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-refers to European
female colonizer, usually a dependent of a male as daughter, niece or wife
Pukasahib-refers to European male colonizer who is connected
to the colonial state in an official capacity or is preferentially association
with it such a European resident and/or employee of a British firm or business
I.
Burdens of Identity: Memsahib and Pukasahib
A.
Empire as Space for Making
1
organized to serve
a) access to raw materials, i.e. timber, oil, silver,
tungsten
b) market for
c)
source of
employment for the lower middle class (Orwell references: pp. 14, 128 &
142)
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
(Orwell
references: pp. 19-20, 65; 201-202)
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) lives structured in relation to work and pleasure
c)
leisure
economies developed 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
(Orwell references: pp. 65 & 122-123)
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
(Orwell references: pp. 53, 115, 98 & 110)
C.
Memsahib and Pukasahib:
Elizabeth Lackersteen and James Flory
1
class insecurity frames
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
(Orwell referenes pp. 94
& 96)
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)
(Orwell
references: pp. 105-106 & 124)
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
d) create an alternative space to the European Club
through shared activities of reading and gardening
(Orwell references: pp. 151-152)
4.
marriage is doomed because Flory
is at best a reluctant Pukasahib while
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;
(Orwell references: p. 196)