Something that strikes me incredibly about Growing is the “theatrical unreality” (23) of colonial life that Woolf draws our attention to early on. Notably, he says “I could never make up my mind whether Kipling had moulded his characters accurately in the image of Anglo-Indian society or whether we were moulding our characters accurately in the image of a Kipling story. (46) We have been in this module studying fictional constructions of colonial portrayal, only to be told that real colonials were very much like fictional constructions. While Woolf’s account then reflects favourably on the Orwellian and Forsterian characters we have debated the realism of; it also more ominously brings to mind the lesson Conrad makes for us of “Lord Jim,” who, consuming adventure fiction, died a deluded romantic hero. Here, we see Woolf’s suspicion that real life colonials have consumed Kipling’s colonial fiction and thus fashion their conduct in a textbook portrayal of what they believe through popular fiction their colonial lives should be like.
Of course, through Stoler’s examination of the myth and realities of colonial living, we are made intensely aware of the fictionality and constructedness of the supremacy of the Empire and European identity, which makes the real colonial’s strict adherence to fictional prescriptions of conduct hardly any more unreasonable than a strict adherence to manuals bearing mythical beliefs of the make-up of Europeans and the colonised. In such a light, anti-imperialist texts, or at least texts such as Growing that highlight the unnaturalness of such conduct become important in opposition to Empire-supporting narratives such as The White Man’s Burden.
Wednesday, October 29, 2008
Stoler and Concubinage
Pardon me for this late entry! here are my thoughts on Stoler's article...
Stoler argues that the colonizer-colonized categories and labels were layed out by "forms of sexual control" and "defined the domestic arrangements of Europeans and the cultural investments by which they identified themselves"(42). Hence, she says that inperial authority is structured in highly gendered terms, and this sexuality and gender to a large extent gave the colonial system its order and manner.
I find this interesting because it assumes that the women were of a subordinate position, when i would instead propose that women in fact had an upper hand in a system like this, whether they realised it or not. They were being instrumental in shifting the colonial system of meaning from self-interest and moral superiority, making clear the weak links in narratives of colonial legitimization.
When stoler says, "most of these women remained servants... but some combined their service with varied degrees of independence and authorit"(49), the point here is that women had a way out, or rather, a way to manipulate their position and manipulate their men to their benefit, and we do see an example of this in May in Burmese Days.
So while Stoler seems to talk aboout "reinforced hierarchies" due to concubinage, i think the more important issue is how these hierarchies are problematised. There is a definite shift from the twice colonized subaltern woman(by patriarchy and by the colonizer) to the subaltern woman with agency and upon whom the colonizing sommunity was deeply dependent on.
Stoler argues that the colonizer-colonized categories and labels were layed out by "forms of sexual control" and "defined the domestic arrangements of Europeans and the cultural investments by which they identified themselves"(42). Hence, she says that inperial authority is structured in highly gendered terms, and this sexuality and gender to a large extent gave the colonial system its order and manner.
I find this interesting because it assumes that the women were of a subordinate position, when i would instead propose that women in fact had an upper hand in a system like this, whether they realised it or not. They were being instrumental in shifting the colonial system of meaning from self-interest and moral superiority, making clear the weak links in narratives of colonial legitimization.
When stoler says, "most of these women remained servants... but some combined their service with varied degrees of independence and authorit"(49), the point here is that women had a way out, or rather, a way to manipulate their position and manipulate their men to their benefit, and we do see an example of this in May in Burmese Days.
So while Stoler seems to talk aboout "reinforced hierarchies" due to concubinage, i think the more important issue is how these hierarchies are problematised. There is a definite shift from the twice colonized subaltern woman(by patriarchy and by the colonizer) to the subaltern woman with agency and upon whom the colonizing sommunity was deeply dependent on.
The Furry Death
Dear Leonard Woolf, I personally do not find your subject of animals irritating in the least: no, indeed, I rather wish you'd had gone on. And on. And on. Or at least explained what exactly Bambi does when he acquires a nicotine addiction. i find myself horribly intrigued by Charles, "obviously a pukka English dog", as opposed to the pariah "yellow" dogs; I wonder what breed he was to have been so saliently genuine or superior, that he would, possessed by an "imperialist Anglo-Indian spirit" recognize a "native" cat. Caliber in this instance is proved by violence, the "rapidity" of murder that gleans "considerable prestige", which also gets translated into "canine society"- very reminiscent of colonial reaction and the modernist theme of anxiety about new uncertainties.
Growing actually made me think of a line: "For we are surrounded by mirrors, walled in by contradictory images of ourselves" when Woolf ponders on the rightness of sitting on a horse "arrogantly". This contradictory nature is also keenly observed in the anecdote he provided of his encounter of the graves of Adam and Eve. Charles is here the "dog of an infidel". The infidel here is also the savior, being trailed by "smiles and shaking of heads and lifting of hands".
Running an empire is, too, much like taming an elephant, using co-opted natives like "tame elephants" to assuage resistance, it's a "precarious position".
Who watched the newest episode of South Park (Pandemic) and tried grafting Stoler's ideas onto it? So if you obviously are a Peruvian pan flute band and yet... at the same time you're obviously not, you may very well be key in overthrowing Peru or saving the world from giant guinea pigs. Or it could just be why Craig says the kids at school dislike you. Heh heh heh.
Growing actually made me think of a line: "For we are surrounded by mirrors, walled in by contradictory images of ourselves" when Woolf ponders on the rightness of sitting on a horse "arrogantly". This contradictory nature is also keenly observed in the anecdote he provided of his encounter of the graves of Adam and Eve. Charles is here the "dog of an infidel". The infidel here is also the savior, being trailed by "smiles and shaking of heads and lifting of hands".
Running an empire is, too, much like taming an elephant, using co-opted natives like "tame elephants" to assuage resistance, it's a "precarious position".
Who watched the newest episode of South Park (Pandemic) and tried grafting Stoler's ideas onto it? So if you obviously are a Peruvian pan flute band and yet... at the same time you're obviously not, you may very well be key in overthrowing Peru or saving the world from giant guinea pigs. Or it could just be why Craig says the kids at school dislike you. Heh heh heh.
modernist by last name
I think my favourite question to ask is whether or not a text is modernist. So…is Growing modernist? I don’t think so but I shall suggest modernist elements other than those already talked about. I feel that the modernist impulse in Woolf has less to do with consciouness (as in the other Woolf) and instead more with narrative and representation.
I thought a very strong modernist gesture lay in the way Woolf would constantly take little sidetrips out of the narrative and tell us little anecdotes about various people. For instance, he relates Dutton’s naivety in sexual matters by way of an “example”, which comes in the form of a little story within a story. This serves to fragment the narrative in a sense, such that while narrative continuity is maintained, the notion of a single, overarching and totalitarian narrative is reduced. The same example is also similar to what Auerbach – remember him?! – describes as “excurses, whose relations in time to the occurrence which frames them seem to be entirely different” (537). Of course, the only occurrence that takes place here is the act of narration; nonetheless, these ‘excurses’ break up the temporal continuity of the narrative into two discontinuous narrative sequences.
These anecdotes also give the text an impressionistic quality – we learn about characters like Dutton through the impressions that Woolf gives us, rather than straightforward description. The most obvious – and funniest example I can think of is his encounter with Mrs Dutton:
“…perhaps owing to the overpowering smell of clean linen, it gave me the feeling of unmitigated chastity…”
Such suggestiveness even though he never really tells the readers what it is that makes her so miserable! However, my point is that impressionism makes the reader acutely aware of the mediating presence of the author/narrator, along with the realisation that the evocative images we are given are subjective impressions of a non-omniscient, non-objective narrator.
