Ladies who lunched… and little else
There were many reasons why women were bored, especially in India. As Flora Annie Steel wrote in her autobiography, The Garden of Fidelity (1929), “The majority of European women in India have nothing to do… few companions of [their] own sex… and above all, in many cases, an empty nursery.”
The sheer number of servants that Anglo-Indian households employed meant that British women in India had few domestic duties. Whereas the wife of an assistant under-secretary in Whitehall might have enjoyed the services of four servants, in India she would have employed about 40.
Women could enjoy familiar rituals such as morning calls and garden parties, but the small size of the European community meant that social life in India was limited, with few opportunities to meet new people. Because Anglo-Indian society was so insular, the same women met day after day to eat the same meals and exchange the same banal pleasantries.
British women generally learned little about India while they were there, and rarely spoke an Indian language apart from a few words of ‘kitchen Hindustani’. Reading was a possibility, but books and magazines were in short supply. By the late 19th century women were enjoying tennis and archery, but in hot weather even these activities came to a standstill.
The same women met day after day to eat the same meals and exchange the same banal pleasantries