Entry into the Zenanas: Narratives of Missionary Encounters

The image of the zenana always produced curiosity in the minds of the western travelers and missionaries alike. It constructed a sense of fascination for the former and a reforming zeal for the latter. The justification of the women’s presence in the missionary field started with the zenana visitation and in the process different modes of perception of the Indian women emerged. Not only this, such encounters were even used as an opportunity to confirm one’s own ideology. Going by the amount of literature written on the zenana visits, one can assume that this led to an important part of the missionary and Indian experience. Much has been written on the institution of purdah that have generalised its very ideology. The closest in this context comes from Eunice De’ Souza’s “Purdah, An Anthology”, has a collection of primary accounts of travellers and missionaries’ on the zenanas. Such narratives provide an essential background on the formation of the stereotypical lines of a westernized approach scripted of the zenanas. Missionaries tend to make visits in the households in the name of reform to women who were living in a general degraded position responsible for the decay of the indigenous society. The paper focuses on the women travelers along with the missionary intervention, as both liberally conceptualized the zenanas in their discourses. The zenanas became the “contact zones” for both.