(299 words, excluding quote)
I thought a very strong modernist gesture lay in the way Woolf would constantly take little sidetrips out of the narrative and tell us little anecdotes about various people. For instance, he relates Dutton’s naivety in sexual matters by way of an “example”, which comes in the form of a little story within a story. This serves to fragment the narrative in a sense, such that while narrative continuity is maintained, the notion of a single, overarching and totalitarian narrative is reduced. The same example is also similar to what Auerbach – remember him?! – describes as “excurses, whose relations in time to the occurrence which frames them seem to be entirely different” (537). Of course, the only occurrence that takes place here is the act of narration; nonetheless, these ‘excurses’ break up the temporal continuity of the narrative into two discontinuous narrative sequences.
These anecdotes also give the text an impressionistic quality – we learn about characters like Dutton through the impressions that Woolf gives us, rather than straightforward description. The most obvious – and funniest example I can think of is his encounter with Mrs Dutton:
“…perhaps owing to the overpowering smell of clean linen, it gave me the feeling of unmitigated chastity…”
Such suggestiveness even though he never really tells the readers what it is that makes her so miserable! However, my point is that impressionism makes the reader acutely aware of the mediating presence of the author/narrator, along with the realisation that the evocative images we are given are subjective impressions of a non-omniscient, non-objective narrator.
(299 words, excluding quote)
Dogone days...
I think it was the way Woolf framed it but I was exasperated that even the dog possessed “the imperialist Anglo-Indian spirit” such that it knew its superiority over native dogs. It seemed rather odd Woolf’s claim that he was curiously unaware of his status as an imperialist. Surely the climate in the colonies was sufficiently different from London and the power the sahibs possess over the natives must have been apparent. The tennis club, in the same way as the European club in Burmese Days, was as a symbol of white superiority and exclusivity. Perhaps he was unconsciously justifying his role by feigning ignorance?
Stoler noted that “what European women had to say had little resonance and little effect until their objections coincided with realignment in both racial and class politics in which they were strategic” (Stoler 57). Here, I am reminded of the sensation stirred by Adela’s alleged sexual assault by Aziz in Passage to India, and the absence and silence of women in Growing. The few women we encounter are that of miserable wives of colonial administrators as they enter into the prison of marriage. Mrs Dutton transits from a relatively independent missionary to the confines of a sterile marriage. Mrs Price bears her suffering in silence “except for the unhappiness terribly stamped on her face”.
Comparing the role of Ma Kin and the European wives, Mrs Price and Mrs Dutton, all three women do not have autonomy and suffer their roles in silence. The men do not take them seriously nor value their opinions let alone care about their happiness in the marriage. How different are they? Perhaps the only endorsement available to European wives is to take on the role of the male imperialist dog (like Elizabeth’s high-handed treatment of domestic staff after marriage in Burmese Days).
Stoler noted that “what European women had to say had little resonance and little effect until their objections coincided with realignment in both racial and class politics in which they were strategic” (Stoler 57). Here, I am reminded of the sensation stirred by Adela’s alleged sexual assault by Aziz in Passage to India, and the absence and silence of women in Growing. The few women we encounter are that of miserable wives of colonial administrators as they enter into the prison of marriage. Mrs Dutton transits from a relatively independent missionary to the confines of a sterile marriage. Mrs Price bears her suffering in silence “except for the unhappiness terribly stamped on her face”.
Comparing the role of Ma Kin and the European wives, Mrs Price and Mrs Dutton, all three women do not have autonomy and suffer their roles in silence. The men do not take them seriously nor value their opinions let alone care about their happiness in the marriage. How different are they? Perhaps the only endorsement available to European wives is to take on the role of the male imperialist dog (like Elizabeth’s high-handed treatment of domestic staff after marriage in Burmese Days).
Putting a face to imperialism/colonialism
I have no clue how Leonard Woolf looks like, but somehow, strangely, I feel that he has managed to put a human face to imperialism/colonialism. But why? Has it to do with this 'frank' feeling I get while reading the text? Or is it because he was (so he claims) "a very innocent, unconscious imperialist" (25)?
Unlike the other texts, I find that Woolf's autobiography provides a new perspective into imperialism/colonialism. While it addresses the negative aspects of modernity on the empire - changing the natural landscape (48), erasure of culture (49), the hum drum of the machinery (53), it also points out the positive aspects - efficiency of a regulated system (110), etc... The text recognises the tension of "holding the balance" (110), perhaps it is its awareness of the "difficulties and the frictions" (111) of imperialism that somehow neutralizes this text.
Is it just me, or is this text very comforting? Odd word, but I do not find myself cringing or horrified as I was with the other texts.. maybe it is the lack of abuse and military might.
Literary References in Woolf
Woolf makes several explicit literary references over the course of "Jaffna"; He directly casts Mrs Lewis as an archtypal character from a Jane Austen novel, likens the native Sinnatamby, as well as the white people around him, to characters from a Kipling novel - he goes so far as to say that 'I could never make up my mind whether Kipling had moulded his characters accurately in the image of Anglo-Indian society or whether we were moulding our characters accurately in the image of a Kipling story'. Later on, he likens the 'profound melancholy and fatalism' lying beneath the surface of the natives to something that 'permeates the scenery and characters of a Hardy novel'. The effect of this is to highlight the unreality and performity of the situation that Woolf finds himself in, such that he seems to be living in the pages of a work of fiction. It makes his point that the Anglo-Indians are displaced people out of their natural habitat - echoes of Passage to India here.
The Heterotopic Imagination: Remembrance of Woolf's Past
I’d like to focus on the interesting premises and assumptions on which the literary form of autobiography is based. As an enterprise that ostensibly and reliably accounts for a person’s life, the form provokes the ever pertinent question of how any kind of writing or narrating can purport to represent a stage of life in its entirety and objectivity. Woolf zeroes in on this when he admits that “[d]airies and letters almost always give an exaggerated, one-sided picture of the writer’s state of mind… Even to ourselves we habitually exaggerate the splendours and miseries of our life”. Woolf's constant referring to letters that he writes to Lytton show up the fact that he relates to himself as text that is self-consciously fashioned and produced. He also sees other people as characters coming out from other colonial literary texts like Kipling's.
While never reaching the comic and absurd extremes like Tristram Shandy does in his quest to hold a mirror to his own life, Woolf shows us that writing is indeed a form of disciplining the self. Like Proust’s narrator, Woolf reaches into his past and finds meaning and significance in the events that have happened and that thus can become aesthetically representable. In fact, Woolf’s writing makes explicit what is inherent in all writing: by separating the “I” that writes in 1960 about events that have happened in 1905, autobiography as a form posits that textual meaning can only arise as a result of this deferral in time, and displacement of space. The retrospective coding of colonial place as something sacrificed to modernity achieves its resonance at the juncture of its topographical reality that inheres, and its necessary deferral into a form of textual “exotic” and unreality. The event of writing (of the self) happens through this distance achieved.
While never reaching the comic and absurd extremes like Tristram Shandy does in his quest to hold a mirror to his own life, Woolf shows us that writing is indeed a form of disciplining the self. Like Proust’s narrator, Woolf reaches into his past and finds meaning and significance in the events that have happened and that thus can become aesthetically representable. In fact, Woolf’s writing makes explicit what is inherent in all writing: by separating the “I” that writes in 1960 about events that have happened in 1905, autobiography as a form posits that textual meaning can only arise as a result of this deferral in time, and displacement of space. The retrospective coding of colonial place as something sacrificed to modernity achieves its resonance at the juncture of its topographical reality that inheres, and its necessary deferral into a form of textual “exotic” and unreality. The event of writing (of the self) happens through this distance achieved.
Thoughts on Stoler
Stoler's article argues that "categories of 'colonizer' and 'colonized' were secured through forms of sexual control," these forms of sexual control and the “rationality” behind them are furthermore dynamic, and change overtime for the purpose of maintaining imperial power. Stoler supports her argument by giving examples of how concubinage is viewed differently over time.
Despite these shifting views of concubinage, what remains static for me is not just simply that the binaries of 'colonizer' and 'colonized' are maintained, but that concubinage is never discouraged (not until the early 20th century- when way to many mixed kids started popping out) and sex remains a common denominator in these shifting views. This is interesting because these sexual exchanges seem to be a consequence of [???- not sure] the economic exchange and trade that colonialism is about.
