Burning Women: Widows, Witches, and Early Modern European Travelers in India (Early Modern Cultural Studies 1500–1700)

In early modern Europe, the circulation of visual and verbal transmissions of sati, or Hindu widow burning, not only informed responses to the ritualized violence of Hindu culture, but also intersected in fascinating ways with specifically European forms of ritualized violence and European constructions of gender ideology. European accounts of women being burned in India uncannily commented on the burnings of women as witches and criminal wives in Europe. When Europeans narrated their accounts of sati, perhaps the most striking illustration of Hindu patriarchal violence, they did not specifically connect the act of widow burning to a corresponding European signifier: the gruesome ceremonial burnings of women as witches. In examining early modern representations of sati, the book focuses specifically on those strategies that enabled European travellers to protect their own identity as uniquely civilized amidst spectacular displays of 'Eastern barbarity'. Cover 1 Half-Title 2 Title 4 Copyright 5 Dedication 6 Contents 8 Acknowledgments 10 Series Editor’s Foreword 14 List of Illustrations 17 Introduction 20 1. Overlapping Discourses:Widows,Witches, and Forms of Literary Haunting 54 2. Under Western Eyes: Sati and Witches in European Representations 91 3. Instructions for Christian Women:The Sati and European Widows 126 4. Disorderly Wives, Poison, and the Iconography of Female Murderers 153 5. Civility and “Dying” to Speak: Sati, the Fetish, and History 190 Chronological Chart of Indian Voyages of Early Modern European Travelers (cited in this book) who wrote about Sati 226 Notes 229 Bibliography of Indian Travel Narratives cited in this book 265 Bibliography 269 Index 282 Front Matter....Pages i-xviii Introduction....Pages 1-34 Overlapping Discourses....Pages 35-71 Under Western Eyes....Pages 73-107 Instructions for Christian Women....Pages 109-135 Disorderly Wives, Poison, and the Iconography of Female Murderers....Pages 137-173 Civility and “Dying” to Speak....Pages 175-210 Back Matter....Pages 211-278