Is there a fiction book about this? If so I would like to read it :)

I really enjoyed this book about British women who went to India in search of a husband. It's full of tales of adventure. From the palaces of maharajahs to the dusty avenues of the hill country, we get a fascinating glimpse into life for British women in India. Some of the descriptions (insects and reptiles) made my skin crawl. The diseases and perils these women faced could be horrific. The author uses letters and diaries, many published here for the first time, to bring her stories to life.

A job well-done and an excellent read. ( )

A nice tribute to the British/human spirit. All the tales of sickness, wild animals and disasters didn't cure my obsession with India.

I found this fascinating, especially because I assumed that this all happened in "A Little Princess/Secret Garden" time period. Well, here's a shocker. Girls were still going on "hunting" trips to India in 1922! What a change. In one way, I like the change. Women have other avenues open to them should marriage not be an option/a personal choice. On the other hand, a large amount of these couples made marriage work- because tradition held with being chaste, faithful, and committed. If only we could have both traditions together!

On a nit-picky note: it could have been better organized. It seemed to jump around and repeat itself sometimes. ( )

A book that is useful and entertaining. Anne de Courcy intersperses chapters on general principles with colourful chapters of personal memories. A competent study of British mating habits. ( )

Subtitle: Husband-hunting in the Raj

"Getting engaged in the Raj was sometimes a bit like speed-dating. Often minds were made up and a lifelong commitment to another human being promised after only a few meetings...."

Maintaining the British Empire was hard. The British men doing the work of the Raj were expected to remain unmarried until they were in their 30's. Since there was a shortage of eligible women in India, the government initiated a program in which it subsidized young women to induce them to travel to India to enjoy a social season in search of a husband. Even after the government stopped subsidizing the program, the young women ("the fishing fleet") continued to arrive each year in droves, all the way through to the independence of India and its partition. This book is a social history of the movement, through time, and it covers all facets of the phenomenon, from the voyage out, to the social whirl, to the engagements and marriages (and the few who returned to Britain unmarried) to the hard and lonely postings with their new husbands deep in the wilderness of the land still so strange and hostile to them.

The women had to put up with the horrible climate, many dangers (exotic tropical diseases, contaminated water, and poisonous snakes, for example), and had to deal with the stringent social protocols to which they were subject. de Courcy depicts their experiences through examining the lives of a few dozen of these women, ranging from the upper-echelons of society (the viceroy's daughter) to its lower-fringes (Anglo-Indian women). She relies on interviews, diaries, letters, and so forth in putting together their stories.

The social protocols were quite rigorous:

"The iron rule of precedence regulated social intercourse, from whom you called on to whom you sat next to at dinner. As the position of every official and military officer was detailed in a graded list known as the 'Warrant of Precedence,' published by the Government of India, it was possible not only to seat people according to seniority but for a new arrival to deduce everyone's place in the pecking order."

Many of these women were courageous and wiling to take risks, although I did not care for the several descriptions of tiger hunts, which seemed to me barbarous, but which seemed to be de riguer for a certain class of Brit in India. The women who married the men of the Raj also had to be prepared to send their children off to England to be educated at a very tender age, and to not see them for years at a time.

Although overall I enjoyed the book, I have some serious complaints about its execution. First, de Courcy organized the book by topic, rather than chronologically or by woman. So, for example, the first section covered the voyage out. The experiences of a number of women on the voyage out were discussed. Since the voyage out in the 19th century (pre-Suez canal) was quite different that voyages in the 1940's, this creates a bit of a mish-mash. (And this observation also applies for each of the other topics covered in the book.)

This method of organization resulted in frequent instances in which a particular woman might appear in one chapter, and then we hear nothing further of her for several further chapters, if she even reappears at all. Since there were so many women whose experiences were covered, I had difficulty keeping track of who was who, what time period they were from, who they married, their social position, and so on.

Another complaint I have about the book is that a great deal of it is repetitious and frivolous. There were long and detailed descriptions of the dresses the women wore to the balls on the ship out, what they wore to the social events they attended once they arrived in India, what they wore to be introduced to the Viceroy, etc. etc.
I got tired of hearing about all the laces, ribbons, silk flowers etc. adorning their frocks. In fact, I very nearly gave up on the book early on, but I am glad I carried on, since the book does cover many interesting and substantive issues. However, much of the repetition and frivolity could have been eliminated, and this would have been a better book.

I am giving this 3 stars because the subject was fascinating (I kept referring in my mind to Paul Scott's Raj Quartet). If I rated it on execution, it would have a lower rating by a fair amount.

3 stars ( )