Economic exchange and sexual exchanges are perhaps one and the same thing. (think commodification of bodies). As a result, everything is reduced and thought of in terms of money. Someone said last week that money effaces race, perhaps its not the erasure of race in the sense of being able to transcend the social class that is associated with your race, but rather, the unmarking and effacement of your individual cultural past, and also the act of re-inscribing you with a new kind of marking/worth- in terms of dollars and cents, in order that the native might remain dependent. The institutionalization of these hybrid children as a form of containing hybridity is then just another "thing”/mechanism that arises from this capitalist system, just as it is also the capitalist machine that in the very first place gives rise to these shifting forms of sexual control that “secure” these binaries.
I hope I make sense, got a bit confuse myself while typing. ☺
Despite these shifting views of concubinage, what remains static for me is not just simply that the binaries of 'colonizer' and 'colonized' are maintained, but that concubinage is never discouraged (not until the early 20th century- when way to many mixed kids started popping out) and sex remains a common denominator in these shifting views. This is interesting because these sexual exchanges seem to be a consequence of [???- not sure] the economic exchange and trade that colonialism is about.
Economic exchange and sexual exchanges are perhaps one and the same thing. (think commodification of bodies). As a result, everything is reduced and thought of in terms of money. Someone said last week that money effaces race, perhaps its not the erasure of race in the sense of being able to transcend the social class that is associated with your race, but rather, the unmarking and effacement of your individual cultural past, and also the act of re-inscribing you with a new kind of marking/worth- in terms of dollars and cents, in order that the native might remain dependent. The institutionalization of these hybrid children as a form of containing hybridity is then just another "thing”/mechanism that arises from this capitalist system, just as it is also the capitalist machine that in the very first place gives rise to these shifting forms of sexual control that “secure” these binaries.
I hope I make sense, got a bit confuse myself while typing. ☺
colonial identity = masculine identity
the colonial anxieties of emasculation continue in leonard woolf, as we see from his description of dutton and miss beeching: "He seemed to have shrunk and she to have swollen...I sometimes think this must be the ideal life for a male--and, after performing his male functions, is killed by her or just dies. Not that I thought that Mrs. Dutton would kill and eat Dutton; but she seemed somehow or other to have absorbed what little life and virility he possessed." (72) this proves again how the colonial identity is tied inextricably to the masculine identity and its anxieties of challenge from any frontier of the suppressed and disempowered--whether female, native or other. while interpretations of colonialism and imperialism as an outlet for excess male sexual energy or as a sublimation of sexuality (hyam) might seem a little exaggerated, stoler's claim that "imperial authority and racial distinctions were fundamentally structured in gendered terms" (42) is certainly legitimised by the overwhelming literary (and historical--as she has introduced in 'carnal knowledge') evidence brought to bear on the idea that the colonial identity is fundamentally tied to masculine identity and is, as such, gendered.
It is significant that while marriage and sex are sites wherein the male is able to exert his sexual dominance, they are paradoxically then also the sites of his possible failure and sexual ineptitude. Mrs. Dutton's swelling and appropriation of her husband's virility reflect masculine anxieties about marriage and sex as potential sites of impotence. furthermore, the idea that the masculine identity is tied to performing some kind of sexual function, after which he is rendered useless and ineffectual reduces the masculine identity as tied to a simple physical function--a shallow act lacking actual substance. Likewise, the colonial mask is a "facade" for woolf, and as we have discussed with orwell's elephant, colonialism is very much the assertion and upholding of the image of the potent, virile male with whom must lie all military, racial and sexual power. Stoler's gendered analysis then is very useful for dissecting the colonial identity as fundamentally tied to masculine identity.
It is significant that while marriage and sex are sites wherein the male is able to exert his sexual dominance, they are paradoxically then also the sites of his possible failure and sexual ineptitude. Mrs. Dutton's swelling and appropriation of her husband's virility reflect masculine anxieties about marriage and sex as potential sites of impotence. furthermore, the idea that the masculine identity is tied to performing some kind of sexual function, after which he is rendered useless and ineffectual reduces the masculine identity as tied to a simple physical function--a shallow act lacking actual substance. Likewise, the colonial mask is a "facade" for woolf, and as we have discussed with orwell's elephant, colonialism is very much the assertion and upholding of the image of the potent, virile male with whom must lie all military, racial and sexual power. Stoler's gendered analysis then is very useful for dissecting the colonial identity as fundamentally tied to masculine identity.
The Sun, the Sand, and the Sea....
Landscape becomes the site of physical and metaphorical change in Woolf’s “Growing”. The change also suggest a disjuncture between the metropole and the colony- not merely physically but psychologically as well.
It starts with the “warm welcome” of the harsh tropics for the “innocent, unconscious imperialist” like himself: "the Colombo sun, which in the late morning hits one as if a burning hand were smacking one's face, the whole of my past life in London and Cambridge seemed suddenly to have vanished, to have faded away into unreality".
The new reality for him is this, the tropics. The climatic change becomes the first indicator of change- of the reality of his situation.
"The strange sense of complete break with the past, the physical sense or awareness of the final forgetting of the Thames, Tilbury, London, Cambridge, St. Paul's, and Brighton, which came upon me". The old memories and places have paved the way for these new sites of memory. The places and buildings become the second indicator of this new reality.
And finally, the fear of colonial administrators back in the metropole: "But I lived in it for many years... and it got into my heart and my bones… I lived inside it to some extent... so that something of its rhythm and tempo, like that of the lagoons and the jungle, crept permanently into my heart and my bones".
This is perhaps a final metamorphosis for the individual living in the colonies, perhaps? As indicated in the highlighted words- there’s a disjuncture from the past, a conjoining with the new. But of course, this does not necessarily mean that he no longer is an “English gentleman”. If so, the suggestion would be that memories and places maketh the [English] man.
It starts with the “warm welcome” of the harsh tropics for the “innocent, unconscious imperialist” like himself: "the Colombo sun, which in the late morning hits one as if a burning hand were smacking one's face, the whole of my past life in London and Cambridge seemed suddenly to have vanished, to have faded away into unreality".
The new reality for him is this, the tropics. The climatic change becomes the first indicator of change- of the reality of his situation.
"The strange sense of complete break with the past, the physical sense or awareness of the final forgetting of the Thames, Tilbury, London, Cambridge, St. Paul's, and Brighton, which came upon me". The old memories and places have paved the way for these new sites of memory. The places and buildings become the second indicator of this new reality.
And finally, the fear of colonial administrators back in the metropole: "But I lived in it for many years... and it got into my heart and my bones… I lived inside it to some extent... so that something of its rhythm and tempo, like that of the lagoons and the jungle, crept permanently into my heart and my bones".
This is perhaps a final metamorphosis for the individual living in the colonies, perhaps? As indicated in the highlighted words- there’s a disjuncture from the past, a conjoining with the new. But of course, this does not necessarily mean that he no longer is an “English gentleman”. If so, the suggestion would be that memories and places maketh the [English] man.
