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Ambivalence in Kipling’s Plain Tales from the Hills
Last updated 17 June 2007
In Rudyard Kipling’s
Plain Tales from the Hills the reader is presented with a collection of
short stories dealing with the many aspects of British imperial control
in India. Within the forty-two short stories, Kipling represents, among
other things, ambivalence towards the concept of Empire. The stories “Consequences”
and “The Taking of Lungtungpen” demonstrate this ambivalence.
From a post-colonial perspective, ambivalence is “a term first developed
in psychoanalysis to describe a continual fluctuation between wanting
one thing and wanting its opposite. It also refers to a simultaneous attraction
toward and repulsion from an object, person or action.” (Ashcroft
12). We will focus on this aspect of attraction and repulsion towards
concepts of power within empire. Ambivalence acts as the middle of the
road, we see the different angles but Kipling does not commit to an opinion.
A case can, and has been, made for Kipling in defense of Imperialism but
we still see an uncertainty amongst the stories. Kipling is both a product
of the colonial power, being British born, and a product of the colonized,
having lived in India. Thus, he is able to look at the situation from
both perspectives. “Ambivalence gives rise to a controversial proposition
in [Homi] Bhaba’s theory that because the colonial relationship
is always ambivalent, it generates the seeds of its own destruction. This
is controversial because it implies that the colonial relationship is
going to be disrupted, regardless of any resistance or rebellion on the
part of the colonized.” (Ashcroft 12-3). Bhaba’s definition
shows the flaws of imperialism, India is caught somewhere between seeing
a society in need of control and a perceived perfection, or right to control
on the part of the colonizer, England. The tension that exists in the
colonizer/colonized relationship is something that would have been evident
to Kipling due to his background.
The story “Consequences”
shows us ambivalence via the corrupt power that the colonizer can demonstrate,
tainting the positive qualities of control. If they are corrupt within
themselves, why should they be considered an authority over another society?
“The Taking of Lungtungpen” demonstrates ambivalence by showing
the ease of barbaric domination. When you look at these two stories in
conjunction with each other you see, “Within the specification of
India as other, the figures of the alluring exotic and the minatory alien
stand out, on the one hand, as the signs of the sensual temptations impeding
the exercise of British rule and, on the other, of an unintelligible danger
to its hegemony.” (Parry 58). The ambivalence laid out here questions
this very idea of the temptations of power and the dangers involved in
achieving it.
“Consequences” is as story that demonstrates the corruption within the British government in its affairs in India. The main character Tarrion is a man of little work ethic who wants a place, any position, in the governmental headquarters in Simla. “He belonged to a regiment; but what her really wanted to do was escape from this regiment and live in Simla for ever and ever. He had no preference for anything in particular, beyond a good horse and a nice partner.” (Kipling 75). Right from the start the reader gets a sense of Tarrion’s ambivalence as a character. He wants a change of position but doesn’t care what he changes too; the mere act of difference is enough for him. Knowing he has little available to him at this stage in life, Tarrion turns to Mrs. Hauksbee to help improve his station. “I haven’t a square inch of interest in all of Simla. My name isn’t known to any man with an appointment in his gift, and I want an appointment - a good, sound one.” (Kipling 76). Soon after Tarrion meets with Mrs. Hauksbee, a chain of deceitful events leaves her with a stack of state secret documents in her possession. These letters become instantly invaluable to Tarrion’s needs. “Of course, their things could never be made public, because Native Princes never err officially, and their States are officially as well administered as Our territories.” (Kipling 77). Government officials are very careful about their reputations and feel strongly that their personal lives are their own and not to be shared with the public. “The principle of secrecy was to that Viceroy quite as important as the practice, and he held that a benevolent despotism liqc [like] Ours should never allow even little things, such as appointments of subordinate clerks, to leak out till the proper time.” (Kipling 77). Tarrion sees the opportunity he has so he immediately goes to Simla, seeking a position with a good salary, having no skills—just the information in the documents. “’And I fancy that special knowledge of this kind is at least as valuable for, let us say, a berth in the Foreign Office, as the fact of being the nephew of a distinguished officer’s wife.’ That hit the Strong Man hard, for the last appointment to the Foreign Office had been by black favour, and he knew it.” (Kipling 79). So, not only was he given this position in a manner not related to his qualifications, other positions in the Foreign Office have as well. Tarrion saw absolutely nothing wrong with his actions. In fact, he thought, “‘If Mrs. Hauksbee were twenty years younger, and I her husband, I should have been Viceroy of India in fifteen years.’” (Kipling 79). Tarrion has gotten what he wants with no repercussions, this is a lesson for him and anyone else that power is yours whether you earned it or not. Tarrion is again demonstrating his ambivalent nature. He is completely unphased with what had to happen in order for him to gain a position in Simla. He is unsure of who was affected by his actions, and unconcerned.
“Consequences” clearly demonstrates the corruption of governmental
practice in Simla and the other side of the colonized coin. Tarrion suffers
no consequence other than his improvement in station. “The most
insidious evil of colonialism remained its pervasive corruption, the spread
of ill-gotten gains and local power throughout the kingdom of Britain
as well as that of India.” (Bolton 877). The imperial power tries
to give a pristine public face by hiding the details of the members’
private lives. “It is precisely by highlighting the ‘invisible
design’ that capitalism’s attempts, to either subsume different
structures or polarize them, can be shown as incompletely successful.
