Open Collections

Marshall, Morgan

University of British Columbia

Since the mid-eighteenth century, British families have relied on South Asian women known as ayahs to provide complete childcare for their white children in colonial India. Indian ayahs lived and worked within the British colonial home as nannies, domestic servants, nurses and, occasionally, wet nurses, helping British families thrive in the isolated environment. Despite ayahs’ intimate employment within the British home, little scholarship has investigated the intricacies of their employment and impact on the colonial home. This master’s research aims to fill this knowledge gap, arguing that the employment of ayahs fundamentally disrupted the empire’s hegemonic power by crossing racial, gendered, and hierarchical barriers to create mother-like relationships with upper-middle-class British children. Ayahs’ disruption of racial superiority and the reproduction of colonial power within British India did not go unrecognized. The possible ‘cultural contamination’ of British children spurred imperial fears amongst the British and attempts to regulate ayahs’ impact were established. It begs the question of how ayahs’ subordination in the household was a product of colonialism and how it disrupted British imperial power. This thesis uses an intersectional feminist framework and an analysis of visual culture to deconstruct the inner workings of the colonial home, revealing a more significant role of Indian women in this period in history.

Text

2022-12-12

Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivatives 4.0 International

http://hdl.handle.net/2429/83397

Interdisciplinary Studies

University of British Columbia

UBCO

http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-nd/4.0/