Stoler and the sleeping dictionary
When Stoler describes how British Imperialism rationalized concubinage by arguing that “local women could supply as useful guides to the language an other mysteries of local societies”, where they were credited for providing services that kept European men alive in their initial precarious acclimatization to harsh native climates and alien cultures, I was reminded of the Hollywood movie The Sleeping Dictionary, which starred Jessica Alba playing a native woman named Selima from Sarawak who becomes the concubine of a dashing white colonial officer John Truscott (Hugh Dancy) for the purposes of inducting him into the mysteries of the local language and culture. Apart from the gross historical inaccuracies of the film, it is interesting how the movie removes culpability from the British Imperial enterprise by representing concubinage not as a colonial practice sanctioned by the colonialism’s reluctance to export European women to the colonies, but as a native custom initiated by the Sarawak people, and merely tolerated by the British officials. In fact, the representation of the native custom of concubinage seems almost an imposition on the reluctant Truscott, who is represented as the gentlemanly and passive victim who initially struggles to comprehend why he has to abide by the savage native custom of concubinage. The native woman Selima is represented as the sexually aggressive and inexplicably exotic Other who becomes affronted when the gentlemanly and civilized British official rejects her advances because he is bound by his code of honor. Thus, concubinage is sentimentalized and romanticized in the movie because it is for the sake of being a good and responsible governor of the local natives that Truscott yields to concubinage. Stoler’s point that concubinage paradoxically reinforced the hierarchies on which colonial societies were based, while making these distinctions more problematic at the same time is also evident in the film when concubinage, which was supposed to be an “emotionally unfettered convenience” becomes a union that is “sustained and emotionally significant.” This is realized in the film when Truscott and Selima falls into a forbidden love and produces a mixed Eurasian child. This enrages both the communities of the colonizers and the colonized, because the metis child threatened to destabilise the binaristic categories of colonial difference that sustained the division between the white colonizer and the native colonized.
Growing Skewed
I find myself having a perplexed attitude towards 'Growing'. On one hand, I think it is subjective to the point of being unrealistic, and on the other, it seems jarringly honest.
Let’s take the honest bits first: he includes extracts of letters, many of which appear uncensored. There is crudeness in his letters (““f*** your wife” I added and enraged him”), as well as a kind of sadism regarding the incident of his owl and rat (“All night long he chases a rat round the dog kennel…he never catches him and as I never feed the rat, they are both slowly dying of starvation”). Also, he admits to sleeping with a “young Burgher girl”, an act that I am sure would not have reflected well of him then.
But I begin to challenge Woolf’s candidness when I see things like “No one, the man included, seemed to be much concerned by this” as a response to Woolf's mismanaged dog peeing on a Sinhalese man, or even that (according to him), “the Arabs were vastly amused” to be “hit…[by]a walking stick” to clear a path for himself. I see it as just another form of White validation of ‘native’ abuse—simply through a ‘but they don’t mind’ attitude. Woolf’s descriptions of events also seem exaggerated/almost ideological (the way the native crows began “eating the vomit as it came out” of Charles’s mouth, or the fact that tiny Charles defeated 3 “large” native dogs, each double his size mind you). I also find his depictions of women in the text fairly extreme, almost like caricatures—we see the phrases “true to type”, “true to the type”, “the kind of wife”, “the…freckled type”—who are flatly/spectrally depicted—“she was a Jane Austen character”, “an inveterate matchmaker”, “went out of her way to say the most outrageous things at the most awkward moments”, “two angels performing a miracle”. Perhaps, the politics of mis/ representation are in play here.
Let’s take the honest bits first: he includes extracts of letters, many of which appear uncensored. There is crudeness in his letters (““f*** your wife” I added and enraged him”), as well as a kind of sadism regarding the incident of his owl and rat (“All night long he chases a rat round the dog kennel…he never catches him and as I never feed the rat, they are both slowly dying of starvation”). Also, he admits to sleeping with a “young Burgher girl”, an act that I am sure would not have reflected well of him then.
But I begin to challenge Woolf’s candidness when I see things like “No one, the man included, seemed to be much concerned by this” as a response to Woolf's mismanaged dog peeing on a Sinhalese man, or even that (according to him), “the Arabs were vastly amused” to be “hit…[by]a walking stick” to clear a path for himself. I see it as just another form of White validation of ‘native’ abuse—simply through a ‘but they don’t mind’ attitude. Woolf’s descriptions of events also seem exaggerated/almost ideological (the way the native crows began “eating the vomit as it came out” of Charles’s mouth, or the fact that tiny Charles defeated 3 “large” native dogs, each double his size mind you). I also find his depictions of women in the text fairly extreme, almost like caricatures—we see the phrases “true to type”, “true to the type”, “the kind of wife”, “the…freckled type”—who are flatly/spectrally depicted—“she was a Jane Austen character”, “an inveterate matchmaker”, “went out of her way to say the most outrageous things at the most awkward moments”, “two angels performing a miracle”. Perhaps, the politics of mis/ representation are in play here.
Is Woolf really so different from all the other Dead White Men?
I, like some others it seems, was looking forward to Woolf being an entirely non-racist writer. However, I was initially disappointed by page 54 when he describes the people of Jaffna and Haambantota kachcheris as
Lest someone say I quote out of context, here Woolf compares the native favourably against the white man who "live..behind our lace curtains in the image...of the rubber stamp and the machine" (Woolf, 54). He celebrates the natives "animal" qualities as opposed to the functional, non-instinctual lives of the Europeans who also have the "desires and passions of the primitive man" (Woolf, 53), but are too inhibited by the superego (Woolf, 54).
Arguably, comparing natives to beautiful jungle animals may not be that insulting in a technical sense. However, I fail to see how it is in any way flattering that their "individuality" is compared to a beggar totally honest about displaying his "appalling sores and ulcers and monstrous malformations", images all associated with disease. Woolf also falls into the thought which associates the land with certain qualities which then "infect" the peoples - people who live near the jungle behave like jungle animals. What I'm saying is this: even as Woolf claims to celebrate the native, his language seems to undercut the content - i don't know if this a subconscious racism or a product of the cultural framework and language norms in which the imperialist functions.
nearer than we are to primitive man and there are many nasty things about primitive man...They live so close to the jungle that they retain some thing of the litheness and beauty of jungle animals...They do not conceal their individuality any more than their beggars conceal their appalling sores and ulcers and monstrous malformations.
Lest someone say I quote out of context, here Woolf compares the native favourably against the white man who "live..behind our lace curtains in the image...of the rubber stamp and the machine" (Woolf, 54). He celebrates the natives "animal" qualities as opposed to the functional, non-instinctual lives of the Europeans who also have the "desires and passions of the primitive man" (Woolf, 53), but are too inhibited by the superego (Woolf, 54).
Arguably, comparing natives to beautiful jungle animals may not be that insulting in a technical sense. However, I fail to see how it is in any way flattering that their "individuality" is compared to a beggar totally honest about displaying his "appalling sores and ulcers and monstrous malformations", images all associated with disease. Woolf also falls into the thought which associates the land with certain qualities which then "infect" the peoples - people who live near the jungle behave like jungle animals. What I'm saying is this: even as Woolf claims to celebrate the native, his language seems to undercut the content - i don't know if this a subconscious racism or a product of the cultural framework and language norms in which the imperialist functions.
(Not at) Home Away from Home: Out of Country, Out of Character
Woolf's “Jaffna”, like “Shooting an Elephant”, is centred on and driven by a main protagonist, typically an average-rank official: an insider to the Empire, yet one who looks in from the outside. Like the elephant-shooting official, who is forced to operate as an automaton within the imperialist system, of which flaws and motives he recognises, so also Woolf saw imperialism from the outside in and “gradually became fully aware of its nature and problems”. While such self-awareness might be praised, it in fact detaches characters (and authors?) from responsibility for the ills of empire while they yet remain in it.
Interestingly, the authors we’ve been reading tend to pad their characters’ actions by contrasting home and being “out there” (Heart of Darkness 17). Woolf tellingly opens the “Jaffna” section by disclaiming that
Also, the characters in Heart of Darkness and Burmese Days are so unnerved by being in foreign lands that they just can’t function in character, conveniently accounting for their exploitative and cruel acts.
From the realm of the caves, Forster’s words echo thus: “We’re not pleasant in India, and we don’t intend to be pleasant. We’ve something more important to do” (Passage 45). Contrary to Fielding’s quip that “You can make India in England apparently, just as you can make England in India” (67), the impulse to detach characters and their motives from their actions with the "out-of-country, out-of-character” mentality prove otherwise – you can’t make England anywhere else than England – and betray the nagging need to account for the vast number of crimes committed in the name of colonialism.
