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A review by wwatts1734
Anna and the King of Siam by Margaret Landon
3.0
Many people are familiar with the story of Anna and the Siamese Court from the Rogers and Hammerstein musical "The King and I." This book is what that musical was based on. It was fascinating to read about this Englishwoman's experiences in the court of Siam, and particularly her interactions with the women within the Siamese emperor's harem and his hundreds of children. This book would certainly be appropriate for anyone who likes to read about cultural interactions and the humorous things that result from them. Also, it gives an English speaking audience a good insight into the Thailand that existed in the 19th Century.
My problem with this novel is that it fed into the British imperial and post-imperial bias that nations in Asia, Africa, the Pacific and the Americas that did not benefit from European colonial administrations are hopelessly barbaric places that need to be taught how to be civilized. This view was widely held throughout the West in the 19th Century and all the way up to the 1960s, and this book reflects that view, indeed it almost epitomizes it. Here is a civilized woman coping with the barbaric practices of polygamy, male domination, castes and other things that the British colonial administrations worked to eliminate throughout the world. We feel sorry for her because she is forced to live among the barbarians and deal with their barbaric ways. This is condescending, but unfortunately it is the way that most people in the West thought about non-Western, non-Christian nations in the past. Because of that, I would caution people who are not aware of this bias to watch for it when reading "Anna and the King".
Keeping this caveat in mind, I would recommend this book to anyone with an interest in Thailand or the far east in the 19th century.
My problem with this novel is that it fed into the British imperial and post-imperial bias that nations in Asia, Africa, the Pacific and the Americas that did not benefit from European colonial administrations are hopelessly barbaric places that need to be taught how to be civilized. This view was widely held throughout the West in the 19th Century and all the way up to the 1960s, and this book reflects that view, indeed it almost epitomizes it. Here is a civilized woman coping with the barbaric practices of polygamy, male domination, castes and other things that the British colonial administrations worked to eliminate throughout the world. We feel sorry for her because she is forced to live among the barbarians and deal with their barbaric ways. This is condescending, but unfortunately it is the way that most people in the West thought about non-Western, non-Christian nations in the past. Because of that, I would caution people who are not aware of this bias to watch for it when reading "Anna and the King".
Keeping this caveat in mind, I would recommend this book to anyone with an interest in Thailand or the far east in the 19th century.