Escaping the Interior Struggle

Stoler’s work Sexual Affronts and Racial Frontiers discusses how state machinations in policies both at home and out in the colonies are intertwined with the internal turmoil of the European in the colonies. In the face of “inclusionary impulses” and “exclusionary practices” (514), the case studies in Stoler’s article straddle the middle grounds of imperialist racism and colonial nationalism. Perhaps the best figure in Orwell’s Burmese Days to embody the interior conflict in the colonialist psyche is Flory. His interior frontier that is constantly challenged and negotiated, becomes what is of interest to us.

An European who sees through the hypocrisy of the colonial enterprise in Burma, Flory despises the pukka sahib characters and attitude, and at the same time has already internalized the imperial racism of the Orientals. Almost committing métissage with Ma Hla May, Flory’s character remains too “European” to tarnish his reputation and his lineage with an interracial marriage. His search for a European bride who will not develop the mentality and attitude of a pukka memsahib reflects his “inclusionary” attitudes and appreciation of the Burmese culture, untarnished by the “culture system” of colonialism.

Flory’s criterion for his bride, and his desire to groom Elizabeth into his ideal bride, show a microcosm of the “inclusionary impulses” and “exclusionary practices” of the colonial government on the colonized populace. On the interior front, the lack of that ideal bride, since Elizabeth rejects him and he exists in a colonized landscape devoid of further opportunities, causes him to become incomplete in his desire to straddle the métis divide. The failure in his negotiation of the interior frontier by having a family that is an extension of his individual, and thereby a retort to the colonial enterprise’s model, leads him to a path of escapism viable only (in his view) by suicide. But is suicide that only option of rebellion and yet having the natural, innate instinct of establishing a family unit?