(300 words)
Interestingly, the authors we’ve been reading tend to pad their characters’ actions by contrasting home and being “out there” (Heart of Darkness 17). Woolf tellingly opens the “Jaffna” section by disclaiming that
If one lives where one was born and bred, the continuity of one’s existence gives it…accepted reality. But if…one suddenly uproots oneself into a strange land and a strange life, one feels as if one were acting…or…in a dream.
Also, the characters in Heart of Darkness and Burmese Days are so unnerved by being in foreign lands that they just can’t function in character, conveniently accounting for their exploitative and cruel acts.
From the realm of the caves, Forster’s words echo thus: “We’re not pleasant in India, and we don’t intend to be pleasant. We’ve something more important to do” (Passage 45). Contrary to Fielding’s quip that “You can make India in England apparently, just as you can make England in India” (67), the impulse to detach characters and their motives from their actions with the "out-of-country, out-of-character” mentality prove otherwise – you can’t make England anywhere else than England – and betray the nagging need to account for the vast number of crimes committed in the name of colonialism.
(300 words)
Modernist experiences in Ceylon
Using Woolf’s “letter to Lytton” on May 21 1905, I am going to discuss how the experience of Woolf’s colonial encounter with the Indian “natives” is one of modernist alienation and disorientation. In this letter, Woolf draws our attention to the uncertainty and instability of events in the foreign space of the Jaffna Penisula using the metaphor of the cataclysm: “a hole had suddenly appeared in the midst of a field about 5 miles from Jaffna . . . every five or ten minutes, the crack widens and the earth topples over into the water, which heaves and swirls and eddies” (22). It is possible, I think, to see this violent geographical occurrence as a symbolic externalization of Woolf’s disturbed mind, disturbed because the colonial encounter and experience is one that is disorientating and confusing, to the extent that he can “neither read, nor think nor – in the old way he feel[s]” (22).
Certainly, Woolf’s disorientation here develops largely because of his alienation in “suddenly [uprooting] oneself into a strange land and a strange life” (3). The colonial encounter is seen as defamiliarizing and thus evoked as if it were an illusion, where “one feels as if one were acting in a play or living in a dream” (3). Indeed, the phantasgamoric element of the colonial encounter is continuously reinforced by Woolf: “there was something extraordinary real and at the same time unreal in the sights and sounds and smells – the whole impact of Colombo, the G.O.H., and Ceylon in those first hours and days, and this curious mixture of intense reality and unreality applied to all my seven years in Ceylon” (3). Ceylon, in other words, can be seen as the place where European anxieties are displaced and performed.
Certainly, Woolf’s disorientation here develops largely because of his alienation in “suddenly [uprooting] oneself into a strange land and a strange life” (3). The colonial encounter is seen as defamiliarizing and thus evoked as if it were an illusion, where “one feels as if one were acting in a play or living in a dream” (3). Indeed, the phantasgamoric element of the colonial encounter is continuously reinforced by Woolf: “there was something extraordinary real and at the same time unreal in the sights and sounds and smells – the whole impact of Colombo, the G.O.H., and Ceylon in those first hours and days, and this curious mixture of intense reality and unreality applied to all my seven years in Ceylon” (3). Ceylon, in other words, can be seen as the place where European anxieties are displaced and performed.
Being Always Subject to "Imperial Power"
In the section where she talks about 'Racist but Moral Women, Innocent but Immoral Men', Stoler notes that even if
'European women were positioned as the bearers of a redefined colonial morality[,] to suggest that they fashioned this racism out of whole cloth is to miss the political chronology in which new intensities of racist practice arose... ...Significantly, what European women had to say had little resonance and little effect until their objections coincided with a realignment in both racial and class politics in which they were strategic' (Stoler 57).
This particularly struck me as it summed up nicely the feeling of futility one may feel in being part of the colonial enterprise. Recall the policeman in "Shooting an Elephant", and his painful awareness of his status as a representative of white prestige and thus the need to 'avoid looking a fool' (Orwell, "Shooting"). Recall also, Flory in "Burmese Days", where it is initially 'unthinkable' (Orwell, "Burmese Days") that he should stick up for Dr. Veeraswami, and ends up signing the document that Ellis writes. Both characters admit to the reality that 'when the white man turns tyrant it is his own freedom that he destroys' (Orwell, "Shooting").
While Stoler's quote makes reference to women, it is clear that all entities under the colonial regime (women, men, animals; you name it) must follow their prescribed place in society, even if this place is irrational, immoral, or redundant. This is not to say that the status quo is static-on the contrary, it is ever-changing (Stoler gives the example of how concubinage is viewed differently over time). However, most noteworthy is the fact that this change only occurs when it is in keeping with the larger, current goals of the empire. Until then, one may agitate for change to little or no effect- such is 'imperial power' (Stoler's title).
(286 words excluding block quote)
Writing the white self by censoring sex
I found Stoler’s observation that the later stages of colonialism were accompanied by the increasing need to build a “cordon sanitaire” (77) around whiteness and white prestige very interesting. This seems to be paralleled in the tension I find in Orwell and Woolf, which arises, I feel, between the growing awareness of empire’s complexity on one hand and the anxiety of self – the need to inscribe one’s identity within protective whiteness – on the other.
This tension is reflected in the Orwell and Woolf texts, which claim to be autobiographical but which are carefully – whether consciously or not – crafted to project a certain image of the self. What struck me in particular about Woolf was how he constantly drew on symbols of whiteness to shape his discourse. The people and events he writes about are compared to (and therefore understood through) fictional discourses from Austen, Kipling, Forster, Don Quixote; his autobiographical account is based not just on personal recollections but on letters exchanged with Lytton Strachey in England. One has to be in dialogue and contact with Englishness/whiteness in order to express the self. And in order to project a self that is acceptable to standards of whiteness (as Woolf himself performs to the Club and to the natives), Woolf and Orwell’s accounts of the self also undergo some form of self-censorship. As noted in other posts, women are curiously absent in texts by both authors; attempts at portraying (white) women are sanitized and desexualized – a symptom of the prescribed moral and sexual roles that Stoler identifies.
Arguably, sexuality in colonialism is essential but veiled (by symbolism or other forms of discourse and power relations) because sex is disarming in its physicality and visceral nature. This is somewhat similar to Woolf’s epiphany that when faced with simple, sensory contact with his beloved animals, “they make nonsense of all philosophies and religions” (101) [though Woolf seems to have a disturbing tendency to place more importance on his pets than on the natives!]. Hence, the power of sexuality and sex to challenge imposed boundaries (physically manifested in the metis children of mixed blood) explains why they were gradually censored from the discourse of whiteness.
This tension is reflected in the Orwell and Woolf texts, which claim to be autobiographical but which are carefully – whether consciously or not – crafted to project a certain image of the self. What struck me in particular about Woolf was how he constantly drew on symbols of whiteness to shape his discourse. The people and events he writes about are compared to (and therefore understood through) fictional discourses from Austen, Kipling, Forster, Don Quixote; his autobiographical account is based not just on personal recollections but on letters exchanged with Lytton Strachey in England. One has to be in dialogue and contact with Englishness/whiteness in order to express the self. And in order to project a self that is acceptable to standards of whiteness (as Woolf himself performs to the Club and to the natives), Woolf and Orwell’s accounts of the self also undergo some form of self-censorship. As noted in other posts, women are curiously absent in texts by both authors; attempts at portraying (white) women are sanitized and desexualized – a symptom of the prescribed moral and sexual roles that Stoler identifies.
Arguably, sexuality in colonialism is essential but veiled (by symbolism or other forms of discourse and power relations) because sex is disarming in its physicality and visceral nature. This is somewhat similar to Woolf’s epiphany that when faced with simple, sensory contact with his beloved animals, “they make nonsense of all philosophies and religions” (101) [though Woolf seems to have a disturbing tendency to place more importance on his pets than on the natives!]. Hence, the power of sexuality and sex to challenge imposed boundaries (physically manifested in the metis children of mixed blood) explains why they were gradually censored from the discourse of whiteness.
