SOURCE: Taylor, Susan B. “Feminism and Orientalism in Elizabeth Hamilton's Translation of the Letters of a Hindoo Rajah.” Women's Studies 29, no. 5 (2000): 555-81.

In the following essay, Taylor explores Hamilton's paradoxical use of Oriental studies in Translation of the Letters of a Hindoo Rajah to address the subjugation of women in Britain while expressing support for British imperial control over India.

Elizabeth Hamilton's Translation of the Letters of a Hindoo Rajah (1796) offers a place to view the interaction of two vexed issues that first draw considerable attention in the British Romantic era: the increasing debates over what constituted women's proper spheres and roles and the heated arguments over how best to govern the rapidly developing Empire in India. These two cultural currents intersect in Hamilton's orientalism—her study of Indian texts and language and her use of that knowledge in her epistolary oriental tale, the Translation of the Letters...