Customer Reviews

Bombay Anna: The Real Story and Remarkable Adventures of the King and I Governess (Philip E. Lilienthal Books)

5 star:		(4)
4 star:		(3)
3 star:		(3)
2 star:		(0)
1 star:		(0)

 

 

This is an interesting book, and well-worth reading, but marred by dithering when the author has to confront Anna Leonowen's lies. Although the author has obviously done a great deal of research, she also slips in a good bit of speculation.

AL was apparently an extraordinary woman, a polyglot, and to a great extent self-educated. She pursued several careers; after her famous sojourn at the Siamese court, she became a writer and lecturer. She was not what she appeared to be, however.

Anna Leonowens was born in India, probably the grand-daughter of an Anglo-Indian. She reinvented herself as a British lady, born in Wales. This does not bother me per se. The deception enabled her to make use of her great talents and support her children; she didn't use it to commit fraud. Morgan dithers about this and the nature of identity at great length in the beginning of the book. In passing, however, one has to abandon one's birth family. Forced to confront this, Morgan makes up possible excuses as to why Leonowen's family, who appear to have been loving and supportive, "might" have deserved to be abandoned, rather than accepting that this was probably a slightly ruthless, pragmatic decision on Anna's part--we don't actually know what her family thought. Perhaps they wished her the best.

The information about the Anglo-Indians extremely interesting. Many British men came to India to make their fortune, but few were able to bring a wife with them, and only the highest ranking men could hope to find a British wife in India. Inevitably, there was mixing with Indian women, and their descendants formed their own sub-society, with lower ranking British men. These people were considered inferior to "real" Britons, and so AL decided to "pass."

Similarly Anna Leonowens lied in her books about the Siamese court. Morgan tries to justify this on the dubious grounds that Leonowens was making a feminist statement. On the other hand, she then complains that Margaret Landon, who wrote Anna and the King of Siam, and the various adaptors of the story misrepresented Siam and King Mongkut. Somehow, it is their fault for believing Leonowen's lies, but not her fault for lying in the first place. Everyone except Anna, it seems, was an ethnocentric Westerner misinterpreting what they saw, and Morgan gives us some tortured analyses to make her point.

Still, Leonowens was an extraordinary woman, with all her faults, and it is extremely interesting to read about her life.

We all know the story of Anna and the king of Siam through the books, Broadway play and movie. But that romanticized version is more fiction than fact. What a shock to learn that Anna, the British governess to the king, really came from India! The daughter of an Englishman and a woman of mixed Indian and Anglo descent, she grew up in crowded military barracks, far from the ideal fantasy that she created. She married Corporal Thomas Leon Owens when she was eighteen, and had four children. After the deaths of her husband and two of her children, Anna took her remaining children to Singapore, arriving with the fantastic story that has clung to her all these years: that she was a British gentlewoman from Wales, widow of Major Thomas Leonowens, with two children born in England. But the true story is much more compelling.

Anna had a photographic memory. She was multilingual and tolerant of all cultures through her association with the people in India--Buddhists, Muslims, and Hindus. She learned Sanskrit and traveled extensively lecturing and teaching after her position ended in Siam.

Anna was the only Western person allowed in the king's harem of over sixty children, their mothers, and servants. Since they could not leave the harem, she viewed them as being incarcerated, and she worked diligently for their release. As researcher and author Susan Morgan writes, "Her critiques of Siam were not about how the West should treat the East. They were about how men should treat women, about the immense potential women have if only allowed to develop it freely, and about the equalities that should exist between people everywhere as a natural and spiritual right."

