Cookie, amah, and master: a look into divergent experiences and colonial attitudes

• Main Author: Poey, Elizabeth Francesca Rui Ying
• Other Authors: Tapsi Mathur
• Format: Final Year Project
• Language: English
• Published: Nanyang Technological University 2024
• Subjects: Arts and Humanities; Domestic servants in colonial households
• Online Access: https://hdl.handle.net/10356/174394
• Institution: Nanyang Technological University

Current literature on colonial Malaya and Singapore have shown a lack of analysis on domestic servants in colonial European households. The few literatures that exist tend to not be in-depth or are imbalanced in perspective. This thesis thus aims to contribute to this gap by exploring on a deeper level the working lives of cookies (household cook) and amahs (nannies) and of the relations they shared with their European masters. Through the analysis of divergent experiences, questions and themes about colonial resistance, structures, and attitudes that informed - and which were intermingled with - the lives and relations of domestic servants in the 19th and 20th century will be raised. This essay argues that colonial notions of gender and race impacted how cookies and amahs worked and were treated by their employers. Conflicts between servant and master can be read as actions of resistance against imperial authority, and it was the broad scope of responsibilities that cookies and amahs had that allowed for them to have greater agency in acting against their colonial masters.