Abstract
In addition to several other novels and short stories, Mary Eastwick wrote two novels set in Penang during the period of British colonization. The Resident-Councillor (1898) and The Governor's wife (1900) focused on the domestic lives and personal relationships of the Europeans in colonial society. In comparison to the attention which has been paid to the work of her male contemporaries, such as Hugh Clifford and Frank Swettenham, Eastwick's fiction has been severely neglected by both literary critics and historians. The aim of this paper is, in part, to recover the work of a neglected woman writer. It also demonstrates how much can be learned from Eastwick's work about the lifestyles and mores of colonial society. In particular her novels provide many insights into prevailing attitudes towards race, class, and gender, and from the neglected perspective of a woman writer. It is argued that Eastwick's fiction deserves greater recognition within the colonial literature of Malaya.
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