- ISBN13: 9781590173367
- Condition: NEW
- Notes: Brand New from Publisher. No Remainder Mark.
Product Description
Eliza Fay’s origins are obscure; she was not beautiful, rich, or outlandishly accomplished. Yet the letters she wrote from her 1779 voyage across the globe captivated E. M. Forster, who arranged for their British publication in 1925. The letters have been delighting readers ever since with their truth-is-stranger-than-fiction twists and turns, their earthy humor, and their depiction of an indomitable woman.
When the intrepid Mrs. Fay departed from Dover more than two hundred years ago, she embarked on a grueling twelve-month journey through much of Europe, up the Nile, over the deserts of Egypt, and finally across the ocean to India. Along the way her party encountered wars, territorial disputes, brigands, and even imprisonment.
Fay was a contemporary of Jane Austen, but her adventures are worthy of a novel by Daniel Defoe. These letters—unfiltered, forthright, and often hilarious—bring the perils and excitements of an earlier age to life.
Tags: Mrs. Fay, earthy humor, Fay, from, Condition
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The basis for Forester’s “Passage to India,” this late eighteenth century collection of letters shows an India in the ever-tightening grip of colonization and the naively racist mindset behind colonization in general.
The letter’s author, Eliza Fay, is a young, newly wed, upper-middle class Englishwoman making and admittedly harrowing passage to India with her husband. The trip begins with a journey through France, then at war with England, followed by a passage through the Egyptian desert and, upon arrival on the Sub-continent, imprisonment by Hyder Ali, “Muslim ruler of Mysore and military commander who played an important part in the wars in southern India in the mid-18th century” (Hyder Ali. Encyclopædia Britannica. Retrieved May 6, 2004, from Encyclopædia Britannica Premium Service.).
Her letters show clearly the eighteenth century English notion of “bringing culture to the savages.” Eliza wonders in genuine incomprehension at the thieving servants, failing even to acknowledge the fact that she and her fellow countrymen are occupiers and in place to except kindness from their subjects. She is shocked at Ali’s gall to “treat _English_ subjects with such cruelty” (120, emphasis hers). Ironically, describing her maltreatment by an upper-class Englishwoman in India, she provides the perfect summary of her blindness: “Those basking in the lap of prosperity can little appreciate the sufferings or make allowance for the errors of the unfortunate; whom they regard as almost beings of another order” (175).
Yet we can hardly fault Eliza for simply reflecting the middle-class values of her society, and in fact there is much in this young lady to set her apart from her peers. She endures some genuine hardships with a cliché English “stiff upper lip,” and has the strength to deal with a less-than-ideal husband in a manner less than conventional in the eighteenth century.
Overall, it’s not a book I’d recommend for “light,” easy reading. However, if you’ve read Forester’s “Passage to India” or you want a look back at the beginnings of English colonization, then it’s not a bad read.
Rating: 3 / 5
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