s young women the same thing it offered men: opportunity.
            Most of the women who chose to go to India were middle or lower middle class sorts. There weren’t many opportunities for them at Home, and their marriage prospects in Britain – where they were small fish in a big pond – were limited at best. But women who made it to India found themselves in a seller’s market: in an environment where British men far outnumbered British women, their marriage prospects dramatically improved – and that’s a big deal for the economic prospects of a nineteenth century woman. It’s as if going on a harrowing sailing trip suddenly gave you good odds to get into an Ivy League school, instead of middling prospects at a mediocre state university.
            While finding a husband in India might have been easy, being a British wife often wasn’t. Most of these women had no knowledge about sex before their wedding nights, and weren’t expected to enjoy it anyway. They were expected to continue to wear heavy, European gowns in the unforgiving Indian climate and were told – for purposes of reproductive health – to be active, but not too active. They were expected to set up a semblance of a British home in a bungalow infested with snakes, red ants, scorpions – all manner of nasty beasties that were not only completely alien, but destructive and dangerous. The memsahib would have far more servants in her employ than a woman of equal status would have at home in Britain, partly because Indian labor was cheap, and partly because the traditions of the caste system restricted servants to only fulfill very specific roles, while British domestic help could multi-task. Although assisted by an army of servants, the memsahib often didn’t understand their languages or customs and was constantly inundated with cultural messaging that told her that none of her servants were truly capable or trustworthy. (That said, there is evidence that some British families and their servants formed deep, almost familial bonds.)
            Still don’t pity the memsahibs?
            Whenever her husband changed station, the woman would have to pack up the house and move. Since travel was difficult, most furniture and household goods had to be left behind and new ones procured at the next station. The woman would have to go on an extended camping trip, across difficult terrain, often only in the company of strangers, since her husband would not be with her. Once arriving in the new station, she would have to adapt to a new climate, new customs, new servants, and submit herself again to the drudgery of the ritualistic and class-conscious society of women in her new station.
            The number one job of the memsahibs was to have children who would serve the empire. Assuming both mother and child survived the birth, childhood in India – indeed, adulthood too – was overshadowed with the threat of diseases that could kill an otherwise healthy person in a matter of hours. Assuming a woman’s children survived to about the age of 7 or 8, she was then expected to send them away to England for their education, as the climate of India was considered unhealthy for British children. In families where there was enough income for this arrangement, the memsahibs faced a choice: they could either accompany their children to Britain and be separated from their husbands or, stay with their husbands in India and not see their children for years at a time.
            These women had two jobs: wife, and mother. The practice of sending children Home to be educated meant that the women were doomed to fail at one of them.
These women were bored. They were lonely. They carried the weight of their nation’s honor on their shoulders, and felt, at every turn, vulnerable to attack by either the climate or people of India. Some of them led extraordinary lives – like Annette Beveridge, who learned Persian and translated the memoirs of Babur (founder of the Mughal Empire) into English. But many of them led the circumscribed lives that were expected of them, despite the sometimes tragic consequences. I wouldn’t call them unsung heroes – because mostly, they weren’t heroic, and the entire imperial project that brought them to India was deeply flawed. But I do have a grudging sort of respect for them, and empathy for them that I didn’t have before reading MacMillan’s book.
Although MacMillan dives into plenty more issues, I will leave you now with a recommendation to read the book, and some of MacMillan’s own conclusions about the women of the Raj:
If a balance sheet is to be drawn up for the women of the Raj, let it be remembered to their credit that they so often loved their servants and were loved in return…let it be remembered that they lived in a difficult country with bravery and competence…they travelled miles on their own, endured hardships and dangers as a matter of course. And they tried to be ladies in all circumstances, like the woman who amused herself when her husband was on tour by shooting tigers and then returning to camp and sitting down to do exquisite needlepoint; or the woman who, when things became tense before Independence, refused to alter her daily routine – but slipped a revolver into her handbag just in case.
Today they tend to be remembered as dim, comic figures or as vicious harridans who poisoned relations between the Indians and the British. Neither memory does them justice. They were living women with worries, happinesses, and sorrows like anyone else…They had a duty to do and they did it to the best of their abilities. Most of all, they simply got on with living.
                                   
           
Sources:
Women of the Raj: The Mothers, Wives, and Daughters of the British Empire in India, by Margaret MacMillan.
Another wonderful book about the transition of British attitudes and policy in India from the eighteenth to the nineteenth century is William Dalrymple’s White Mughals.
You can check me out on goodreads to find out what else I’ve been reading.