Rudyard
Kipling’s stories still provoke much debate today, especially Mary Postgate.
The three stories considered here represent different stages in his work,
beginning with The Man Who Would be King, one of his many Indian stories, and
Friendly Brook, one of the Sussex tales. In his introduction to ‘A Choice of
Kipling’s Verse’, the poet T.S.Eliot called him “the most inscrutable of
authors... a writer impossible wholly to understand and quite impossible to
belittle”. However, it is possible to recognise some of his concerns. Kipling
became a journalist in India, and worked on both the Lahore ‘Civil and Military
Gazette’ and the Allalabad ‘Pioneer’. It was in this guise that he appeared in
many of his stories. He had a life-long fear of anarchy, so he supported those
institutions and practices that kept people in their place, such as the church,
morals, and the law. As an Anglo-Indian, Kipling was a great respecter of the
British Raj. Yet he recognised many of its faults in his Plain Tales From the
Hills, specifically the attempts to make a bond between the races, in stories
such as Lispeth. Such attempts are always doomed to failure. Rather, Kipling
sees it as an unequal partnership between conqueror and conquered. It was he,
after all, who coined the phrase “The white man’s burden”, which unfortunately
became the excuse for atrocities committed by those whom Kipling himself would
have disapproved of.
The Man Who Would be King begins with two English adventurers, Dravot
and Carnehan, who walk into Kipling’s office one night. They declare that they
want to “Sar-a-whack” Kafiristan, a land which has been left
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unexplored
by Europeans. Nothing less than winning an empire will do for them. Such a
boast is easy to dismiss, and no doubt the narrator does so, until two years
later a wreck of a man shuffles into his office, which is all that remains of
the once proud Carnehan. He embarks on his tale, which seems incredible, but
Carnehan has the stench of integrity. Sir Robert Clive before had shown how
strong a well-armed troop of Indians could be against a larger, less
disciplined force. So Dravot and Carnehan succeed at first in their ambitions,
and the tribesmen are quite content to be their subjects, for they have
replaced anarchy with order.
They even become gods, for the tribesmen mistake a Masonic motif for the
sign of Alexander, who had conquered those lands many centuries before. Dravot
and Carnehan do not reveal its real significance; such a deceit is often
dangerous in Kipling stories. Indeed, the truth becomes apparent when Dravot’s
“queen out of the strongest tribe” bites him and makes him bleed, something
which immortals are not supposed to do. Suddenly, Dravot’s dream of a line of
kings and a bond with both races is shattered, as is his body which falls from
the bridge that the tribesmen cut away. Carnehan is crucified, but bravely
withstands the pain, and so is released by his awed tormentors. It is
interesting that the one who was most aware of his humble background is the one
who survives, albeit with a damaged body; ”There’s no accounting for natives.
This business is our ‘Fifty-Seven”. Dravot’s ego had urged him to go beyond his
station in life. Kipling implies that he could never have become an emperor in
the mould of Queen Victoria. Empire-building is better left to those who are
born with the authority. It is a long story for Kipling, and provides much
scope for debate, especially the historical implications and for Kipling’s
skill as a creator of myths.
Friendly Brook is also in Kipling’s mythopoeic mode. It concerns people
whom he should have been able to sympathise with better than the Indians: the
rural people of Sussex.
There were other Sussex tales, most notably Puck of Pook’s
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Hill.
However, this story stands out from the other Sussex tales, because its
characters are situated in their own environment, with little or no reference
to the outside world. Throughout, the characters speak in their native Sussex
dialect. It is worth persevering with because, like many Kipling stories, it
contains hidden depths.
Two labourers, Jesse and Jabez, discuss the reason why a fellow worker,
Jim Wickenden, has apparently left one of his valuable fields to be flooded by
the brook. Angus Wilson detects one of Kipling’s main concerns in the symbolism
of the overgrown hedge which has grown “all manner of trees”, which suggests
the anarchy that he had always feared. Some readers have chosen to go far
further, to reveal masculine and feminine binary oppositions. For example, men
like order and cutting the hedge, and women are more disordered, closer to the
free-flowing brook. Whilst Jim’s mother has no voice, the brook roars. There is
a sign that the village is slowly changing, for Jim’s foster daughter trains to
be a teacher. Her drunken father visits, and blackmails Jim, by threatening
that he will take Mary back. "Then Mary come downstairs... an’ the
man tells her who he was, an’ she says he had ought to have took proper care of
his own flesh and blood while he had it by him, an’ not to think that he could
ree-claim it when it suited”. She is still regarded as a possession, a thing to
bargain over. Although it is doubtful that her father would have ever carried
his threat, since he was getting a lot of money out of the situation, and would
never have supported her. He does have the law on his side though. Jim’s mother
is also possessive :“‘twas his mother led him on toward adoptin’ of Mary - to
furnish out the house with a child, like and to keep him off gettin’ a noo
woman. He mostly done what his mother contrived”. The difference is that his
mother is continuously possessive, and not just when it suits her.