On The Duttons
“I can still see their minute figures [i.e. Miss Beeching and Dutton], standing there in the gigantic, flat, dusty plain of Jaffna peninsula, looking helpless, ridiculous, pathetic against the flaming sunset. And I realized that largely owing to me Dutton would marry Miss Beeching – or perhaps it would be more accurate to say that Miss Beeching would marry Dutton […] I was depressed that Sunday bicycling back to Jaffna.” (69-70)
Woolf disapproves of the union between Dutton and Miss Beeching. He seems to be demoralized by the thought that the former has been “caught”. He goes on to elaborate this thought with a metaphor:
“[The Duttons] reminded me of those pairs of insects – some are spiders or worms – in which a very small male is attached to a very large female – fitting ignominiously and neatly into her gigantic body – I sometimes think that this must be the ideal life for a male – and, after performing his male functions, is killed and eaten by her or just dies.” (72, emphasis mine)
Woolf’s attitude towards the Dutton’s union seems to based itself on a certain intimation of an unsavoriness in Miss Beeching’s character; he distrusts her, perhaps even imbue her presence in the continent with a deplorable agenda. Woolf writes that, together with Miss Case, Miss Beeching arrives in the tropics for the purpose of missionary work (69). And, as it turns out, “some months later Miss Beeching did marry Dutton.” (70) I am intrigued by why Woolf would feel so strongly against the union between Dutton and Miss Beeching. Is he reacting upon an assumption that the two missionaries entered Jaffna only on the pretext of missionary work, whereas their real agenda is to participate in the “marriage market”? Stoler’s exposition of the restrictions on European women in the colonies may be relevant here: if unions between European man and native women were encouraged institutionally as these were considered “less costly” or economically more viable a method of providing “sexual access” to the European men within the colonial enterprise – native women who entered into concubinage “could be dismissed without reason, notice, or severance pay. They might [even] be exchanged among Europeans and ‘passed on’ when men left for leave or retirement in Europe.” (49) – and if the restrictions on salary increases of male European colonial employees continues to be upheld – as a method of discouraging immigration of European women and marriages between them and the European men in the colonies – would not, then, the pretext of missionary work presents itself as an attractive justification for the entry of European women into the colonies?
Or is Woolf more concerned if Dutton is capable enough a man (an English man?) to enter into so solemn a project as marriage is? In relation to the second possibility, Woolf writes that Dutton is “mentally […] certainly a eunuch,” that “his attitude towards [love and women] was a cross between that of a sentimental and innocent schoolgirl and that of Don Quixote.” Thus, Woolf appears to think of Dutton as naïve and romantic, and perhaps more crucially, unmanly. What then constitutes Woolf idea of (an ideal?) manhood? To answer that, one may refer to the emphasis in the second quote.
More will be touched upon during presentation.
Woolf disapproves of the union between Dutton and Miss Beeching. He seems to be demoralized by the thought that the former has been “caught”. He goes on to elaborate this thought with a metaphor:
“[The Duttons] reminded me of those pairs of insects – some are spiders or worms – in which a very small male is attached to a very large female – fitting ignominiously and neatly into her gigantic body – I sometimes think that this must be the ideal life for a male – and, after performing his male functions, is killed and eaten by her or just dies.” (72, emphasis mine)
Woolf’s attitude towards the Dutton’s union seems to based itself on a certain intimation of an unsavoriness in Miss Beeching’s character; he distrusts her, perhaps even imbue her presence in the continent with a deplorable agenda. Woolf writes that, together with Miss Case, Miss Beeching arrives in the tropics for the purpose of missionary work (69). And, as it turns out, “some months later Miss Beeching did marry Dutton.” (70) I am intrigued by why Woolf would feel so strongly against the union between Dutton and Miss Beeching. Is he reacting upon an assumption that the two missionaries entered Jaffna only on the pretext of missionary work, whereas their real agenda is to participate in the “marriage market”? Stoler’s exposition of the restrictions on European women in the colonies may be relevant here: if unions between European man and native women were encouraged institutionally as these were considered “less costly” or economically more viable a method of providing “sexual access” to the European men within the colonial enterprise – native women who entered into concubinage “could be dismissed without reason, notice, or severance pay. They might [even] be exchanged among Europeans and ‘passed on’ when men left for leave or retirement in Europe.” (49) – and if the restrictions on salary increases of male European colonial employees continues to be upheld – as a method of discouraging immigration of European women and marriages between them and the European men in the colonies – would not, then, the pretext of missionary work presents itself as an attractive justification for the entry of European women into the colonies?
Or is Woolf more concerned if Dutton is capable enough a man (an English man?) to enter into so solemn a project as marriage is? In relation to the second possibility, Woolf writes that Dutton is “mentally […] certainly a eunuch,” that “his attitude towards [love and women] was a cross between that of a sentimental and innocent schoolgirl and that of Don Quixote.” Thus, Woolf appears to think of Dutton as naïve and romantic, and perhaps more crucially, unmanly. What then constitutes Woolf idea of (an ideal?) manhood? To answer that, one may refer to the emphasis in the second quote.
More will be touched upon during presentation.
the act of colonialism
Woolf seems to paint colonialism as something akin to a farcical act and I got a first hint of this when he says that it was the act of pretending to be grand “in a strange Asiatic country’ that “gave the touch of unreality and theatricality” to the lives of the White ruling caste. In London, they were what they were, they were not acting. But in Ceylon, they “were all always…playing a part, acting upon a stage”; the backcloth of which was imperialism” (24).
This notion of theatricality and acting is continued when Woolf describes how he attained a good impression in Jaffna. He says, “My reputation as …a Sahib…was therefore established within three hours of my arrival, for a civil servant, wearing bright green flannel collars and accompanied by a dog who within the space of ten minutes killed a cat and a large snake, commanded respect”. Here, the comical and almost ludicrous manner by which Woolf gained this immediate respect as a White master undermines his own prestige because it is almost as if White respectability depended not on true substance, but on whether one possessed the right costumes and props to pull off the White master’s act of prestige.
This idea of acting is also evident in how the civil servants met every evening for a game of tennis, which had become something like “a ritual, almost a sacrament”, before adjourning for social conversation—“the ritual of British conversation which inevitably followed British exercise”. All these social rituals seem to me like outward shows of sophistication and civility, mere acts of the white man’s supposed prestige and superiority over the natives. All these definitely reduce colonialism to a very empty and substance-less shell for me—a very staged-up act that is ultimately hollow at the core.
This notion of theatricality and acting is continued when Woolf describes how he attained a good impression in Jaffna. He says, “My reputation as …a Sahib…was therefore established within three hours of my arrival, for a civil servant, wearing bright green flannel collars and accompanied by a dog who within the space of ten minutes killed a cat and a large snake, commanded respect”. Here, the comical and almost ludicrous manner by which Woolf gained this immediate respect as a White master undermines his own prestige because it is almost as if White respectability depended not on true substance, but on whether one possessed the right costumes and props to pull off the White master’s act of prestige.
This idea of acting is also evident in how the civil servants met every evening for a game of tennis, which had become something like “a ritual, almost a sacrament”, before adjourning for social conversation—“the ritual of British conversation which inevitably followed British exercise”. All these social rituals seem to me like outward shows of sophistication and civility, mere acts of the white man’s supposed prestige and superiority over the natives. All these definitely reduce colonialism to a very empty and substance-less shell for me—a very staged-up act that is ultimately hollow at the core.
Restoring my faith...
I felt that Woolf was a much more honest writer than Orwell was, and he presented the dilemmas colonial masters faced in a much clearer light. Woolf highlighted the performative aspects colonialists had to play but at the same time, demonstrated to the reader his attempts at negotiating between the performativeness and truthfulness.
The four men “waded back slowly; the feet of the dead man stuck out, toes pointing up, very stark over the shoulders of the men in front. The body laid on the sand. The bearded face of the dead man looked very calm, very dignified in the faint light (95).