Morgan's extensive and careful research provides the reader with the facts of Anna's life and shows how this amazing woman truly lived and fought for women's rights by exemplifying the principles she espoused in her own life. Throughout the book, pictures of Anna at various ages add to the narrative. The only drawback is the repetition that makes some of the chapters sound as if they may have been written as stand-alone articles. Recommended for women's and multicultural collections.

by Susan Andrus
for Story Circle Book Reviews
reviewing books by, for, and about women

What a wonderful book! So full of information, so well-written and easy to read, I couldn't put it down. Author Susan Morgan not only brings Anna Leonowens's remarkable life to life, she makes the reader see why Leonowens made up so much of her "official" life story, and why the (false) image of blond Anna (a lie) dancing with King Monghut (played by Yul Brynner) in The King and I, has had such a powerful grip on our imaginations. Anna Leonowens could do a lot more than dance, and Susan Morgan can really tell a story.

We get it, Anna had to reinvent herself with a pack of lies in order to fight the racist, sexist era in which she lived. She did so admirably, but she never went back to later correct those lies, continuing to lie to her grandchildren about their heritage, and tossing her own in the trash. The author is constantly making excuses for this, even trying to infer that perhaps her relatives wronged in some way, when Anna cut them out of her life completely, when all evidence was to the contrary.

The woman made great strides from a humble beginnings, but hated her own beginning so much that she refused to admit to it. I would find her a far more admirable character had she done so, later on, once she had become a success.

I am not one for biographies where the author inserts him or herself into the narrative, if you are, you will like this one.

Cannot improve on the other 5 star reviews.

Imagine most people only know of Anna from the King And I, and as such think of her as some well educated, proper English woman, who as a widow is sent to be the governess to the Kings many Siamese children. The book also deals with her two, not one child(ren), as she had a daughter who was sent to boarding school in England. And Anna wasn't English born, but was born in India, something the play and movie never speak of. And she wasn't well educated but was indeed a fast learner. Reminded me a tad of how homeschooling parents often become students as well.

Susan Morgan the author does an excellent job of describing everyday life and how unlike Yul Brenner, the real King was neither handsome nor interests in Anna in any way other than as the educator of his children. Ms. Morgan also goes into detail about the history of the King and how beautiful daughters of well off citizens were often sent to him, to be a part of his 'harem' or household.

When one thinks of a widow with a child, going into uncharted territory in the 1800's one has to admire Anna Leonowens even more. Some great lessons for we women in 2010.

Well written and well researched this is a must read for anyone who sat entranced by the King and I or who has an interest in the real lives of Victorian women.

Susan Morgan clearly loves Anna Leonowens.
Much of what Morgan brings to the table is new and insightful, especially historic details about Anna's early life. She has fleshed out what was discovered by W.S. Bristowe in researching his 1976 book, LOUIS AND THE KING OF SIAM, about the life of Anna's son Louis Leonowens. In a chapter called ANNA UNVEILED, Bristowe presents for the first time, the basic truth about Anna's birth place, birthdate and background, all in India. Morgan tells us "that there is almost no information about Anna Harriet Edwards early years" then proceeds to go about creating a mythic young Anna, running about barefoot in dusty bazaars, helping her mother with the laundry in the river and sleeping with other "half caste" children, "in piles like puppies".
She then introduces us to a teenage Anna, devouring her books, self educating herself in Hindi, Persian, and Sanscrit, and finally finding love and marriage with a dashing young clerk. When the marriage ends with the death of her husband, Anna creates a new identity, moves to Singapore with her two young children and opens up a financially unsuccessful kindergarten in her home.
The king of Siam requests an English teacher for his older children and after sending her daughter off to school in England, Anna moves to Bangkok with her son and stays for about five years.
Much of Ms. Morgan's account of this part of Anna's life is strange. Although Anna stated in her books that the contents were true, many learned historians have doubted the veracity of Anna's accounts in the palace, including Prince Damrong, one of Anna's own students. However, in her defence of Anna, Morgan discounts them all with a wave of her pen. She allows Anna's lies to become "tales". In a high handed manner, she says "There is no plausable justification for reading Anna's two books about Siam literally and then casitgating her for getting the facts wrong". Why not? Truth is the point of a biographical work. She goes on to say "It is obvious that her books are immaginative visions of Siam, and that many of the incidents she depicts are exaggerations". Ms. Morgan appears to have such a high regard for Anna Leonowens, that she arbitrarily filters facts to bolster her own "immaginative visions". Taking her quotations out of context, Ms. Morgan has bent other author's quotations to her own purpose. For example, Ruth Adams Knight, in her biography of Princess Rudivoravan quotes her as saying, "King Mongkut was an excessively modest man. The Chow Chorm Kien (one of King Mongkut's chief wives)said if he began to punish one of his household - and whippings were not too unusual in those days - the girl had only to tear open her bodice, and His Majesty would stride away in confusion". Ms. Morgan, once again, chooses to quote only "whippings were not too unusual in those days", ignoring the full quotation to support her own position.
It is regrettable that exaggeration, outright lies, and selective quotes seem to have become the hallmark of the Anna Leonowens story. Unfortunately, the central core of Ms. Morgan's book does absolutely nothing to clarify an already confusing narrative regarding Anna's time in Siam. Her self-serving position only perpetuates an erronious myth.

