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Olivia appears very often in the novel and is described most exactly. She is apparently relatively small, graceful and feminine in appearance; the narrator uses adjectives like „slim“ and „slender“ to describe her. She attracts the attention of the Nawab. Olivia spends a lot of time in her house, playing the piano or reading, which makes her appear a rather conventional middle-class wife from an age long past. She is married to a British offical calles Douglas whom she finds „noble and fair“. I guess Olivia yearns to explore the exotic world beyond her door, but as she is at heart passive and dependent on others, she mostly sits at home waiting for something to happen.

The Nawab enters her life as a welcome escape from her boring life. This explains why she grasps at every opportunity to accept his hospitality and is annoyed when Dougls sees things differently. In her uncritical admiration for the Indian prince, she shows herself to be naive and dominated by her instincts. She dimisses the repeated warnings concerning the Nawab from within the British community. Within the community at Satipur Olivia remains an outsider. She has nothing in common with the older women, mrs Crawford and Mrs Minnies. She is also an outsider within the world of India undertaking nothing for example to learn the local language or to make friends among Indian women.

But Olivia was changed by the Indian experience. The change becomes obvious when you contrast an early episode involving Olivia´s fear of death in childbirth with her later decision to voluntarily undergo an Indian abortion.

p.147, ll.12-17 The narrator´s views of Olivia