Mounted on that beast, she has been into action with tigers in the jungle, she has been received by native princes, who have welcomed her and Glorvina into the recesses of their
zenanas and offered her shawls and jewels which it went to her heart to refuse.
'O mother,' he cried, 'do they do this in the
zenanas? Suppose an Englishman came by and saw that thou hats no nose?'
The free and complete opening of the professions, the final abolition of the
zenana I call it, and the franchise to all women who pay Queen's taxes above a certain sum.
Soon she also took on the tasks of visiting Indian women secluded in their residences (called
zenanas), guiding Indian Bible women, and directing multiple boys' schools.
In the 17th and 18th centuries the Muslim women of Manipur, married or unmarried, were not confined in
zenanas, as they were in Bengal and Hindustan and they did not cover their faces before strangers (2).
This she does because, on having seen for herself the appalling conditions of the
zenanas (7) and their inmates, she has come to realize that British ideals can only be instilled into these Indian
zenanas by their own people.
The Gordons and their successors became engaged in the usual range of mission activities: evangelism, education, medical work, visiting women in the secluded quarters (
zenanas) of their homes, and the preparation of Christian literature.
This judgment of one for thirty years missionary of the American Board, in Madura, South India, and who had 952 women of the
zenanas in that city under the instruction of her own trained Bible-women last year, will be received with respectful attention.
In order to look exactly like women, they only wear female clothes while
zenanas have both male and female wardrobes.
The world of
zenanas. Plainspeak: Talking about sexuality in South and Southeast Asia.
Unlike other visual documentation of
zenanas, the archive of the Seventh Nizam of Hyderabad's
zenana is exceptional for the unprecedented abundance of images, the extensive compositional variation, and the range of possible social spaces inhabited by its members.(4) The portraits of the Nizam's
zenana juxtapose intimate family relations with visual citations to Orientalist narratives of an erotic harem, disclosing the political and personal dimensions of royal domesticity operating within one of India's largest existing
zenanas of the late imperial period.(5)
There are references to nautch girls and
zenanas, fine brocade and rich silks, fencing and shooting, Mughal camps and English officers.