Orientalist and colonialist perspectives on the representation of the female in Kipling’s Kim

Abstract

The depiction of women has been pivotal in the Orientalist discourse of representation which has frequently been keen on inculcating in readers certain concepts and views of Oriental women, thus maintaining and expanding the Orientalist agenda. Rudyard Kipling’s Kim is no exception, even if it is predominantly a male novel as posited by a number of critics. This paper argues that some critical views on this issue are on the whole sketchy when it comes to this novel in particular. Drawing heavily upon his immediate and extensive knowledge of India, as well as on the enormous Orientalist chronicles, Kipling succeeds in creating an artistic masterpiece which offers a many-sided negative imagery of females whose echoes still resound in today’s media. Kim’s focus of representation remains largely concerned with the female status in the Orient socially, ideologically, mentally, and physically. Together, these well-knit dimensions, in addition to other elements, construct a picture that reinforces colonial aspirations. Re-considering the intricate threads and sophisticated processes of Orientalism depending on the contribution of critics like Edward Said and others in works such as Kim is likely to help today’s readers to better understand forms of cultural denigration and appropriation diffused purposefully by hegemonic actors in various media.

Keywords:

• Colonialism
• Eastern woman role
• Orientalism
• Oriental female representation
• Oriental male oppression

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author.

Notes

1. See notably his Our Moslem Sisters A Cry of Need from Lands of Darkness Interpreted by Those Who Heard It.

2. This is asserted by Karyn Huenemann: “Since 1990, for example, The Kipling Journal, the quarterly publication of the Kipling Society in Britain, has presented only three articles discussing gender issues in Kipling”. She adds, “On the topic of Indian women, however, Kim seldom appears on the critical radar” (Huenemann, 2009, pp. 23, 36).

3. I am using King’s words which were used in his book Orientalism and Religion in a different context.

4. Behdad’s words were used in the context of criticizing Orientalism in general in his article titled “Orientalist Desire, Desire of the Orient”, however I am “using” them in context as a way of criticizing the picture of the Oriental woman in the West.

5. I am using Wisker’s words which he uses to describe Bertha Mason, Rochester’s “mad” wife, in Brontë’s Jane Eyre.

6. See pp 312–315.

7. It is a motif that Kipling has maintained in other short stories like “Without Benefit of Clergy”, “Beyond the Pale”, and “Lispeth” where British males desert their beloved Indian females (Ameera, Holden, the Englishman—Trejago, Bisesa, and Lispeth, whose name is the same as that of the Shamlegh woman in Kim). Some critics, such as Karyn Huenemann, draw a connection between the two, claiming that Lispeth who opens Plain Tales from the Hills reappears in the concluding chapters of Kim (Huenemann, 2009, p. 36). In the former story, Lispeth is abandoned by her English lover with whom she is enamored. She is told by the Chaplain’s wife “that it was ‘wrong and improper’ of Lispeth to think of marriage with an Englishman, who was of a superior clay … ” (Kipling, 1888, p. 4).

8. Ayesha is the key character in a number of H. R. Haggard’s novels like She and Wisdom’s Daughter. She is described as a charming and tempting female.

9. ⁹I am using her words which she uses to describe depictions of Algerian women in French postcards.

10. According to the notes of the Penguin Classics 2000 edition, this word means “sheets or veils in front of the faces of women” (p. 365). By “sexual undertone” I do not mean to refer to any kind of relationship between Kim and that woman at all as this will be clarified shortly.

11. I am indebted to an idea discussed by Ali Behdad in a different context (See on Behdad, 1994, pp. 28–29).