Administering Domestic Space: Flora Annie Steel's The Complete Indian Housekeeper and Cook

Abstract

The Complete Indian Housekeeper and Cook was probably the most popular and best-known of the many household guides for Anglo- Indian memsahibs published in the late nineteenth century; it was translated into the vernacular and between 1888 and 1917 it went into more than ten editions. It is a domestic ethnography in miniature (Chase and Levenson 80), which drew upon Flora Annie Steel's experiences to provide an insight into the home life of the British in India. Immediately after her marriage on 31 December 1867, Steel (1847-1929) went to India with her husband, Henry William Steel, a member of the Indian Civil Service. She spent the next twenty-two years of her life in Punjab, in remote districts as well as in the larger stations, accompanying her husband wherever he was posted, and rarely spending more than a year in any place. During that time the strong-willed, autocratic memsahib, ignoring the often restrictive conventions of the Raj community, learnt to speak, read, and write Punjabi (including the dialects of the various districts in which she lived), and proceeded to build a career for herself as an educationalist. In 1884, she was appointed Inspectress of Girls' Schools in the Punjab, and between 1885 and 1888 she served on the Provincial Education Board. She also acted as a selftaught doctor to local women and children, designed the town hall in Kasur, and for a time was Vice-President of the “Victoria Female Orphan Asylum” in the Punjab.