IN A MALAYAN BUNGALOW: NEGOTIATING BRITISH WOMANHOOD IN MALAYA, 1936-1942

Abstract

From 1936 to 1942, the Straits Times published a weekly newspaper supplement entitled In a Malayan Bungalow (IMB). This supplement was published for British women living in Malaya as it included topics relating to womanhood, household management, food, beauty, and fashion. This supplement was contextualised to the living conditions in Malaya with contributors addressing British women and sharing their own opinions and insights about life in Malaya. This thesis examines how IMB was a platform that mediated concerns about British womanhood in Malaya. Contributors to IMB often debated on expectations of wifehood and motherhood in Malaya. These expectations fleshed out in the articles need to be understood in light of larger imperial concerns and trends in the metropole. Therefore, this thesis analyses how various forces shaped the roles of British women as wives and mothers in the colony. Imperial ideology expected wives to uplift the colonies as they represented a civilising and moralising force. Wives were expected to support the men stationed in Malaya and prevent him from ‘going native.’ Mothers were expected to fulfil their duty to preserve the lineage of British descendants. Ideals brought over from the metropole, such as social norms and modern influences, also shaped life in Malaya, which were either in tension with or complemented the imperial agenda. Ultimately, the extent to which women carried out the imperial agenda was contingent upon their willingness to conform to imperial expectations or if they allowed other interests to encroach onto their responsibilities in the colony. The discourse in IMB presents British womanhood in Malaya as a process of negotiation between these various concerns.