Child Characters in Victorian and Postcolonial Fiction, 1814 - 2006

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Child Characters in Victorian and Postcolonial Fiction, 1814 - 2006 City University of New York (CUNY) CUNY Academic Works All Dissertations, Theses, and Capstone Projects Dissertations, Theses, and Capstone Projects 10-2014 Works in Progress: Child Characters in Victorian and Postcolonial Fiction, 1814 - 2006 Kiran Mascarenhas Graduate Center, City University of New York How does access to this work benefit ou?y Let us know! More information about this work at: https://academicworks.cuny.edu/gc_etds/364 Discover additional works at: https://academicworks.cuny.edu This work is made publicly available by the City University of New York (CUNY). Contact: [email protected] Works in Progress: Child Characters in Victorian and Postcolonial Fiction, 1814 – 2006 By Kiran Mascarenhas A dissertation submitted to the Graduate Faculty in English in partial fulfillment of the requirements for the degree of Doctor of Philosophy, the City University of New York 2014 ii © Kiran Mascarenhas All Rights Reserved iii This dissertation has been read and accepted by the Graduate Faculty in English in satisfaction of the requirement for the degree of Doctor of Philosophy. __________ _____________________________________________ Date Chair of Examining Committee, Ashley Dawson, Ph.D. __________ _____________________________________________ Date Executive Officer, Mario DiGangi, Ph.D. Talia Schaffer, Ph.D. Timothy Alborn, Ph.D. Supervisory Committee iv The City University of New York Abstract Works in Progress: Child Characters in Victorian and Postcolonial Fiction, 1814 – 2006 By Kiran Mascarenhas Advisers: Ashley Dawson, Talia Schaffer In this dissertation I analyze the relationship between national and individual development in Victorian and postcolonial novels set in India. My central argument is that the investment in the idea of progress that characterizes colonial narratives of childhood gives way in postcolonial fiction to a suspicion of dominant understandings of progress, and that this difference is manifest in the identity formation of the child character as well as in the form of the novel. In the Victorian colonial narratives discussed in this study, the bildung of the child involves the overcoming of the child’s conflicted cultural identity. The children of the colonial elite are socialized in early years by their Indian caregivers. As the children begin to acquire Indian languages, tastes and mores, however, British adults, driven by cultural anxiety, seek to re-educate and Anglicize the children until there is scarcely a trace of Indian influence in the child’s appearance or conduct. Likewise, gender and class identity, though ambiguous in the years of infancy, settles towards the end of a typical colonial narrative. However, the proper classification of the child towards which the colonial novel strains is effected so anxiously that v even optimistic colonial narratives like Dinah Mulock Craik’s “The Half-Caste” (1857) or Rudyard Kipling’s The Jungle Book (1894) convey an awareness of the fragility of the government of child and colony. Where in Victorian novels children eventually outgrow their hybrid identity, in postcolonial novels the gender, class and national identities of the child-protagonists never quite settle. The final chapter of my dissertation connects the figure of the neglected child in postcolonial fiction with larger questions of nation formation and argues that the veneer of investment in progress evident in Victorian novels has worn away to reveal a ubiquitous, though uneven, sense of betrayal. The chapters are organized around texts produced at moments widely considered critical in the history of colonial India: the missionary tracts produced after the legalization of missionary work in 1813, the emergence of the “post-mutiny boy hero” in the wake of the Revolt of 1857, the repatriation narratives that proliferated in the twilight years of empire, colonial writing by Indian writers at the time of decolonization, and finally postcolonial narratives that layer the problems of liberalization, such as a perceived disconnect between the citizen and the state in an age of transnational capital, with India’s colonial past. Contrasted with the understanding of history as a series of critical moments is the narrative of slow violence over the course of the nineteenth and twentieth centuries: the gradual degradation of human and environmental rights under first colonial and then postcolonial elite regimes. Finally the dissertation looks for new ways forward from this potentially debilitating understanding of colonial and postcolonial history and literature. vi Acknowledgements My dissertation adviser, Ashley Dawson, has been a patient and rigorous interlocutor. His fresh perspectives on postcolonial concerns