show me the women

There is hardly any mention of women, much less notable and interesting woman personalities in Leonard Woolf’s Growing. I think this is very much explained by Stoler’s article on how colonial policies discourage the immigration of European women into the colonies, limiting marriages only to high ranking officials and keeping salaries of European recruits “artificially low” to prevent them from starting a family (48). I think that it is the scarcity of European women, rather than Leonard Woolf’s deliberate omission that explains the lack of female personalities in his autobiography.

Leonard Woolf did pay special attention to the Lewis and Price couple. Mrs Lewis was “[l]arge, plump, floridly good-looking”, “a Jane Austen character complete in face, form, speech, mind – a Mrs Jennings” (42). She is “an inveterate matchmaker” equipped with “artless and embarrassing manoeuvres” (43). Mr John Penry Lewis was a “[l]arge, slow, fat, shy man” who was “extremely lazy and not fond of responsibility”, “took little interest in administration” (41). Mrs Price “was the exact opposite of Mrs Lewis. She was a real Victorian lady” (114). She is “rather silent and extremely nervous”, with an “impenetrable reserve” (114). Ferdinando Hamlyn Price was “[t]all, thin, athletic looking, baldish, with a long hatchet-face” and was “congenitally and incorrigibly lazy” (105).

There are a few observations to be made. Both Mrs Lewis and Mrs Price have “delicate sensibilities” and need for “elevated standards of living” (55). Mrs Price whose “life with Price and Ceylon ... terrified her” (114), Mrs Lewis and her gramaphone (88). Marriages are confined to high ranking colonial officials (i.e. G.A). Married men are lazy and seldom dealt with colonial administration, preferring to delegate the jobs to young and single subordinates (i.e. Leonard Woolf).

Contrary to Stoler’s article, I do not see European women and marriage as having that much of an impact on colonial rule. Then again, perhaps that is what Stoler is concerned with, the overlooking and omission in assessing the influence of European women with regards to colonial policies.