"I find some Hindu practices like burning widows, utterly bizarre": Representations of Sati and Questions of Choice in Veils of Silk

As summarised in the Introduction to this volume (page 8):

In “’I find some Hindu practices, like burning widows, utterly bizarre’: Representations of Sati and Questions of Choice in Veils of Silk,” Maura Seale uses textual analysis of a Mary Jo Putney novel as a starting place to reveal “the racial and imperial politics of the romance genre” that “have not received much scholarly attention” (132). [...] Seale examines the stereotypes and seductive views of otherness that underlie fantasies of Indian life. Seale’s description of sati and of a Putney novel heroine’s “choice” to run from the pyre at her husband’s death invokes an impression of false independence, one the heroine definitely exercises in the novel but one that is dependent on a stereotypical view of cultural practice.