Beyond the Pale by Vron Ware

Author:Vron Ware
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Verso Books
Published: 2015-06-08T16:00:00+00:00

Annette Ackroyd (1842–1929) with her pupils in March 1875

Her personal story is useful because it reveals some of the complexities of a Victorian feminist’s response to questions of race, class and gender. When she first arrived in Delhi, Annette Ackroyd was shocked by the attitudes of the other British people – known then as Anglo-Indians – towards Indian people and culture; ten years later, however, she was active in the debate surrounding the Ilbert Bill, a relatively progressive piece of legislation introduced by the viceroy, Lord Ripon, which aimed to expand the territories in which Indian judges could try subjects on criminal charges. Annette Ackroyd was in the forefront of opposition to it since it meant that European women would have to stand before Indian judges. In a letter to The Englishman she argued her case:

I am not afraid to assert that I speak the feeling of all Englishwomen in India when I say that we regard the proposal to subject us to the jurisdiction of native judges as an insult.

It is not pride of race which dictates this feeling – it is the pride of womanhood. This is a form of respect which we are not prepared to abrogate in order to give such advantages to others as are offered by Mr Ilbert’s Bill to its beneficiaries.8

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