May's tight spot

Last week’s presentation group mentioned how the tone in which Ma Hla May’s end was narrated seemed to suggest that she deserved her end. I agreed with them then and after reading Stoler, I think this point can be expanded. Stoler mentioned how the courts/societies often concurred that the native woman would inevitably go back to her prostitute ways after separating from the White man and this evoked May for me. Though May was not a prostitute before, having been ousted from the relationship with Flory, she ends up in a brothel.

Rather than ponder whether Orwell conformed to the same ideas as the Indies & Indochina officials, I just want to flesh out the fact that the native women, not just the White man, is put in a tight spot by such mixed unions because everything of hers is put on the line. I really don’t like the character May (and I’m not a feminist) but she deserves sympathy. She can’t go back to her village without being made to remember her “ex” and her concubine life. She can’t demand anything from Flory except money. It is as if May relinquished her native identity by union with Flory and she can’t take it back nor she can’t claim Whiteness by association. Mixed bloods can at least straddle both identities— May can’t even do that. So the brothel where women are not people or selves with identity but are bodies, is where May can reside with her lack of identity.

(250 words)