Introduction Part I: The white woman and the 'civilising mission'; 1. The missionary 'gaze' and the 'civilising mission': zenana encounters in nineteenth-century Bengal; 2. Flora Annie, social reform and female education in late nineteenth-century Punjab; 3. Returning the 'gaze': colonial encounters in Indian women's English writings in late nineteenth-century western India Part II: Colonial domesticity, white women's health and gender disadvantage; 4. The ambivalences of power inside the colonial home: memsahibs, ayahs and wet nurses; 5. Marginalising the memsahib: the white woman's health issues in colonial medical writings; 6. The colonial 'female malady': European women's mental health and addiction in the late nineteenth century; Conclusion; Select bibliography; Index