I love to read histories and memoirs about life in British India so as soon I as heard that The Fishing Fleet by Anne de Courcy was coming out, I rushed to place a library hold. And as soon as it arrived at my library branch, I picked it up and read it. I thought a book about the women who went husband-hunting in the Raj by de Courcy, whose previous books I had enjoyed so much, would be a delightful one to spend an afternoon with. And in many ways it was. It just wasn’t quite as good as I had hoped it would be.
De Courcy looks at the women who went to India looking for husbands during the time of the British Raj, from the mid-19th Century to 1947. She does an excellent job of explaining why they were needed and what motivated them to come but fails to provide any real detail on how the women experienced and (hopefully) adjusted to life there. The book is a composite of intriguing accounts culled from the letters, diaries, and memoirs of the women of the Fishing Fleet but there is very little attempt to tie the different accounts together. Individually they were fascinating. Combined they were a bit of a mess, albeit a well-written and, with a number of photographs included, well-illustrated one.
De Courcy’s explanations of the norms of Anglo-Indian society were useful, though (like most topics in this book) much more ably covered in Margaret MacMillan’s superlative Women of the Raj. She points out that most British men in India were there in service to some master or another – government or military – and were not generally allowed to marry until they were around thirty, by which point they were in a hurry to find a mate after years of loneliness. She reminds readers that the British in India were decidedly middle-class (the wealthy having no need to make their fortunes in India and the poor serving no purpose in a land where servants were easy to come by) and that social conventions were rigidly observed and generally more strict that at “Home”. She does do a particularly excellent job of describing the bureaucratic process by which Indian wives and mixed-race children were, over some years, stigmatized (having been the norm through the 17th and 18th Centuries), thereby guiding British men to seek British wives. And she also very ably explains why British women would risk coming all the way to India in order to find a spouse. Middle-class men left Britain to make their fortunes in the outposts of the empire but, in doing so, left a female population sadly short of potential husbands. In Victorian England, when marriage was the most desirable ambition for a woman, this created a problem:
From 1851 to 1911 approximately one in three of all women aged twenty-five to thirty-five was unmarried; and between fifteen and 19 per cent of women aged thirty-five to forty-five were unmarried.
The focus is on the hunt for a husband rather than the marriage that follows and for me that was the main problem with this book. Girl arrives off ship, finds herself with a three-to-one male-female ratio and, generally without too much fuss, finds herself besieged by suitors. It all happened very quickly:
Getting engaged in the Raj was sometimes a bit like speed dating. Often, minds were made up and a lifelong commitment to another human being promised after only a few meetings and without the aphrodisiac bait of great wealth, a large and splendid estate, or huge personal prestige to account for such rapidity.
To me, what would be fascinating is to know what happens after those hasty marriages. How did the new brides adjust to their husbands and their new, frequently remote, surroundings? There are two chapters near the end devoted to “The First Home” and “Up Country” by they are brief and not particularly informative. Most of the accounts de Courcy shares end with the engagement or the marriage, the “happy ending”. (Only in one case are we told that the marriage was unhappy.)
Everything is dealt with very quickly and with very little depth. Chapters are short and jump from one topic to another, sometimes interspersed with a chapter devoted to one or another of the women. The topics are interesting but with chapters that never exceed twenty pages de Courcy never has the room to expand on any descriptions or themes. If possible, she used too many examples and never has time between different women’s stories to build up a detailed portrait of their experiences or to reflect on their significance to the country. When de Courcy poses that question in the epilogue, asking “Did the Fishing Fleet girls have any real influence on the conduct of affairs in this vast country…?” it was a shock to me since nowhere in the book had she spent time reflecting on that. Everything felt just a little too shallow.
It is a fun book to read because of the specific stories de Courcy shares from the women who went “fishing” but I think it could have been so much better
This is one of books I’m going to be reading for a challenge organised by the Bright Young Things group on Goodreads. I’m hoping that as I know nothing about the subject that it will give me a good overview.
I think this would make a good introduction to the subject, Joanne. De Courcy packs a lot of information into what is not a very long book.
I’ve read references to this subject in several books but not a book on the subject. There was a lot of ridicule and condescension towards the women. I do hope I can find this eventually.
One of my problems with the book is that the ridicule and condescension that you mention is barely acknowledged. Her view is basically that the Fishing Fleet girls were necessary and a good thing, and that was that. She briefly mentions the embarassment of girls who returned home without finding husbands but, since the focus is on the girls who married, we don’t hear a lot more about it.
Just started this book for our library reading group, I must admit it didn’t immediately engage me but will keep an open mind. Thanks for your very thorough review, it alerted me in what to look out for and I
will feed your views into group meeting
I think there is so much detail here that it should make for an interesting group discussion, especially for people who haven’t read much about the Fishing Fleet or the Raj before. De Courcy covers a number of fascinating topics, my issue was just the way in which she did so. Do keep an open mind and I hope you have a good discussion at your reading group meeting!
I think I bought this book simply for its cover! I found it interesting and well-written, but just as you did, somewhat superficial. For more on what happened to fishing-fleet brides after they married, I’d recommend Pat Barr’s “The Memsahibs.” She focuses on the Victorian era and also writes about single women who worked in India as teachers, nurses, etc. After reading Barr’s and MacMillan’s books, I came away convinced that those women had to be sturdy indeed (both physically and mentally) to have lived that kind of life.
I do love the cover and the way it is coloured. I haven’t read The Memsahibs but will put it on my lists; sounds like I would really enjoy it. Having read what MacMillan had to say (and, to some extent, de Courcy) I know I would never have been able to handle life in India during this time. I might have been able to survive the illnesses and the climate, even the dangerous wildlife, but I do not think I could have handled living in a society so focused on sport and hunting – so many physical pursuits but nothing intellectual. That would have defeated me entirely.
Shame this wasn’t better. It does sound fascinating and awesome in premise, but it would bother me a lot to have everything with the rosy endings, since we know that a lot of those women died in childbirth and their kids got sent back to England for school and suffered lifelong displacement trauma. Yep. History.
One of the interesting things de Courcy does point out is that a number of the Fishing Fleet girls were ones with roots in India, who came back to live with their parents after finishing their schooling in England.
I had such great hopes for this! I just picked up Angels of Albion: Women of the Indian Mutiny so at some point I’m going to try and read the two together. The story of how ‘mixed’ relationships gradually became unacceptable is so interesting – I’m glad it gets some coverage in this book, but I had really been hoping for some more focus on the way these women changed British society in India as a whole, particularly as there seems to be a lot of evidence suggesting those were among the changes that led to the Mutiny…
The mutiny is barely covered here, so don’t get your hopes up for any insights into it!
I heard about this book when I saw an interview with Julian Fellows on YouTube, he just finished it. Here’s a link if you’re interested:
I remember JF mentioned it in one of the newspaper’s “Best Books of 2012″ pieces.
It’s an interesting subject, but from your review, I’m not sure this is the book I want to read about it. I too would want to more about life after the marriage.
A more general book about women in India would probably appeal to you more, Christy. The Memsahibs, which Aparatchick mentions above, sounds good and Women of the Raj is excellent.
Yes – I definitely added those two to my to-reads list, thanks!
It’s a shame this wasn’t a better read as it is a topic I find fascinating.
There’s enough new material here that, if you’re interested in the topic, I would still recommend reading it, but it isn’t quite as good a book as I think it could have been.
This is my current read. When the author was researching we briefly corresponded, as I have ancestors who left England for India in the late 17th Century & married men either in the military or working for the East India Company. My period of interest was earlier that the scope of this book, & I am trying to locate books written about the period of my interest.