Mourning the Loss of Empire in the Novels of Penelope Lively and Ruth Prawer Jhabvala Kathleen Williams Renk

ariel: a review of international english literature ISSN 0004-1327 Vol. 42 No. 3-4 Pages 217–236 Copyright © 2012 Imperial Fantasies: Mourning the Loss of Empire in the Novels of Penelope Lively and Ruth Prawer Jhabvala Kathleen Williams Renk Will the British Empire ever be over, or are we destined to wit- ness its eternal return in the form of [literary] nostalgia mas- querading as history? (Burton, “India, Inc.?” 217) We need to be rigorously critical of the histories of feminism—those cheery, triumphant narratives. (Burton, Burdens of History 23) Feminism must produce a discourse that interrogates its own histories, particularly if it aspires to be something more than politics as usual. (Burton, Burdens of History 24) Historian Antoinette Burton expresses postcolonial impatience with literary nostalgia in regard to the British Empire, particularly as evidenced by Tom Stoppard’s drama Indian Ink, which she claims “pretend[s] to rehearse [the British Empire’s] relentless end” (“India, Inc.?” 217). Burton chastises Stoppard for his infinite rehearsal that concentrates on the imperial relationship between a supposedly liberated, modern British woman and an Indian male artist, a relationship that transgresses the gender, racial, and sexual hierarchies prescribed by empire. While one may take issue with Burton’s reading of Stoppard’s drama since Stoppard’s play focuses on a relationship that attempts to forge mutual artistic regard between a woman poet and a male painter, her criticism recognizes the ubiquity of a continuous, never-ending empire that, like a ghostly shadow, haunts contemporary British literature. Stoppard is not the only contemporary British writer who infinitely rehearses the British Empire’s “relentless end.” Penelope Lively and Ruth Prawer Jhabvala also create novelistic worlds steeped in imperial nos- 217 Kathleen Williams Renk talgia. Lively’s Moon Tiger (1987) and Jhabvala’s Heat and Dust (1975) can certainly be read in this imperial context, yet previous readings have generally focused on the feminism within the novels1 while ignoring the imperialism inherent within the texts. Such readings do not acknowledge the ways in which the novels continue the legacy of imperialism, or imperialism’s influence on the development of feminism. Both novels meditate on and at times mourn the loss of empire. They create imperial fantasies that continue to represent and codify colonial relationships in the post-imperial era. Phyllis Lassner argues that colonial British women writers such as Olivia Manning, Elspeth Huxley, and Phyllis Shand Allfrey produced work that blatantly critiques the British Empire as it scrutinizes the Third Reich and calls for the elimination of all empires. Lively’s and Jhabvala’s novels, in contrast, romanticize the grandeur of empire even as they portray robust female characters who sometimes bristle against patriarchy and imperialism. Like the nineteenth and early twentieth-century feminists who, in Burton’s view, plead their case for suffrage while upholding imperial designs and whose rhetoric was shaped by the British Empire, Lively’s and Jhabvala’s novels inscribe, to borrow a term coined by Valerie Amos and Pratibha Parmar, a type of “imperial feminism” (Burton, Burdens of History 2).2 These fictions paradoxically underscore women’s need for sovereignty even while fan- tasizing about empire. Burton argues that Western feminism emerged and matured during the apex of the imperial era and that, although British feminist and imperial discourses are thought to be antithetical to one another, Victorian and Edwardian feminisms were generally shaped by imperialist rhetoric. Indeed, British feminists in these eras “collaborat[ed] in its [the Empire’s] ideological work” (2). Noting the hierarchical racial discourse inherent in imperialism’s supposedly civilizing mission, Burton focuses on the relationship between British suffragettes and Indian women and argues that the suffragettes positioned themselves in relation to their supposedly powerless, subjugated Indian counterparts. These sisters were cast as “foils to the progress of Western imperial women” (18). Burton un- derscores the commonality between imperial feminism and its need to save Indian women and the rhetoric of contemporary global sisterhood. 