Established as colonial hill stations in Indian's Doon Valley, in the 1820s, Mussoorie and Landour emerged in Victorian literary imagination with the journals of Emily Eden, Fanny Parks, and the Wallace-Dunlop sisters. This paper argues that the Doon's female imperial architextures invented new prospects of grafting Anglo-Saxon aesthetics on the Himalayan terra nullius, diminishing, miniaturizing, and depopulating aspects of the hazardous, the alien, and the local. A thread of archetypes —jhampauns (Himalayan loco-armchairs) and Himalayan vistas— link the aesthetic arcs in the journals of Eden, Parks, and the Wallace-Dunlops. Although the architexture was ostensibly apolitical, it imbued the Doon's representational spaces with a reproducible English character, rendering its terra incognita into terra familiaris in imperial psyche, while carving a distinct imperial subjectivity for Memsahibs.
Established as colonial hill stations in Indian's Doon Valley, in the 1820s, Mussoorie and Landour emerged in Victorian literary imagination with the journals of Emily Eden, Fanny Parks, and the Wallace-Dunlop sisters. This paper argues that the Doon's female imperial architextures invented new prospects of grafting Anglo-Saxon aesthetics on the Himalayan terra nullius, diminishing, miniaturizing, and depopulating aspects of the hazardous, the alien, and the local. A thread of archetypes —jhampauns (Himalayan loco-armchairs) and Himalayan vistas— link the aesthetic arcs in the journals of Eden, Parks, and the Wallace-Dunlops. Although the architexture was ostensibly apolitical, it imbued the Doon's representational spaces with a reproducible English character, rendering its terra incognita into terra familiaris in imperial psyche, while carving a distinct imperial subjectivity for Memsahibs.
Establecidas como puestos de montaña coloniales en el valle de Doon de la India, las ciudades de Mussoorie y Landour poblaron el imaginario literario victoriano, en la década de 1820, a través de los diarios de Emily Eden, Fanny Parks y las hermanas Wallace-Dunlop. Este artículo defiende que las arqui-texturas imperiales femeninas en el Doon inventaron nuevas posibilidades para la inserción de la estética anglosajona en la terra nullius del Himalaya, reduciendo, miniaturizando y desechando aspectos de lo azaroso, lo alieno y lo local. Una serie de arquetipos —los jhampauns (palanquines del Himalaya) y las panorámicas de las montañas— unen la estética de los diarios de Eden, Parks y las hermanas Wallace-Dunlop. Si bien la arqui-textura era aparentemente apolítica, esta infundió y reprodujo un carácter inglés en los espacios de representación del Doon, convirtiendo así una terra incognita en la terra familiaris de la mentalidad imperial, mientras que, al mismo tiempo, forjaba una subjetividad imperial exclusiva para las Memsahibs.