rekindled my love for the field, and it was he who suggested I attempt a periodization of Indian literature. His work as a scholar and activist continues to be inspirational. Talia Schaffer, who encouraged my interest in Victorian studies and inspired my interest in non-canonical writing, nurtured me not just through the writing of this dissertation, but throughout my time at the CUNY Graduate Center. Phone conversations with her at crucial moments silenced my inner Hamlet. Tim Alborn, whose intellectual inquiry acknowledges but reaches past disciplinary limits, has been incredibly incisive in his reading of my dissertation and has always pushed me to do more and do it better. The reading list he suggested for my Orals introduced me to historians like Prasannan Parthasarathi, Manu Goswami and Timothy Mitchell, with whom I still hold imaginary consultations. The CUNY Graduate Center has been generous with financial support – University Fellowships, Tuition Fellowships and a Dissertation Year Fellowship. More importantly, the Center has sustained me through graduate school, broadening my thinking immensely. I was so happy to take the train to NYC and enter 365 on 5th, knowing that even random encounters in that building could be incredibly enriching, let alone the two-hour class sessions with some of the kindest and most brilliant people in the world. Gerhard Joseph, Richard Kaye, Peter Hitchcock, Judith Milhous, Carrie Hintz, Tanya Agathocleous and Nancy K. Miller have been generous mentors and guides. Anne Humpherys, who introduced me to the wonderful toolbox of Narratology, always made time to listen to the papers of her students at conferences, and was always willing to talk things over with me. Joan Richardson’s intellectual rigor and warmth have been vital. Steve Kruger’s email response time is worthy of further study – I’m convinced he’s vii broken some records. Mario Digangi, whose smile lights up the hallways of the GC, was always forthcoming with whatever help was needed, and stretched the resources available at the GC to meet the needs of the students in a way that would have really impressed Charles Dickens. My peers, Anne McCarthy, Mia Chen, Leila Walker, Taylor Kennamer, Jessica DeCoux, Colleen Cusick, Lily Saint, Ian Foster, Fiona Lee, Alison Klein and Maggie Galvan were always willing to lend an ear or a hand – in turn, they have my heart. Finally, I thank my family: my mom, Sheila, who believes I can do anything, my father, Jimmy, whose humanitarian vision shaped my formative years, my other mom, Norma, who dropped everything and rushed to my side when I needed her, my Aunt and Uncle, Leonie and Mark Castelino, whose friendship sustained me through the lonely first years in a strange land, my children, who have taken the demanding third child, this dissertation, in their stride, and adopted many of my imaginary friends as their own, Sammy, who warmed my feet and made me go for long walks, without which I might have turned into a disembodied mind, and Ranjit, whose support and love I can depend on. viii Contents Introduction 1 1. Little Henry’s Burdens: Missionary Fiction and the Advent of Victorian 27 India 2. Becoming Young Britons: Colonial Girls and How They Grow in “The 65 Half-Caste” and The Secret Garden 3. Kipling’s Striplings: Mowgli and Kim 107 4. Swami and Friends: Situating Malgudi 158 5. Afterward: Midnight’s Grandchildren 190 Bibliography 243 1 Introduction This dissertation analyzes the relationships between representations of bildung and representations of the developing nation in colonial and postcolonial fiction set in India. My central argument is that in colonialist and nationalist fiction, the child is made to serve as a repository of “variously sentimentalized cultural identifications”1 and as the one for whom the social order is held in perpetual trust, and that this reproductive futurism means that the collateral damage wrought in the name of progress towards that brighter future is never reckoned with, but endlessly deferred. In postcolonial fiction, however, the colonial ordering of time and space is broken, development of the individual and of the nation is suspended, and the possibility of endless deferral is foreclosed. Contemporary works of postcolonial fiction function as anti- bildungsromane by refusing the genre’s teleological sense of direction, and in some cases, by refusing as well the bildungsroman’s adherence to literary realism. A study of child characters reveals the fantasies and attitudes of their adult creators. John MacKenzie, in his introduction to Katherine Castle’s Britannia’s Children (1996), argues that “Most societies clearly reveal both their moral norms and their political ideologies through their efforts to acculturate the young” and points to the “powerful zone of intellectual, ideological and moral convergence
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