Masked: The Life of Anna Leonowens, Schoolmistress at the Court of Siam

Wisconsin Studies in Autobiography

by Alfred Habegger

A brave British widow goes to Siam and—by dint of her principled and indomitable character—inspires that despotic nation to abolish slavery and absolute this appealing legend first took shape after the Civil War when Anna Leonowens came to America from Bangkok and succeeded in becoming a celebrity author and lecturer. Three decades after her death, in the 1940s and 1950s, the story would be transformed into a powerful Western myth by Margaret Landon’s best-selling book Anna and the King of Siam and Rodgers and Hammerstein’s musical The King and I .
            But who was Leonowens and why did her story take hold? Although it has been known for some time that she was of Anglo-Indian parentage and that her tales about the Siamese court are unreliable, not until now, with the publication of Masked , has there been a deeply researched account of her extraordinary life. Alfred Habegger, an award-winning biographer, draws on the archives of five continents and recent Thai-language scholarship to disclose the complex person behind the mask and the troubling facts behind the myth. He also ponders the curious fit between Leonowens’s compelling fabrications and the New World’s innocent dreams—in particular the dream that democracy can be spread through quick and easy interventions.
Exploring the full historic complexity of what it once meant to pass as white, Masked pays close attention to Leonowens’s midlevel origins in British India, her education at a Bombay charity school for Eurasian children, her material and social milieu in Australia and Singapore, the stresses she endured in Bangkok as a working widow, the latent melancholy that often afflicted her, the problematic aspects of her self-invention, and the welcome she found in America, where a circle of elite New England abolitionists who knew nothing about Southeast Asia gave her their uncritical support. Her embellished story would again capture America’s imagination as World War II ended and a newly interventionist United States looked toward Asia.

Best Books for General Audiences, selected by the American Association of School Librarians

Best Regional Special Interest Boosk, selected by the Public Library Reviewers

Genres: History, Biography, Nonfiction, Historical, Biography Memoir

543 pages, Hardcover

First published January 1, 2014

About the author

Alfred Habegger is professor emeritus in English at the University of Kansas, where he taught from 1966 until his retirement in 1996. He earned his BA at Bethel College in 1962 and his Ph.D. from Stanford University in 1967.

Reviews

[Jane · Rating 5 out of 5]

This was an interesting read about the life of Anna Leonowens, the real individual upon whom the character of Anna in musical The King and I is based. It has long been revealed that the real Anna hid her Anglo-Indian origins, creating a mask of a proper Victorian English governess. This character that was invented by the real life person is the Anna that was further developed by the author Margaret Landan which then led to the Anna seen on the screen. The book ends with a couple of chapters dealing with the fictitious Anna which rounded out the truth and legend appropriately.

[Liss Carmody · Rating 3 out of 5]

Having grown up seeing The King and I a number of times, as well as Anna and the King in theaters, a rebuttal of some of the more problematic aspects of these two films is not something I was at all amiss to encountering. Herbage leads the reader on a thorough and deliberate overview of Anna Leonowens' life, beginning at her ancestors and tracing her own experiences through shaky Eurasian upbringing and a tumultuous marriage, through what would become formative events for her in the royal court of Siam. It shouldn't surprise anyone that the image of this court as portrayed in Leonowens' writing, and the subsequent film adaptations, is warped and eurocentric, and yet it perpetually surprises. If I have any complaints, it's that the tone was a little bit dry, and that the author sometimes seems to find one claim 'credible' and another not so based on criteria that seem a bit arbitrary or at least could stand to be spelled out further. Very much a worthwhile read, however, and now I feel compelled to re-watch these films with a more critical eye.

[Mark Werderitsch · Rating 5 out of 5]

Fascinating study of an enigmatic woman.

Anna Leonowens is well known to most American by means of the musical "The King and I," a revival of which has been running at Lincoln Center in New York for nearly a year, as well as the 1956 film. However, the real Anna is nothing like the woman in the movies. In her own books, she puffed up her influence with the king regarding his Westernizing of Siam, now Thailand. This is as thoroughly researched biography of an enigmatic woman who had to hide her inconvenient past to further the prospects of herself (as a wage earner after her husband died in 1859 when she was only 28, and those of the two of her four children who lived past infancy. I can say little because it would spoil the book. But this is a must read for anyone who is a fan of the musical or the various films and books on Anna, including her own.

[Ann · Rating 4 out of 5]

I watched the Yul Brynner edition of The King and I in the late fifties and was fascinated by this movie with its exotic setting and my husband spent two tours in Thailand courtesy of The USAF so I was interested in reading this book. I was surprised at the disclosures of fiction against facts. This book is a scholarly study of Anna Leanowens and her life from birth to death and what factored into her tales. In short, she was a drama queen and it paid her to be one in order to survive in Victorian times and of being of mixed race. Her book also was influenced by the Evangelical movement of missionaries and her close ties with American missionaries . Her contacts allowed her to survive in America with teaching. Her books and writings fell out of favor as time ran on.

[Linda · Rating 5 out of 5]

Very well researched book. So sad that most of what Anna Leonowens is a lie. Her whole family history is invalid. This makes me wonder how much other "history" has been rewritten. I would have loved to kniw how her sister and mother felt when she rejected them to hide her ancestory. Did she have regrets? Did her children or grandchildren ever know? This book is a reminder about why sourcing should be checked and authors need to practice critical thinking.

[Rose · Rating 5 out of 5]

Fascinating. Who knew that the life of Anna Leonowens was so much more complicated and interesting than her stay in Siam? Impressively and impecably researched. Corrects many of the errors in previous biographies which results in a richer narrative. Nice illustrations and very helpful genealogical chart.

[Jennie · Rating 1 out of 5]

Very very dry. One long rebuttal to all of her published works.