This becomes a very difficult situation. Mary’s father
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keeps
coming back for more money, and the situation gets out of control, for there
seems to be no resolution in sight. Divine aid is needed. This being a Kipling
story, in which anything can happen naturalistically, this is exactly what
happens. Jim has made Mary’s father drunk so that he falls from the broken
bridge (as Dravot did) into the flooding brook and drowns. Jim takes it as an
act of divine retribution. This does not come from the Christian God, but the
more pagan deity of the brook. Jim appears to have gone back in time by
worshipping the brook, and sacrificing his field to it, as the Greeks or early
Romans might have done. So Kipling again demonstrates his myth-making powers
and precise command of language.
He also has the ability to shock. It may even be said that modern
readers find Mary Postgate more disquieting than Kipling’s contemporaries ever
did. The question of whether Mary acts with Kipling’s approval is still being
debated. Mary Postgate is employed as the companion of an older
woman, Miss Fowler. Both she and her nephew, Wynn, comment about her
unimportance and lack of ambition:”You are less use than an empty tin can, you
dowey old cassowary”. Mary even admits that she lacks an imagination, which is
surely the thing that makes us all human. “Nothing makes me perspire,” she
says, so presumably she has never been frightened or excited, or out in the
sun. It may be that she needs something to shake her alive. They hear of
Wynn’s death, as an accident as part of his training for the Royal Flying
Corps, but do not witness it. However, Mary does observe the death of “little
Edna”, the publican’s daughter, when she goes to buy petrol for the
incinerator. Surely “those vividly coloured strips and strings” do make her
feel something for once.
Many have linked this story with Kipling’s ‘irrational’ hatred of the
Germans. Bonamy Dobrée reports a speech of Kipling’s in 1915, in which he
said:”there are only two
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divisions
in the world to-day - human beings and Germans”. Dobrée argues that this is
understandable in a man whose dream of civilization was shattered by the
barbaric atrocities of German forces, such as the massacre of Louvain. Kipling
was not advocating that all people should act as Mary does; standing by while a
fellow human dies. She is a character who seems divorced from the realities of
life. Angus Wilson takes the line that a nation which is waging such a terrible
war must not allow feelings of compassion to get in the way of destroying the
enemy. Indeed, Wilson regards war as a bestial act, and imagines Mary devouring
the German as a predator. To look beyond this argument, it does not really
matter what Mary does at all. The German is fatally wounded, and would probably
not have been discovered normally. For once Mary loses her grip on reality, and
imagines that she is punishing him, when really there was nothing that she
could have done to help him. Everyone has the capacity to be so petty-minded,
and it is a truth which we naturally find uncomfortable, especially when
displayed in such an extraordinary tale. Mary is shown to enjoy the experience;
”she scandalized the whole routine by taking a luxurious hot bath before tea”.
Those embarking on war often feel the need to proclaim that right is on their
side, they have to have grievances to feel justified.
So, Mary Postgate can be seen as a parable of how wars are started. Not
by the law of the jungle, as Wilson would suggest, but by all too human
emotions. We are the only animals that have the capacity to revenge grievances
recorded in history. There are many readings that can be gleaned from this
story, as in Kipling’s other stories. It is because of this that they have
lived on. Few authors could be dead for more than fifty years and still manage
to be controversial. His work asks questions that will never be answered. To
conclude, it is very hard to do justice to any one of these stories in the
space allowed, for all are rich and complex.
6
Bibliography.
“The
Short Story In English” by Walter Allen.
“Rudyard
Kipling: His Life and Works” by Angus Wilson.
“Kipling
in India” by Louis L.Cornell.
“Rudyard
Kipling: Realist and Fabulist” by Bonamy Dobrée.
“The
Tiger Book of Short Stories”.
Buy
Rudyard Kipling books from Amazon.co.uk
Buy
Rudyard Kipling books from Amazon.com
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