Burmese Days and the

Burdens of Identity: Memsahib and Pukasahib

Keywords

Metropole and Periphery - Analytical category for examining the dialectical relationship between the nation-state and empire

Gender -Socially prescribed roles for men and women, based on purported biological differences of males and females

Sexual Politics -power struggle over the enforcement or   transgression of prescribed gender roles, including sexuality

Memsahib -Colloquial expression, occasionally sarcastic, for European female colonizer, usually a dependent of a male as daughter, niece or wife,

Pukasahib -Colloquial expression, occasionally sarcastic for European male colonizer who is connected to the colonial state in an official capacity or is preferentially association with it as an official, member of military or police or trade

I. Burdens of Identity: Memsahib and Pukasahib

A.   Empire as Space for Making Britain

1.   organized to serve Britain’s economy:

a) access to raw materials, i.e. timber, oil, silver, tungsten

b) market for India as well as British manufactured goods

c) source of employment for the lower middle class

2.  realized middle class identity:

a) management or supervisorial positions

b) guaranteed social status based on privilege of whiteness

c) personal and household servants

d) exclusive social institutions (Club) and activities--tennis, riding and hunting

B.    Empire as a Gendered Space

1.   gender structured opportunity and social life in the empire:

a) bachelors less expensive to support without dependents

b) work and pleasure structured lives

c) leisure economies develop to accommodate unattached males

d) sex trade tolerated but involved health risks;   concubinage preferred for stabilizing effect on colonial order and colonial health

e ) biracial progeny undermined racial hierarchy while confirming it

2.    presence of white women highly regulated; generally accompanied males in the capacity of dependents:

a) maturing or multi-generational colonial personnel

b) need to assert prestige and power by restricting access to colonized to colonizer through legally sanctioned monogamy.

c) unfavorable ratio of females to males in domestic marriage market

C.   Memsahib and Pukasahibs: Elizabeth Lackersteen and John Flory

1.    class insecurity frames Elizabeth’s self-perception and relation to Empire:

a) resented penury and subordinated status after leading a life of privilege

b) preferred predictable social relationships and suspicious of “foreigners”

c) prestige of whiteness restored her sense of entitlement that she could not experience in Britain or Europe without means

2.  white masculinity (pukasahib) revolves around willingness to control circumstances and command subordinates:

a) good: Flory rescued her from “danger”, skilled as a hunter, knowledge of the surrounding natural world, secure (employed and owns bungalow)

b) bad:   Flory transgressed spatial, social and sexual boundaries within colonial society;   no real prospects for moving up in the world (cf. Lieutenant Verrell)

3.   Flory’s ideal of white femininity  (anti-memsahib) based on authenticity or conformity to imagined “English womanhood”:

a) female friend or wife; an equal

b) non-judgemental; open to freedom of thought

c) share knowledge of Burma in exchange for knowledge about London and Paris

d) create an alternative space to the European Club through shared activities of reading and gardening

4.  marriage is doomed because Flory is at best a reluctant Pukasahib and Elizabeth embraces status as Memsahib:

a) fails to uphold white prestige in general and her’s in particular

b) unwilling to observe boundaries

c) cannot reconcile the lie of colonialism; Elizabeth wants the prestige that comes with colonial power