218 Imperial Fantasies: Mourning the Loss of Empire She also argues that “rematerializing Western feminism’s imperial history means taking responsibility for its legacies to and relationships with the present” (24), suggesting that imperial tendencies still prevail in the post-imperial era. Burton suggests that imperial feminism lingers on in the postcolonial era, a view that Amos and Parmar share. This lingering, imperial feminism, as depicted in these novels, is the subject of this essay. While Lively’s novel might be read as a meditation on mortality and a reflection on British women’s lives in the liberated twentieth century, it is important to recognize the extent to which the text’s protagonist, Claudia H, benefits from advantages garnered by first-wave feminists who forged their rhetoric during the Victorian and Edwardian imperial eras. As such, Claudia, who advocates women’s equality but does not acknowledge feminism, also views the world through “imperial” eyes; she creates imperial fantasies about the Middle East and continually casts a backward glance on all empires, whether ancient or modern, while noting the vanishing civilizations that continue to linger even in a postcolonial era. In contrast, Jhabvala’s novel meditates specifically on the fall of the British Empire, highlighting women’s roles in this loss, while decrying the reversal in power that transpires as a result of the fall. The juxtaposition of the two novels forces the reader to examine not only the history and continuing legacy of imperialism but the history of Western feminism in the ways that Burton suggests. Rather than “cheery, triumphant narratives” of Western feminism (Burton, Burdens of History 23), these novels can be scrutinized within the discourse of imperial feminism, allowing readers to “interrogate the history of feminism.” This approach complicates British imperial history and the history of Western feminism and attempts to come to terms with their complex and problematic relationship. Creating Imperial Fantasies When the times are out of joint it is brought uncomfortably home to you that history is true and that unfortunately you are a part of it. One has this tendency to think oneself immune. This is one of the points when the immunity is shown up as fantasy. I’d rather like to go back to fantasising. (Lively 103) 219 Kathleen Williams Renk Tom Southern, the protagonist, Claudia H.’s, true love in Moon Tiger, expresses both a truth about World War II and the tendency to create fantasies wherein life is made both stable and ideal. Tom’s preference for fantasy suggests an attempt to withdraw emotionally and psychologi- cally from the horrors of both war and history; he indicates the need for fantasy as a coping mechanism for witnessing and participating in brutal acts of destruction. Yet Tom also speaks to Claudia of a mirage he and another British soldier observed: “an entire oasis village—palms, mud huts, camels, people walking about,” a “mirror place going about its business” juxtaposed with carnage in the desert (102). The “mirror world, a vanishing oasis” (104) is an ideal world exempt from brutal- ity. Although Tom’s fantasy concerns war, his vision can also be read in relation to the end of empire and a desire to meditate on and maintain the British Empire as it wanes. Tom’s pronouncement is emblematic of Claudia’s approach to empire throughout the novel. Like Tom, Claudia would rather ignore the reality of the present moment in which the British Empire is on the verge of collapse, preferring instead to fantasize about empire and its “ideal” state in which all prescribed hierarchies are in place. As an imperial feminist whose lifespan has straddled the twentieth century and the World Wars that contribute to the eventual loss of empire, Claudia can be seen as a representative of the withering, dying, and incestuous empire that, in its narcissism, created Little Englands around the globe. While Claudia rarely speaks overtly of the British Empire, she spends considerable time reflecting on empire in general and creating imperial fantasies in which all social and political relationships are made right and ideal and the “natural” hierarchy is maintained. Critical positions vary in regard to whether Claudia is cast as a feminist in the novel. Margareta Jolly describes Claudia as a “pre-feminist heroine” (60) and Moon Tiger as “an elegant study in proto-feminism” (70),3 while Mary Moran maintains that the novel represents a “sub- versive feminist outlook” (“A Feminist History of the World” 90) and that, as a historian, Claudia inserts women and the personal into male- dominated history. Moran implies that Claudia’s life reflects the tra- jectory of some women’s lives in the twentieth century as they “made it in a man’s world” (89). Moran seems to congratulate Claudia, who 220 Imperial Fantasies: Mourning the Loss of Empire “spars” with her brother Gordon and enters the male dominated world of history and journalism and “conquer[s] them” (89). Moran argues that Claudia’s “refusal to conform to the restrictive domestic pattern of most women’s lives took the form of traveling widely, enjoying sexual freedom, choosing not to marry the father of her child, and pursuing her career relentlessly” (89). While it is true that Claudia “refuses to conform” and that her non-conformity places her in a feminist category, she acts as though feminism has not yet emerged. She quips and then brags, “If feminism had been around then I’d have taken it up, I suppose; it would have needed me” (Lively 14). Surprisingly, she knows little of the history of feminism despite her work as a historian.

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