Anna Leonowens

Anna Leonowens (November, 1831 - 1915) is chiefly famous for being the British governess portrayed in the musical The King and I. The play, based on adaptations of her factually slipshod memoirs, provides a fictionalised look at her life in the royal court of Siam (present-day Thailand).

Royal governess?

Though successful, the school could not support the family financially, and thus she came to the momentous decision to accept an offer made by the Siamese consul in Singapore and become governess to the children of the King of Siam, S.S.P.P. Maha Mongkut. Actually, she was hired as a teacher of English, not a governess.

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It may be concluded that the opening scenes of the famous films based on the life of Anna Leonowens, in which the young "English" widow arrives in the strange eastern city of Bangkok amongst people whose way of life is a complete mystery to her, are highly misleading. Anna Leonowens knew the Far East well -- by the age of only twenty-seven, she had already lived in India, Australia and Singapore. Of course Siam was new to her, but there must have been as much about it that was familiar as there was of the unknown. This is not to say that there was nothing frightening about some of the experiences which she and her young son faced.

Related Topics:
Film - Bangkok

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The reasons for her decision to send her daughter to school in Britain, while her son travelled with her to Bangkok, are not clear; though no doubt the position of women in the royal palace where she was going would not have been such as to allow her children to be treated equally. At around the time of her arrival, the King's eldest son, Chulalongkorn, was to be elevated to the position of Crown Prince, whilst his eldest daughter was enduring quite a different ceremony, that of the tonsure. It is no wonder that she made such a fuss about the delay in fulfilling the King's promise to provide her with a house of her own. With sixty-seven children and numerous wives, it was hardly likely that the King and his ministers would take much notice of a woman, albeit a European woman who was responsible for the education of the King's children. King Mongkut, however, was a learned and cultured man, who was breaking new ground for Siam simply by having the idea to educate his wives and children.

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Her role in the royal court

It has been said that Anna Leonowens, in her memoirs of 1870, exaggerated the importance of her role in the King's court and suggested that she had a greater degree of influence than she could possibly have had in reality. However, it was the peculiarity of her situation that led to her story capturing the interest of a nation, and if many of the episodes featured in the films and plays about her stay in Siam do not reflect real life, this is no more than can be said about many other dramatisations of the lives of people even less worthy of note. It is debatable whether the true story of her time in Siam, which lasted only five years, would have become the subject of a film, a musical, and even a television series, if it had been told with literal truthfulness either by Anna herself or by those who re-told it later. In fact, it is largely based on some short stories she wrote. The secret of its success almost certainly lies in the very idea of a lone Western woman being accepted in an exotic Eastern royal court; and the fact that she was there to work, rather than as a lady of leisure, adds to the interest audiences have felt in Anna as a person.

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Relations with King Mongkut

The King himself was a complex character. Educated and intelligent, he was nevertheless tightly controlled by his own upbringing and native traditions. He may have felt a certain degree of respect for the European woman -- indeed, must have done, otherwise he would not have entrusted the education of his children to her; but it would be wrong to imply, as do the various dramatisations of the story, that he treated her as an equal. The torture and execution of the girl, Tuptim, watered down for film viewers, illustrate only too clearly how foreign Siamese ideas of justice and religion were to those prevalent in Victorian Britain, let alone those in vogue in the 20th century. Anna's departure from Siam did not have, as popularly thought, anything to do with the King's death, and he did not plead with her to remain. However, she was in the process of negotiating to return to his court when he was taken ill and died.

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That the King had some regard for Anna is indicated by the fact that she and her son were both mentioned in his will, though they never received the legacy.

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Relations with King Chulalongkorn

The young King Chulalongkorn, elected according to Siamese tradition to succeed his father, made many reforms including the abolition of the practice of prostration before the royal person. Anna's teaching of him cannot be given complete credit for this, but it would be surprising if she had not had some influence on him. By this time she was already contributing articles based on her experiences to the "Atlantic Monthly", which were later expanded into two volumes of memoirs which earned her immediate notoriety, despite the stilted manner in which she wrote. She became personally acquainted with Harriet Beecher Stowe, author of Uncle Tom's Cabin, a book whose anti-slavery message had not been lost on some of Anna's pupils in Siam. She visited America, Russia and other European countries, and eventually met King Chulalongkorn again when he visited London in 1897, thirty years after she had left Siam. He himself expressed his debt to her on that occasion.

Related Topics:
Harriet Beecher Stowe - Uncle Tom's Cabin - 1897

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