Woolf did not dehumanize the Arab man, did not try to impose strict binaries but rather his description of the man as ‘dignified’ touched me. Just when I had lost all faith in colonial masters as humans and saw them as just greedy and self-absorbed men, I’m glad Woolf came along to restore some faith in them. And I thought it was hilarious how he said he was ‘infuriated when I saw a rather unpleasant looking white man introduced into my room by the peon without my permission’ (129). Where he said ‘[t]he longer I was in
Tuesday, October 28, 2008
Sexuality in Exigency
We see in Woolf’s Jaffna account the figures that obviously reflect the Stoler’s description of European women in the colonies. A “Jane Austen character”, Woolf describes Mrs. Lewis as a archetypal female of the Victorian Social Realist novel (42). Likewise, it is due to such characters that Stoler describes to have “contructed the major cleavages on which colonial stratification would rest” (56), “as bearers of a redefined colonial morality” (57). Her attempted matchmaking of Woolf with Mary can also be seen as the microcosmic replication of the colonial state’s directive that European men in the colonies would need to be married to a European woman to keep them in check.
Yet, the absence of the wife figure in Woolf’s account in Jaffna provokes suspicion. It might be presumptious to say it, but perhaps like most European men in the colonies, he indulges in prostitutes to relieve sexual tensions/pressures of living in the colonies (68), and the marriages of his generation in Jaffna are described to be bleak and sad (70), for Dutton and Miss Beeching’s marriage is described to be falling apart (74). Where then, is the European wife, or the native concubine that Stoler prescribes for men in the colonies?
Woolf’s platonic lying together on the sand with Gwen, juxtaposed with the lax (immoral?) upbringing of the two girls by their widowed mother (102), shows him to be deviating from Stoler’s chapter description of European men in the colonies as “innocent but immoral men”, needing “racist but moral women” (56). But what Woolf’s silence on his sexuality in the Jaffna account means the abovementioned or is simply glossing over the norms of colonial sexual politics, his encounters of colonial representations of sexualty largely subscribe to the economical and political exigencies.
Yet, the absence of the wife figure in Woolf’s account in Jaffna provokes suspicion. It might be presumptious to say it, but perhaps like most European men in the colonies, he indulges in prostitutes to relieve sexual tensions/pressures of living in the colonies (68), and the marriages of his generation in Jaffna are described to be bleak and sad (70), for Dutton and Miss Beeching’s marriage is described to be falling apart (74). Where then, is the European wife, or the native concubine that Stoler prescribes for men in the colonies?
Woolf’s platonic lying together on the sand with Gwen, juxtaposed with the lax (immoral?) upbringing of the two girls by their widowed mother (102), shows him to be deviating from Stoler’s chapter description of European men in the colonies as “innocent but immoral men”, needing “racist but moral women” (56). But what Woolf’s silence on his sexuality in the Jaffna account means the abovementioned or is simply glossing over the norms of colonial sexual politics, his encounters of colonial representations of sexualty largely subscribe to the economical and political exigencies.
show me the women
There is hardly any mention of women, much less notable and interesting woman personalities in Leonard Woolf’s Growing. I think this is very much explained by Stoler’s article on how colonial policies discourage the immigration of European women into the colonies, limiting marriages only to high ranking officials and keeping salaries of European recruits “artificially low” to prevent them from starting a family (48). I think that it is the scarcity of European women, rather than Leonard Woolf’s deliberate omission that explains the lack of female personalities in his autobiography.
Leonard Woolf did pay special attention to the Lewis and Price couple. Mrs Lewis was “[l]arge, plump, floridly good-looking”, “a Jane Austen character complete in face, form, speech, mind – a Mrs Jennings” (42). She is “an inveterate matchmaker” equipped with “artless and embarrassing manoeuvres” (43). Mr John Penry Lewis was a “[l]arge, slow, fat, shy man” who was “extremely lazy and not fond of responsibility”, “took little interest in administration” (41). Mrs Price “was the exact opposite of Mrs Lewis. She was a real Victorian lady” (114). She is “rather silent and extremely nervous”, with an “impenetrable reserve” (114). Ferdinando Hamlyn Price was “[t]all, thin, athletic looking, baldish, with a long hatchet-face” and was “congenitally and incorrigibly lazy” (105).
There are a few observations to be made. Both Mrs Lewis and Mrs Price have “delicate sensibilities” and need for “elevated standards of living” (55). Mrs Price whose “life with Price and Ceylon ... terrified her” (114), Mrs Lewis and her gramaphone (88). Marriages are confined to high ranking colonial officials (i.e. G.A). Married men are lazy and seldom dealt with colonial administration, preferring to delegate the jobs to young and single subordinates (i.e. Leonard Woolf).
Contrary to Stoler’s article, I do not see European women and marriage as having that much of an impact on colonial rule. Then again, perhaps that is what Stoler is concerned with, the overlooking and omission in assessing the influence of European women with regards to colonial policies.
Leonard Woolf did pay special attention to the Lewis and Price couple. Mrs Lewis was “[l]arge, plump, floridly good-looking”, “a Jane Austen character complete in face, form, speech, mind – a Mrs Jennings” (42). She is “an inveterate matchmaker” equipped with “artless and embarrassing manoeuvres” (43). Mr John Penry Lewis was a “[l]arge, slow, fat, shy man” who was “extremely lazy and not fond of responsibility”, “took little interest in administration” (41). Mrs Price “was the exact opposite of Mrs Lewis. She was a real Victorian lady” (114). She is “rather silent and extremely nervous”, with an “impenetrable reserve” (114). Ferdinando Hamlyn Price was “[t]all, thin, athletic looking, baldish, with a long hatchet-face” and was “congenitally and incorrigibly lazy” (105).
There are a few observations to be made. Both Mrs Lewis and Mrs Price have “delicate sensibilities” and need for “elevated standards of living” (55). Mrs Price whose “life with Price and Ceylon ... terrified her” (114), Mrs Lewis and her gramaphone (88). Marriages are confined to high ranking colonial officials (i.e. G.A). Married men are lazy and seldom dealt with colonial administration, preferring to delegate the jobs to young and single subordinates (i.e. Leonard Woolf).
Contrary to Stoler’s article, I do not see European women and marriage as having that much of an impact on colonial rule. Then again, perhaps that is what Stoler is concerned with, the overlooking and omission in assessing the influence of European women with regards to colonial policies.
"... the silence, the emptiness, the melancholia ..."
No one (at this point in the class, at least) can miss the significance of the opening of Chapter 2: "There was something extraordinarily real and at the same time unreal in the sights and sounds and smells ... and this curious mixture of intense reality and unreality applied to all my seven years in Ceylon" (21). Once again, like Conrad, Woolf probes the nature of reality, and by extension the nature of consciousness and of experience itself and the very faculties with which we apprehend/comprehend the world. The fact that the Woolf prefaces his own arrival in Sri Lanka in such uncertain terms underscores his own anxiety at being displaced from not only his home, but from the familiar structures of knowledge production and meaning making. In being pushed to the very fringes of the Empire Woolf finds it almost necessary to undertake the ontological questioning that is at the heart of his memoirs. This line of questioning undercuts the solipsism that is so intrinsic to the "I" of the autobiography, and the centre cannot hold. Much of the chapter is a reorientation, in every sense of the word, in a foreign country, but just as Woolf is getting comfortable in Jaffna, his brief posting to Mannar unsettles him once again, besieging him with sleepless nights.
Thus, modernism was not just a fictional strategy; it also allowed for the interrogation of autobiographical self, and for the crystallization of the anxieties of the colonizer, as Woolf came to see colonial superfluity and futility in Sri Lanka. One is left to consider (as does Leonard himself, undoubtedly) what might have happened if he did marry Gwen, and it in is this subtle yet palpable ponderation of the autonomy of the individual against the social script that Woolf does not simply address a growing disaffection towards the colonial enterprise, but mounts a redress of the self and society, and how the latter impinges on the former.
