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Introduction

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  24 March 2026

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Summary

This book explores colonial gendered interactions, with a special focus on the white woman in colonial India. It examines a wide range of both literary and non-literary colonial narratives which offer a rich site for studying constructions of inter-racial interactions as well as gender representations against a grid of colonial transactions. The book also examines missionary writings, their delineation of zenana education visitations, their construction of the oppressed purdah woman, as well as their projection of the zenana as a site of disease, ignorance and idleness. It focuses on narratives which underline the disadvantaged position of the white woman in India. The book seeks to unravel the gender politics that undergirded colonial medical handbooks which were authored mostly by male colonial physicians. This book focuses on yet another aspect of female health in the colony, namely mental health.

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