A genealogy chart would have been useful and may have saved the author from making a literary faux pas. On page 161 she tells us that, after her sojourn in Siam, Anna Leonowens went to Ireland where "Mr. Wilkinson Sr. was delighted to welcome the widowed wife of his wife's brother". Well, not really. She was actually the widowed daughter of his wife's brother (a sergeant Thomas Edwards from Middlesex) i.e. his niece by marriage. The author then goes on to tell us that "It was a particularly joyous moment for Anna, ... to be welcomed into the family of her beloved Tom." Her "beloved Tom" was her late husband Thomas Louis LeonOwens who came from the diocese of Ossory in County Kilkenny (page 56). Thomas Wilkinson, Anna's uncle by marriage, lived in Enniscorthy in County Wexford.

Again on page 161, we are told that the Wilkinsons had "happy memories of Tom Leonowens as a boy". This is the first mention in the book of such a confluence and it is just misinformed invention. It was Anna's son, Louis Thomas Leonowens, whom the Wilkinsons "became fond of" when he was left with them (page 162).

The misconception may be explained by a second cousin (in 1939) having categorized Anna Leonowens as "the wife of a cousin" of his mother (on page 213) when, if fact, the two women were first cousins. In order to sustain Anna as "the wife of a cousin" her husband has been imagined as a cousin of the Wilkinsons. And from this error comes the fiction that the Wilkinsons knew Tom Leonowens as a boy.

On page 167 one or other of the Wilkinson Toms is said to be related to Anna as "her brother-in-law". Thomas Wilkinson Sr. was actually her mother's brother-in-law. Thomas Wilkinson Jr. was her first cousin. For either Tom to have been Anna's brother-in-law her husband, Tom Leonowens, would have had to have been a Wilkinson brother. The author has already described him as a cousin. He was, of course, neither.

Maybe some members of the Wilkinson family had recounted stories about Tom Wilkinson Jr. (the future London barrister) as a boy and the author, perhaps following Margaret Landon ("Anna and the King of Siam"), has assumed that Tom to be Thomas Leonowens.

The book is worth reading, however, as it counteracts Broadway's fantasy and Anna Leonowens own novels: "The English Governess at the Siamese Court" and "The Romance of the Harem". There is, however, a great deal of surmising about what Anna and the ladies of the harem "thought" and a fair amount of feminism and political correctness retrofitted to the nineteenth century.

The "book is printed on Natures Book, which contains 50% postconsumer waste" and the binding is glued, not sewn.

Very pleased with the service. So happy to have found it with Amazon.
I live in Thailand - and enjoy reading the history of this country.

Regards, Nancy C. Bradburn

The mailing envelope for the book was clearly used. I opened it in my car and got a shower of
gray insulating material that wouldn't have disintegrated when the envelope was new. The book was just fine. Hope this will be taken more as a "heads up" than anything else. New envelopes matter.