Volume III Special Issue I January 2023

Name of Author : Mayuri Bhakat

Title of the paper : A Tripartite Coalition of Memsahibs, Children and Ayah: A psychoanalytic study of Alice Perrins Chunia Ayah, Centipede and Old Ayah

Abstract: Earlier generations of the memsahibs influenced the later generations through their comments on fictional and non-fictional endeavours. Though the memsahibs came to colonial India as a fishing fleet, they gradually started to live in this land. Thus, the encounters between the coloniser and the colonised gradually started with the mingling of multiple issues. It was through the native servants and ayahs that the memsahibs and the children got a first-hand experience of the colonised land. This encounter creates some conflicting situations for both parties. The conflicting conditions are psychologically linked with two apparently disconnected feelings the desire to like the other and the fear of the other. This kind of contradictory situation raises an uncanny feeling for both the coloniser and the colonised. In this paper, I have focused on three short stories written by Alice Perrin to delineate how she depicts these conflicting ideological concepts through the tripartite relationship of ayahs, memsahibs and children. The binary between the master and the slave brings out the repressive identity on the front line. Through a detailed study of these texts, this paper will highlight how the coalition was governed by repression, fear, anxiety, challenge, guilt, and ultimately the feeling of uncanny.

Keywords : Empire, Ayah, Memsahibs, Children, Uncanny

DOI :

Page Number : 112-116