White Women’s Burden: A Postcolonial Study of Paul Scott’s Memsahib in The Tower of Silence

Abstract

The Raj literature is mostly dominated by male characters with few negative stereotype women characters featuring in them. The Tower of Silence (1971/2005) by Paul Scott is one such novel which breaks the rule as it is women-centric, dominated by women characters of all ages. Unlike the common notion that Scott is critical of the Raj machinery, this paper will investigate the white women's burden a special technique used by Scott to displays the irrevocable British superiority of race, culture and moral obligations. The Tower of Silence (1971/2005) has a vast array of Memsahibs, and this novel connects the story of the previous two novels of the Quartet through these female characters, and it is almost devoid of any native female characters. This paper will study the glorification of the white women’s burden to display the vital role played by these Memsahib's in the propagation of the Empire.