Material objects occupy every page of historical British literature, lending color, verisimilitude, and elaborate symbolic meanings to the vivid worlds of the texts. In the twenty-first century, scholars have brought a gamut of thing- and object-focused methodologies to analyzing and theorizing the functions, agency, and meanings of these intricately drawn artefacts. In Textile Orientalisms: Cashmere and Paisley Shawls in British Literature and Culture, Suchitra Choudhury presents a compelling argument for cashmere and paisley shawls as tangible, wearable symbols for the Indian subcontinent that represent the intricacies and contradictions of imperial society, gender, and identity, as well as ideas of power, class, authenticity, and belonging (3). Choudhury unravels the histories, stories, and meanings of cashmere and paisley shawls, using postcolonial literary and materialist cultural theories to weave a politically urgent and elegant reexamination of novels and plays by Elizabeth Inchbald, Walter Scott, William Thackeray, Wilkie Collins, and Frederick Niven that span the period from 1785 to 1931.

Traditionally, Indian shawls were khilat (honorary gifts) and practical garments for warmth. In the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries, however, the acceleration of British colonization and trade on the subcontinent transformed the garment into first a powerful political gift and then a valuable and desirable sartorial object. From the 1840s, Britain began producing imitation shawls, naming these after the Scottish weaving town of Paisley. The story of the cashmere and paisley shawl, as scrupulously told by Choudhury in her Introduction and first chapter, “Historical Contexts,” is one of cultural contact and transformation, as well as appropriation as well as representation, and it raises questions about imitation, hybridity, and authenticity. These meanings are evident in contemporary literatures where authors drape cashmere and paisley shawls on the heroines, pianos, and pages of their stories. In some texts, the shawls are quick and convenient ciphers for India, while in others, authors lavish fetishistic attention on describing the shawls and playing with their fugitive meanings.

Choudry’s primary materials are textual and textile, and she demonstrates equal dexterity and knowledge in the examination of both. The book’s six body chapters are arranged chronologically and trace shifts in fashion, colonization, literature, and textile production from the late eighteenth to early twentieth centuries. In chapter 1, Choudhury discusses the pre-colonial history, production, and use of Kashmiri shawls to show how their use as khilat conferred a value and meaning that made them desirable and fashionable objects for colonial trade. The shawl’s importation to, and later imitation in, Europe transformed its association with noble courtly masculinity into one of fashionable and consumerist femininity.

Choudhury picks up this narrative in her analysis of Inchbald’s Appearance is Against Them (1785) in chapter two. In this play, the shawl appears in a series of farcical scenes of theft, which Choudhury associates with contemporary corruption in the East India Company (75). In certain hands, the shawl of Inchbald’s play is also a symbol of women’s vain fixation with fashion and its potential for narcissism. Here, the shawl is both imperial and domestic as it “represent[s] the nation's search for imperial ethics” at home and abroad (79).

In chapter 3, Choudhury identifies Walter Scott’s ambivalent positions on the British-made paisley shawl in his St. Ronan's Well (1823) and The Surgeon's Daughter (1827). In the former, the Indian-style shawl of domestic manufacture is decried as a cheap imitation; yet, in the latter, the shawl is commended as almost indistinguishable from the authentic Indian example (83). Choudhury argues that these competing positions both provide commentary on contemporary transitions in British imperial governance and policy and represent a shift from mercantile trade to industrial capitalism. It is in these intricate connections, supported by rigorous textual and historical analysis, that Choudhury’s work is arguably at its strongest.

The focus on the shawl’s function as an icon for imperial politics is carried into chapter 4, where Choudhury reads the shawls in Thackeray’s Vanity Fair (1848) as having dual purposes. They are convenient accessories in his critique of society’s vain preoccupation with appearances and performance (102), and an allusion to the contemporary Anglo-Sikh wars. Choudhury argues that, much like in Inchbald’s play, the shawls of Vanity Fair are simultaneously domestic and imperial, but in ways that cannot be unraveled.

Imitation British shawls are the focus of Choudhury’s compelling analysis of Wilkie Collins's Armadale (1866) in chapter 5. Choudhury draws on Homi Bhabha’s work on imitation to read Lydia Gwilt’s red shawl as a symbol of rebellion within the domestic sphere and in the Empire as she connects Lydia’s disenfranchisement, exploitation, and eventual rebellion with that of the Indian sepoy. This striking new reading of Collins’s notoriously difficult novel advances Choudhury’s analysis of cashmere and paisley shawls.

In the sixth and final chapter, Choudhury turns her attention to Frederick Niven’s The Paisley Shawl (1931), positioning the titular object in relation to Scottish Home Rule debates in the 1920s. Niven depicts the shawl not as a fashionable accessory but as a curious inherited textile to drape over the furniture. In a text deeply concerned with ideas of home, Choudhury argues that the shawl’s imperial origins and history as a product of theft and appropriation undermine the concept of the home as pure and uncorrupted and also prompt the discussion of English imperialism in Scotland. Niven’s iteration of the shawl is a “deeply fraught metaphor [used] to absorb nationalist anxieties and dilemmas” (18). This chapter draws together the threads of the work, with the shawl recurring as a fugitive object for stories of imperialism, belonging, and identity.

Textile Orientalisms is a rigorous piece of scholarship while also being a pleasure to read. Choudhury’s exceptional bibliography and index are valuable resources for casual readers and scholars alike. The ample illustrations of textual and textile sources support Choudhury’s argument and serve as reminders of the beauty and all-important materiality of the shawls, although some impact and details are lost through the images being black-and-white, too small, and oversaturated.

Textile Orientalisms is an original and compelling contribution to postcolonial scholarship on nineteenth-century literary and textile cultures. Choudhury shows what the material turn brings to literary and postcolonial studies. Scholars and students across these fields will find in Choudhury’s work new insights into the sensibilities and preoccupations of texts we thought we knew.