Title: Forbidden Jewel of India Series: Herriard #1
Author: Louise Allen
Published: December 18, 2012
Genre(s): Romance: Historical
Page Count: 279
Rating:
Summary from Goodreads:Anusha Laurens is in danger. The daughter of an Indian princess and an English peer, she's the perfect pawn in the opulent courts of Rajasthan. Even so, she will not return to the father who rejected her.
Arrogant angrezi Major Nicholas Herriard is charged with bringing the alluring princess safely to her new life in Calcutta. Nick's mission is to protect, to serve—but under the searing Indian sun an initial attraction unfurls into a forbidden temptation.
This beautiful, impossible princess tests the very limits of his honor—especially when Nick is left with only one option to keep Anusha safe: marriage. But the fast-flowing waters of the Ganges determine a different fate, and duty may separate them forever.
Remember that time Eloisa James said that she’d figured out a way to write a half-Indian character without having to deal with the legacy of colonization and oppression in her narrative? Remember that same time she said diversity in publishing was “trendy”? (Yes, she really did say those things.)
Well. Forbidden Jewel of India is a great example of why white authors like Eloisa James and Louise Allen need to sit down in a quiet room somewhere and think about their choices. I don’t doubt that this book is written from the goodness of Allen’s heart; I don’t doubt her research or her grasp of the historical material. I don’t even doubt that she is fully aware that the British imperial legacy in India is one of racism and oppression and greed.
It’s just that there are some narratives that no amount of research can save, if the author is so far out of her depth. Colonizer/colonized romances can work. (See, generally: Alyssa Cole.) But white people should approach those narratives with care.
I honestly have no qualms with the overarching structure of Forbidden Jewel of India. This is primarily a road-trip romance—Nick is a major in the British East India Company and is sent to retrieve his benefactor’s half-Indian daughter from her uncle’s palace. Anusha is a minor princess with a lot of zest for living and a (rightful) vendetta against white people in general and her father in particular. But off they go, riding across the Indian countryside on their way to Kolkata. They have various adventures along the way and their initial antagonism turns to friendship.
It’s a good story, and Louise Allen is a talented storyteller. She pays attention to setting and works hard to make it clear that this book is actually set in India, not an vaguely sketched-in location approximating India. I appreciated that.
Eventually, Nick and Anusha arrive at her father’s house in Kolkata. She is transformed into a nice white lady (hair, corsets, etc.) and is informed that she must marry a suitable English bachelor. This is where the little “mmm, I don’t know about this” moments really began to pile up and I started to feel uncomfortable.
On one hand: yes, 19th century English society was full of Indian (and half-Indian) people. I imagine that most of them dressed in traditional Western clothes. It’s not historically inaccurate to imagine that Anusha would be made over to look like a white person. However—should a white author really be writing that story? The story of a half-brown girl (who has lived her entire life with her brown relatives) being suddenly forced to accept the other half of her identity one fine day because her father had the hankering to marry her off is…a choice. And in spite of Louise Allen’s obvious good intentions, I don’t think she understood the implications of this plot point.
And also: why the fuck are white people so obsessed with the Kama Sutra? Every single historical romance I’ve ever heard of that deals with India also talks about how Indian women are all sexual wizards who spend their days studying the fine arts of blowjobs and reverse cowgirl position. (See: Hello Stranger by Lisa Kleypas). By the end of Forbidden Jewel of India, Anusha’s defining characteristic was how sexually knowledgeable she was (especially compared to Nick’s frigid and cold first wife). Like, no. Stop this narrative! It’s harmful; it’s gross.
Lastly, I just want to mention that the most telling part of this story was how, after Anusha’s hair has been shorn and her clothes taken away, Nick sees her gussied up like a duchess, and that is the moment when he’s most attracted to her. In that moment, Anusha has been colonized, and Nick has a colonizer boner.
(This is what I mean about white authors not having the skillset to recognize potential harm to minorities in their writing. I bet Allen thought she was writing a typical make over moment with no other implications.)
Look. Your good intentions do not absolve you of your inability to recognize that there might be some stories you are not equipped to tell. Research doesn’t necessarily give you insight into what oppression feels like. And even in a story with an HEA, you can’t just ignore certain truths about the world we live in. This is historical romance, not fantasy romance. Forbidden Jewel of India tried so hard, but in the end it did felt like a book by a white lady who just wanted to be trendy.
