In 1920s British Raj India, independent, hardworking American Gladys was expected to have servants — whether she wanted them or not.
As I write Gladys’s biography of her years in 1920s to 1930s India, I strive to put in context her role at that time as a memsahib. This was a century ago. She and Ken (Americans) had been thrust into the British Raj system, which they didn’t entirely embrace.
Yet they didn’t entirely reject it, either. As master-servant relationships in general (especially between races and economic statuses) make me uncomfortable, here’s my attempt to look at Ken and Gladys’s roles as objectively as I can.
Definitions of memsahib vary. Merriam-Webster defines it as “a white foreign woman of high social status living in India especially: the wife of a British official”. (The word “white” is rather telling about attitudes in the time of the Raj. Ugh.)
The Collins Dictionary has a simpler definition: “title for a woman in a position of authority and/or the wife of a Sahib”. That, I think, more accurately applied to Gladys, being American.
Eventually the term encompassed Indian upper class women as well. In Economic and Political Weekly, Memsahib: Who Are You?, Swastika Hore points out: “A time would come when the upper classes of Indians would be addressed as sahibs and their wives memsahibs by people lower down the social scale–evidently a colonial hangover.”
As I include diary entries in blog posts that include references to Ken and Gladys managing servants, readers incorrectly may assume that where there are servants, there must be masters who feel entitled. Conversely, Ken and Gladys were genuinely hard working people who had not grown up with servants nor expected to have them.
A Forester and a Teacher as Sahib and Memsahib
Ken, at age sixteen (in 1915) graduated from high school and worked in logging camps. He studied forestry in college, then worked as an assistant professor before being hired by the British Indian government in 1923 at 25 years old.
In my post Ken in the Raj, he describes his arrival in India, when he obviously enjoyed getting elevated attention and honor. Yet during his following ten years in India, Ken worked tirelessly, often from sunup to sundown, in Indian logging camps and mills. He never expected more work from others than he did himself. His clothes grew so sweaty he sometimes changed his work clothes three times in a day.
As for Gladys, she’d been a working woman before moving to India: a self-supporting junior high school teacher. She also was her own cook and housekeeper. However, in India as memsahib of Ken (an important government appointee) Gladys was suddenly expected to have servants do all her household chores. She was often annoyed at not being able to simply do them herself and her own way.
Once, when expecting guests, Gladys wanted to sweep cigar ashes off her veranda. However, her butler (main servant) Freddy was horrified at the thought of Gladys doing it herself, so refused to find her a broom. He also refused to do it himself, considering it below his caste and dignity to sweep. He insisted he must instead fetch a “sweeper” from another village.
Gladys realized then that she was enmeshed in a system not only within the British hierarchy but Indian hierarchy as well. She was expected, as wife of an important government official, to employ servants. And the more servants the better, to supply jobs to as many people as possible. And keeping up with caste rules was a challenge!
Busy-bee Gladys
Still, she kept pace with those she hired with her own energetic activity. Even in India she made most of her own clothes. She hired a tailor to assist her in stitching while she designed and whipped out garments for her entire family, including underwear, coats, baby clothes and dresses, even work-wear for Ken. She also worked for a year as a physical education instructor, traveling to various schools in India.
Gladys did naturally embrace having a nanny, especially since she had no family to help her after childbirth. When her daughter Pamela was a toddler, then preschooler, it proved exhausting to protect her from constant jungle dangers. An extra pair of hands was welcome. Gladys was expected to call her “Ayah”, the word for nanny, which was not terribly personal, but did express gratefulness for her help.
Managing staff had its awkward moments. Once a servant walked into Gladys’s bedroom when she was partially undressed, simply to tell her something.
Also special requests had to be considered, as when Freddy wrote Ken the following:
“You are my Father and I look to you for everything. My marriage ceremonies costing 200 rupees. Master, please giving advance pay of 200 rupees, for which I will ever pray for Master’s good luck and happiness.”
He got the Rs. 200 and was married.
Staff management required kindness, tact and boundaries.
Gladys enjoyed having cooks help her. However, managing them at times proved problematic, particularly when they were dishonest in managing her food budget. (She tells a funny story in One Sly Sacked Cook, which I’ll post next week.)
Some caution was also required, as in the Andaman Islands, servants were ex-convicts, living in a penal colony. (See The Andaman Islands Penal Colony: Race, Class,Criminality, and the British Empire, by Clare Anderson, University of Leicester.)
Most of the time Memsahib Gladys felt quite safe. She was a bit taken aback, however, when one of her servants reassured her that he would never hurt her, adding, “I only killed my wife because she was unfaithful.”