Thus, modernism was not just a fictional strategy; it also allowed for the interrogation of autobiographical self, and for the crystallization of the anxieties of the colonizer, as Woolf came to see colonial superfluity and futility in Sri Lanka. One is left to consider (as does Leonard himself, undoubtedly) what might have happened if he did marry Gwen, and it in is this subtle yet palpable ponderation of the autonomy of the individual against the social script that Woolf does not simply address a growing disaffection towards the colonial enterprise, but mounts a redress of the self and society, and how the latter impinges on the former.
European women in native lands
Stoler’s essay talks about the role of women in colonialism, and how sexual politics can be seen in relation to racial policies. Although the presence of European women in native lands enforced the boundaries and social spaces drawn between the white community and the natives, this reinforcement of racial differences was a continuation from previous tensions in the interactions between colonizers and colonized. European women are however chided for several things: racism, jealousy of Euro-Asian unions, and if they are assaulted by natives, they are often blamed for provoking their desires.
Similarly, the women in the novels read in this course have been portrayed as naïve, racist and unable to adapt to native cultures. Have we been reading them wrongly? That we fault these women for perhaps not being more open-minded and less racist, when in fact, they had a gendered-specific role to play in the colonial lands. As Stoler argues, “what European women had to say had little resonance and little effect until their objections coincided with a realignment in both racial and class politics in which they were strategic” (57). Do we perhaps take on the position of a White male colonizer with certain expectations of how European women were to behave, in ways which are also “strategic” to our own understandings of colonialism?
If colonialism is predicated on colonial difference, then European women could either be perceived as the bearers of these differences or they could transgress their roles. Either way, they must be read in ways aligned with particular ideologies and value systems. As much as European women, like the natives, are policed by the white male colonizers, they are policed by readers too.
Similarly, the women in the novels read in this course have been portrayed as naïve, racist and unable to adapt to native cultures. Have we been reading them wrongly? That we fault these women for perhaps not being more open-minded and less racist, when in fact, they had a gendered-specific role to play in the colonial lands. As Stoler argues, “what European women had to say had little resonance and little effect until their objections coincided with a realignment in both racial and class politics in which they were strategic” (57). Do we perhaps take on the position of a White male colonizer with certain expectations of how European women were to behave, in ways which are also “strategic” to our own understandings of colonialism?
If colonialism is predicated on colonial difference, then European women could either be perceived as the bearers of these differences or they could transgress their roles. Either way, they must be read in ways aligned with particular ideologies and value systems. As much as European women, like the natives, are policed by the white male colonizers, they are policed by readers too.
Performativity; Power and a little Gender
The idea of theatricality or performativity is seen again in Woolf’s Growing. His open admittance that “in Ceylon [they] were always, subconsciously or consciously, playing a part, acting upon a stage.(Woolf24-25)” suggests that the role of the colonized is one that is not so much assumed as it is acted out. The underlying notion of having expectations to meet in the eyes of colonial standards by the establishment suggest that the relationship between colonizer and colonized was not only set up by expectation (and recognition) of a master-slave(power-powerless) dynamic, but also perpetuated by it. Stoler’s idea of “who counted as “European” and by what measure”(43) then becomes something that is vague in terms of actual personality traits, but becomes a much more vague label recognized by virtue of the way the colonizers and colonized act. This can be seen in Woolf’s autobiography where his dog defecates someone’s clean white clothes and no one takes notice and also when the Charles, his dog is sick all over the native owned place in Jaffna and no one took notice. The fact that the white man (and the whiteman’s dog) can behave in such a manner without consequence signals the obvious power positions.
While Stoler’s article of Gender suggest that sexual images illustrate the iconography of rule(45), what remained curious to me is Woolf’s illustration of women(white or non) in the excerpts, from the nonchalant way he says he “spent the night”(I forget the page) with a local woman to his merciless, descriptions of Miss Beeching with the “face rather like that of a good looking male Red Indian”( Woolf 26)and Mrs Lewis as “large, plump and flordly good-looking”(I forget which page), he seems to embody that colonial ideal of European “hypermasculinity”(cant find the page in Stoler) in his power of gender over the figures of Others; women and perhaps the most “othered’ the native women (who supposedly are “useful guides”(Stoler 49)
Growing Up Woolf
It looks like I'm the first to post this week. I found the chapter, "Jaffna" a bit of a drag to read towards the end. Am I the only one? It starts out interesting enough, but as the memoir progresses Woolf starts transitioning abruptly from one incident to another, leaving me a bit disorientated(and bored, all those acronyms do NOT help),and I was wishing I was reading Roald Dahl's Going Solo instead, indicative of the state of nostalgia I'm currently wallowing in. (aka: I miss my childhood!) But to be fair, this Woolf's not that bad. Okay now on to my post proper:
In "Jaffna", Woolf writes retrospectively about working experience as a civil servant in Ceylon, working hard and efficiently for indolent G.As, doing their jobs for them, improving office effiency etc etc. He recounts his life in the imperialist White society, talking about the White civil servants he met. Interpersed between his accounts are extracts from his correspondence with his Bloomsbury friend, Lytton Strachey.I found most interesting his resemblance to Orwell's Shooting an Elephant, in his "growing" awareness of himself as a "ruler of subject peoples" (111) and the doubts that came along with it, where at the beginning he had been a "very innocent, unconscious imperialist" (25). Like Orwell, he becomes conscious of the dilemma that faces the white imperialist as a "cog" in the imperial machinery through day-to-day incidents with natives. Woolf, in the horse-whip incident, doubts the White imperialist's right to rule in thinking that his "sitting on a horse arrogantly in the main street of their town was as good as a slap in the face" (114). It is ironic that Woolf had disregarded traffic laws in stopping his horse to be this nit-picky, exacting civil servant, pointing out how the natives had encroached on the highway with their property. Woolf becomes aware of this irony which highlights inequities in treatment that White imperialists assume, in order to perpetuate their rule. Similar to Orwell's Shooting, Woolf becomes aware of the White imperialist as "acting" on the "stage, scenery, backcloth" that was imperialism. What Woolf seems to be projecting is the implication of being an individual within a larger organisation or machinery. In Woolf's bid to be a good civil servant, an "effective cog" so to speak, he assumes a stance that compromises fair, un-rascist treatment of the natives, thus perpetuating their dominance.
(295)
In "Jaffna", Woolf writes retrospectively about working experience as a civil servant in Ceylon, working hard and efficiently for indolent G.As, doing their jobs for them, improving office effiency etc etc. He recounts his life in the imperialist White society, talking about the White civil servants he met. Interpersed between his accounts are extracts from his correspondence with his Bloomsbury friend, Lytton Strachey.I found most interesting his resemblance to Orwell's Shooting an Elephant, in his "growing" awareness of himself as a "ruler of subject peoples" (111) and the doubts that came along with it, where at the beginning he had been a "very innocent, unconscious imperialist" (25). Like Orwell, he becomes conscious of the dilemma that faces the white imperialist as a "cog" in the imperial machinery through day-to-day incidents with natives. Woolf, in the horse-whip incident, doubts the White imperialist's right to rule in thinking that his "sitting on a horse arrogantly in the main street of their town was as good as a slap in the face" (114). It is ironic that Woolf had disregarded traffic laws in stopping his horse to be this nit-picky, exacting civil servant, pointing out how the natives had encroached on the highway with their property. Woolf becomes aware of this irony which highlights inequities in treatment that White imperialists assume, in order to perpetuate their rule. Similar to Orwell's Shooting, Woolf becomes aware of the White imperialist as "acting" on the "stage, scenery, backcloth" that was imperialism. What Woolf seems to be projecting is the implication of being an individual within a larger organisation or machinery. In Woolf's bid to be a good civil servant, an "effective cog" so to speak, he assumes a stance that compromises fair, un-rascist treatment of the natives, thus perpetuating their dominance.
(295)
Monday, October 27, 2008
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