Only then can we, as critics, examine the fault-lines of this discourse,
and make visible the ambivalence and alterity present in the constitution
of capitalism as a foundational theme.” (Prakash 13-4). Kipling
is forcing us to look at all angles of domination by taking the story
out of the village and putting the reader into the political office. By
stating the facts of the story, without judgment, Kipling is voicing an
ambivalent view of the details of the story and the corruption that ensues.
He is playing devil’s advocate by showing the inner machinations
of the government. “When Kipling sports with the referential mode
which he so ably used to prescribe codes of conduct and instill ways of
seeing, he puts in question the very predications which elsewhere he so
aggressively articulated.” (Parry 54). It is up to the reader to
decide whether he supports this corruption or if this is meant to highlight
the dangers of government; Kipling is an ambivalent voice presenting the
facts.
In “The
Taking of Lungtungpen” we are looking at the dominating force
and trite control as the British take over a tiny, innocent village. There
is a blatant racism inherent from the beginning of the story, “An’
such double-inded divils I niver knew! ‘Tis only a dah an’
a Snider that makes a dacoit.” (Kipling 87). The inhabitants of
the village are never humanized; they are only referred to by their bodies
or, as stated in the previous quote, as devils. The act of dehumanizing
creates a distance forcing the reader to detach from the action of the
story, and it creates ambivalence towards the people of Lungtungpen. The
white men look at the invasion as another task to complete and don’t
care to think of the repercussions of their actions on the villager’s
lives. They look at them in terms of their ancient tools and traditions.
“Prisintly, I learn that, acrost the river, about nine miles away,
was a town just dhrippin’ wi dahs, an’ bohs an arrows, an’
dacoits, an’ elephints, an jingles. ‘Good!’ sez I; ‘this
office will now close!’” (Kipling 87). It is an office to
be closed, not a town where life can begin and prosper. The soldiers cross
the river and after hitting resistance from the villagers, they went in
guns blazing and torched the houses. “Whin we was all dhressed we
counted the dead-sivinty-foive dacoits besides wounded. We tuk five elephints,
a hunder’ an’ sivinty Sniders, two hunder’ dahs, and
a lot av other burglarious thruck.” (Kipling 90). The men are dead
and the women have been collected. “Lift’nint [Lieutenant]
on our shoulthers round the town, an’ playin’ wid the Burmese
babies – fat, little, brown little divils, as pretty as picturs.”
(Kipling 90). The soldiers are completely ambivalent to the inhumanity
of the scene described. They have killed the fathers, yet they are happy
enough to play with the babies of the village. This demonstrates how much
power they have: they were immediately able to overcome the resistance
and now feel the people of the village are their property to do with as
they chose, and there is no one to stop them or tell them otherwise.
“The Taking of Lungtungpen” is used to highlight process the
British soldiers go through when “colonizing” a new area.
They are given an order, and they follow it without asking how it affects
others. Kipling shows the reader the animalistic nature of the soldiers
by their senseless brutality, and mocks them as they enter the village
in nothing more than underwear, leaving their kits behind, soaked from
crossing a river. “Representations which neutralize or elide the
challenge to the British world-view, and which ensure that the positioning
master and native is not disturbed, close the space for a counter-discourse
authored by the colonized as historical subject an agent. Yet in the act
of muting these utterances, the texts reveal a knowledge of their existence
and their danger.” (Kipling 60). By depicting the soldier’s
in an animalistic native way, Kipling is weakening and decentralizing
the importance of the colonizer. By demonstrating their brutal nature
and mocking their actions simultaneously the reader get a clear sense
of Kipling’s ambivalence towards the purpose of colonization. Perhaps
Kipling sees the need for force but remains unsettled with the way the
soldiers go about using it, creating a tension Kipling does not resolve
by the end of the story.
Both short stories demonstrate ambivalence towards the human condition
in relation to the Indian “other”. While either corruption
for personal gain, or a fun day of destruction and power, both acts leave
a wake of consequences on an unwitting society. Through “Consequences”
we may get the sense that Kipling feels a need to expose the corruption
within the government, showing the negative sides of empire and demonstrating
how power is there to be taken not earned, much as the land in India was
taken by the British. Yet, in “The Taking of Lungtungpen”,
Kipling seems quite at ease with this barbaric and senseless physical
control. This is the discord between wanting one thing, power, and the
uncertainty of how it is attained. While these are only two stories of
the many Kipling wrote in his time in India, they show someone who questions
the Empire within which he resides. We are left to only guess where Kipling’s
mind finally rests on the idea of imperialism. For now, we can only sit
with him in the middle and keep asking questions.
Works Cited
Ashcroft, Bill, Gareth Griffiths and Helen Tiffin, ed. Post-Colonial Studies: The Key Concepts. New York: Routledge, 2006.
Bolton, Betsy. “Imperial Sensibilities, Colonial Ambivalence: Edmund
Burke and Frances Burney,” ELH 72 (2005).
Kipling, Rudyard. Plain Tales from the Hills. Oxford: Oxford University
Press, 2001.
Parry, Benita. “The Content and Discontents of Kipling’s Imperialism,”
New Formations : 49-63.
Prakash, Gyan. “Postcolonial Criticism and Indian Historiography,”
Social Text 31/32 (1992): 8-19.
This page was written by Jamie Lerch.
This project was completed under the direction of Dr Leon Litvack as a requirement for the MA degree in Modern Literary Studies in the School of English at the Queen's University of Belfast. The site is evolving and will include contributions from future generations of MA students on other writers and themes.
Email Dr Litvack with your comments: L.Litvack at qub.ac.uk
