Writing the Empire, Wearing the Veil: Gender, Power, and the Politics of Travel writing in Eliza Fay’s India

Abstract

This article examines the late eighteenth century travel letters of Eliza Fay, a British woman in colonial India, to unravel the intersection of gender, empire, and knowledge production. Using postcolonial and feminist theories, this paper interrogates how women played a discursive role in the knowledge production. Positioning Eliza’s travelogue within the “third space” of colonial encounter, the article analyses her simultaneous complicity and challenges in imperial and gender discourse, revealing how women navigated and contributed to the dynamics of Orientalism and knowledge-making in colonial India. This article asserts that travel writing by women is an essential source for reconstructing histories marginalised in official archives, exposing both the prejudices and anxieties that shaped colonial attitudes toward natives and the roles women played in sustaining and questioning imperial projects. Ultimately, this article represents an attempt to situate travel writing as gendered knowledge production within the frameworks of postcolonial feminism and Foucauldian theories of discourse and power.