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Authors
Advisor(s)
Abstract(s)
Eliza Fay’s Original Letters from India (1817), initially sold to the Calcutta
Gazette to pay off her debts, aroused the curiosity and interest of Edward M. Forster,
while he was doing research for his best-selling novel, A Passage to India. In his own
words, “Eliza Fay is a work of art.” (apud Fay 7) The value of E. Fay’s travelogue, comprising
not one, but three voyages to India (in 1779, 1784, 1796) can be easily explained
if we take into account the scope of its geographical coverage, the hardships of its
historical context (the political chaos brought about by the fall of the Mughal empire
and the consolidation of the British rule in the Indian subcontinent) and the heroism of
the first person-narrator that emerges behind the descriptive sketches and the scenes
of adversity and imminent danger. Thus the current analysis will focus on the E. Fay’s
adventurous mode of narrating, e.g., the discursive situatedness of the traveller visà-
vis the Other(s) (European and non-European peoples and loci) and the constraints
imposed by the patriarchal idealization of the domestic Woman and their alleged
feebleness.
Description
Keywords
Adventure narrative Empire Orient Orientalism Female travelling
Citation
Simões-Ferreira, Isabel – “Travelling to India: Eliza Fay’s Narrative Account of her Voyages”. Op.Cit.: Revista de estudos Anglo-americanos/A Journal of Anglo-American Studies. APEAA-Associação Portuguesa de Estudos Anglo-Americanos. ISSN 2182-9446. II série. Nº3 (2014), pp. 1-17