got hypermasculine meh?

According to Stoler, the “demasculinization of colonised men and the hypermasculinity of European males are understood as key elements in the assertion of white supremacy”. In Burmese Days, Orwell contrasts this masculine ideal against the realities of Flory and Co. as a means of challenging both the racial and gendered implications of this ideal.

While this hypermasculine ideal is very much embodied by the polo-playing, feral, virile, Verrall, the same cannot be said for Flory and Co., who spend their available time indulging in gin and tonics rather than games of tennis. Furthermore, the white colonisers are shown to be inadequate in comparison with the local males. There is, for instance, the token symbol of physical strength and purity:

“The Burman who paddled Elizabeth was sixty years old, half naked, leaf brown, with a body as perfect as that of a young man” (160)

Masculinity is expressed most clearly in their sexual exploits (I’m thinking of that skanky scene involving Mr Lankersteen and THREE Burmese girls, and similar) which are numerous and commonplace, and which involve the domination of local women such as Ma Hla May. However, doubly asymmetrical power relationships between colonizer/colonized and male/female makes it difficult for me to read such sexual relations as an embodiment of white masculine power – You don’t need to be particularly power to dominate over an already subjugated and subservient class of people. Furthermore, the presence of Elizabeth, with her love physical sport such as shooting and horse-riding, serves further to undermine the gendered stereotypes.

The issue of virility also arises: Concubinage revolves around sexual, but sterile (infertile?) unions and Flory for instance is described as being in a state of perpetual bachelorhood.

“Flory, because a bachelor, was a boy still whereas Ko S’la had married, begotten five children, married again and become one of the obscure matyrs of bigamy” (51)

The idea of fecundity (or lack thereof) is thus another, more subtle way in which the ideal of white masculinity is critiqued and found to be wanting.