Gender and Travel Writing in India, c.1650–1700

In the travel narratives of the late seventeenth century, incidents involving gender relations appear regularly; sometimes the travel/author2 narrates them in order to depict these relations, while in other instances, the tropes of gendered discourse need to be excavated from these descriptions. Through these representations in the travel narratives, this essay investigates the intricacies of the gender relations where identities are constantly formed and modified, layers of meanings are created around descriptions of events, contradictions and conclusions are found in abandon, and the bridges of understanding emerge and get dissolved frequently in alterity.