ABSTRACT
This chapter explores how like Phebe Gibbes, Lady Morgan narrates a cultural encounter with India without travelling to the land through the framework of an interracial love. The tragic tale of love between a Westerner and an Indian woman not only explicates the British colonialism deploying the usual trope of the West as masculine and the East as feminine but also foregrounds how the native woman can become a site of resistance to colonial discourse. The Irish identity of Morgan made her acutely aware of the political hegemony of British imperialism. Morgan underlines that the programme of the systematic destruction of the native culture and the relentless onslaught of the colonial culture will result in revolt and tragic consequences. What makes her markedly different from Gibbes and Hamilton is the way she represents native woman. While in Gibbes native women appear as notch-girl and rape-victim, Hamilton speaks of the native women in order to understand the position of the British women. Morgan provides us with a full-fledged portrayal of an Indian woman who never seems to be a part of the Orientalist construction of the libidinous Other and represents sati as a cultural practice of colonial resistance. The Indian woman appears as a subversive figure who can disrupt the certainties of the colonisers’ social and cultural identity.
