Brian Pennington note that the representation of India in these reports must be examined in their context and with care for its evangelical and colonial ideology. The reports by Carey were conditioned by his background, personal factors and his own religious beliefs. The polemic notes and observations of Carey, and his colleague William Ward, were in a community suffering from extreme poverty and epidemics, and they constructed a view of the culture of India and Hinduism in light of their missionary goals. These reports were by those who had declared their conviction in foreign missionary work, and the letters describe experiences of foreigners who were resented by both the Indian populace as well as European officials and competing Christian groups. Their accounts of culture and Hinduism were forged in Bengal that was physically, politically and spiritually difficult to preach in. Pennington summarises the accounts reported by Carey and his colleagues as follows, Carey recommended that his fellow Anglo-Indians learn and interpret Sanskrit in a manner "compatible with colonial aims", writing that "to gain the ear of those who are thus deceived, it is necessary for them to believe that the speaker has a superior knowledge of the subject. In these circumstances, knowledge of Sanskrit is valuable." According to Indian historian V. Rao, Carey lacked understanding and respect for Indian culture, with him describing Indian music as "disgusting" and bringing to mind practices "dishonorable" to God. Such attitudes affected the literature authored by Carey and his colleagues. Family history Biographies of Carey, such as those by F. D. Walker and J. B. Myers, only allude to Carey's distress caused by the mental illness and subsequent breakdown suffered by his wife, Dorothy, in the early years of their ministry in India. More recently, Beck's biography of Dorothy Carey paints a more detailed picture: William Carey uprooted his family from all that was familiar and sought to settle them in one of the most unlikely and difficult cultures in the world for an uneducated eighteenth century British working-class woman. Faced with enormous difficulties in adjusting to all of this change, she failed to make the adjustment emotionally and ultimately, mentally, and her husband seemed to be unable to help her through all of this because he just did not know what to do about it. Carey even wrote to his sisters in England on 5 October 1795, that "I have been for some