Similtude & Difference: Ma Hla May & Elizabeth

The tension set up by the relationship of similitude and difference between Elizabeth and Ma Hla May is embodied in their dramatic first encounter (87). While the passage delivers an account of their differences – “No contrast could have been stranger […]” – it closes with a hint that the two women might not actually be that different after all – “neither of them could take her eyes from the other; but which found the spectacle more grotesque, more incredible, there is no saying.” This placement of the women on equal footing, so to speak, is further sustained and elaborated in subsequent moments in the novel. For example, in Chapter VII, the history of Elizabeth tells us she is effectively penniless, and unskilled, and hence the reliance on marriage for survival represents the sole source of income she could allow herself to imagine; this is not dissimilar to Ma Hla May’s situation, as far as the penniless part is concerned. The difference between them lies in that Elizabeth would possibly not spread her legs before a marriage is actually procured i.e. institutionally recognized. But would the institution recognize a marriage such as that between Flory and Ma Hla May, if he indeed chooses to walk down that white aisle?

What interests me further is the observation that the ending of the novel has not imagined what I perceived to be a “finer” resolution for Ma Hla May: the latter ends up a destitute and a prostitute – “her good looks are all but gone, and her clients pay her only four annas and sometimes kick her and beat her” (285). On a strictly material level, I would say that Elizabeth fares infinitely better than Ma Hla May: Mr Macgregor proposes marriage and she “[accepts] him gladly”; and that “they are very happy” in their matrimony (287). Perhaps such diverse resolutions for these women spring out of an imagination that finds unconvincing the representation in which the embodying of similar attitudes towards marriage as a form of survival would ensure both women – despite the “colonial differences” between them – eventually experiencing the same sort of destiny?