Burning Women: Widows, Witches, and Early Modern European Travelers in India

by Pompa Banerjee

In early modern Europe, the circulation of visual and verbal transmissions of sati, or Hindu widow burning, not only informed responses to the ritualized violence of Hindu culture, but also intersected in fascinating ways with specifically European forms of ritualized violence and European constructions of gender ideology. European accounts of women being burned in India uncannily commented on the burnings of women as witches and criminal wives in Europe. When Europeans narrated their accounts of sati, perhaps the most striking illustration of Hindu patriarchal violence, they did not specifically connect the act of widow burning to a corresponding European the gruesome ceremonial burnings of women as witches. In examining early modern representations of sati, the book focuses specifically on those strategies that enabled European travellers to protect their own identity as uniquely civilized amidst spectacular displays of 'Eastern barbarity'.

296 pages, Hardcover

First published December 31, 2002

Reviews

[Bekka · Rating 4 out of 5]

Burning Women: Widows, Witches, and Early Modern European Travelers in India by Pompa Banerjee explores the relationship between European witch burning and Indian sati. Both subjects of burning women are exposed by European men; yet the relationship between the two uncanny circumstances of fire engulfed female figures are never connected leaving a sizeable rift in the texts of this time period and the European understanding of the sati. Pompa Banerjee’s book serves as a valuable tool in understanding modern cultural studies, specifically the Renaissance via European male perspective regarding women in both India and Europe.