LIKE A FISH GASPING FOR WATER: THE LETTERS OF A TEMPORARY SPOUSE FROM BENGKULU (Light Letters, volume 2)

LIKE A FISH GASPING FOR WATER: THE LETTERS OF A TEMPORARY SPOUSE FROM BENGKULU

E. Ulrich Kratz (2006) LIKE A FISH GASPING FOR WATER: THE LETTERS OF A TEMPORARY SPOUSE FROM BENGKULU, Indonesia and the Malay World, 34:100, 247-280.

Abstract:

The article introduces six Malay letters from 1784 and 1785 which were sent by Ence’ Lena of Bengkulu to John Marsden, the elder brother of William Marsden. The letters express in moving words the personal loss and dislocation of a local woman, whose spouse of many years has left her to return to Europe, taking with him two of their three children. The documents are important for several reasons: they give a personal voice to a late 18th-century Muslim female individual from West Sumatra; they contribute to our knowledge of the Malay epistolary in general and provide a historical context to the nature and uses of the Malay language in particular; they throw light on an aspect of British and Asian relations for which we lack contemporary accounts in European languages; they bring the day-to-day life of British settlements around the Bay of Bengal in the late 18th century into focus; and, last but not least, they raise challenging questions about the lives of John and William Marsden.