School of Communication

Foundation in Communication – Semester Two

Subject: English 2

Aditi Verma – 0302985

Andrew Goh – 0304490

Victorian Era Women: The Picture Kipling Paints

Literary Research

Introduction:

The portrayal of women in various literary works has been a matter of much discourse

over the centuries. Many scholars have been inspired to study the contradicting roles that women

play in the expanse of literature. Some are painted as subdued and meek while some as confident

and self-assured. Some are depicted as ‘damsels in distress’, while some as independent and

strong-willed. Some follow society’s rules and regulations without any objection, while others go

against the societal norms and stand up for themselves.

Thus, given the broad and exploratory nature of this subject, we have attempted to study

one such author’s illustration of women. The main aim of our dissertation was to analyse the

representation of women by Rudyard Kipling in his collection “Plain Tales from the Hills.”

Plain Tales from the Hills is the first collection of short stories by Rudyard Kipling,

published in 1888. Many of the stories are set in a small Hill Station of India, ‘Simla’. We have

studied six short stories from this collection in which women play prominent roles. They are:

1. Lispeth

2. Cupid’s arrows

3. Three—and an extra

4. Miss Youghal’s Sais

5. The Other Man

6. The Rescue of Pluffles

Literature Review:

Quite a few of Kipling's works were set in British India. This comes as no surprise, as

Kipling was born in what is now Mumbai in India. Based on Kipling's biography by Merriman

(2006), it seems logical to assume that Kipling's view on women was shaped by several women

in his own life; firstly, Captain Holloway's wife in the boarding house he attended from 1871 to

1877, where he was often beaten, to the point that he referred to it as the 'House of Desolation',

his own mother and her sister, Aunt Georgie and lastly Caroline 'Carrie' Balestier, his American

publisher's sister.

Miroslava Kovářová (from Masaryk University in Brno) has examined the portrayal of

British women in India by Rudyard Kipling, E.M. Forster, and P. Scott in his thesis published in

2007. He describes Kipling’s women as multi-dimensional and multi-faceted. They prove that

even though they live in a male dominated society they often dominate the man; even though

many of them struggle in their daily lives, they are not victims of particular men but of a

particular political and ideological system both men and women are subjected to. (Kovářová,

2007) On the other hand, he has also stated that Kipling’s portrayal of female characters is

“restricted and limited”, and has described women like Mrs. Hauksbee and Mrs. Reiver as

“shallow and promiscuous.”(Kovářová, 2007) So, on the whole he considers Kipling’s portrayal

of British women in India as wicked, mischievous, prejudiced and sometimes unfaithful to their

husbands, and his younger female protagonists as possessing genuine non-calculating attitudes

that are rewarded with the highest possible award, love.

Somewhat in contrast to Kipling’s representation of women, a Victorian author, Mary

Ann (Marian) Evans, more popular by her pen name George Eliot has addressed women in her

essay, Silly Novels by Lady Novelists, as wealthy, beautiful, pious, stylish, and somewhat

shallow. In her books, she showed the deficiency of a woman's place in society by restricting her

characters to their boundaries, unlike Kipling.

Another one of the prominent Victorian era authors was Thomas Hardy. He has usually

portrayed his female characters as helpless, and has depicted an overall lesser value of women,

as can be examined in two of his most renowned works, Return of the Native and Tess of the

d’Urbervilles. However, his female characters have been repeatedly illustrated as the centre of

their novel’s fictional world, though generally viewed as tragic characters, that is, as victims.

Then, the concept of ‘pater familias’, where the husband was head and moral leader of

his family, had been firmly ingrained in Victorian culture. A wife's proper role was to love and

obey her husband; her place in the family hierarchy was second to her husband – although not

without significance or importance, since the tasks of the Victorian wife was to tend to her

husband and properly raise her children, and these were widely considered the keystones of

social stability by the Victorians then. Such can be proved by the Victorian ideal of the tirelessly

patient, sacrificing wife being depicted in literature like Coventry Patmore’s 1854 poem, The

Angel in the House.

Nevertheless, Victorian-era wives were also expected to play a role not unlike the

commander of an army, which was coined as ‘Household Commander’ in 1861 by Isabella

Beeton in her manual, Mrs Beeton’s Book of Household Management. The manual states that in

order to run a respectable household and secure her family’s happiness and well-being, a wife

would have to perform her duties intelligently and thoroughly – she would have to organize and

instruct her servants, which was not an easy task as most of them were not reliable.

Thus, from the above selected examples, we have seen some of the ways in which other

scholars viewed Kipling, and also how other authors have showcased their women during the

Victorian-era. Kipling. However, the aforementioned contrast with how Kipling painted most of

his women, particularly in Plain Tales from the Hills. His female characters are quite different

from their contemporaries in the literature of the same period. For instance, his female

protagonists are portrayed in a stronger light unlike Hardy’s or Patmore’s. They are intelligent

and somewhat rebellious against societal norms unlike Eliot’s – and definitely not at all like the

‘Household Commander’ Isabella Beeton espouses. For example, in one of his short stories titled

Cupid’s Arrows, the main character competes in an archery contest, where the winner will

receive a diamond bracelet – and if she wins it, by taking the bracelet she signifies her

acceptance to marry the organizer of the contest, who is a high-ranking officer. However, she

chooses to do things her own way and deliberately loses the contest, although in a manner that

shows she did so purposefully. Such an act has signified Kipling’s preference for strong-willed

women in his work, and this is precisely what we have attempted to highlight in our research.

Literary Analysis:

Rudyard Kipling portrayed his various female characters in different ways. Not only that,

each character of his seems to have more than one side, never failing to surprise the readers.

From submissive to defiant, he never portrayed them in a uniform manner, but strove to make

them as varied and as complex as possible. Thus, in the following pages, we study some of these

characters, belonging to the short story collection Plain Tales from the Hills.

I. Miss Gaurey

In this section, we examine the character of Miss Gaurey, the female protagonist of the

short story “The Other Man” from Kipling’s short story collection.

In the story, Miss Gaurey is a woman who is forcibly married to a man named Colonel

Scheriederling implied to be many years her senior, despite the fact that she is in love with

another man at the time. After falling ill, Miss Gaurey — who was considered ordinary from the

start — becomes ‘ugly’, and her husband ignores her from then on, choosing to go back to the

‘lairs of his bachelorhood’ instead.

Miss Gaurey is a standard example of women during those times; more often than not,

they were forced into marriages for the family’s sake. Besides that, Scheriederling’s treatment of

her is somewhat abusive, reflecting on how men thought of their wives back then – subservient,

mindless and expected to tolerate all form of abuse, mental or physical.

However, unlike how women were expected to behave, that is highly emotional and

prone to tears; Miss Gaurey does not shed a single tear during the entire story. In example, she

does not weep during her forced marriage to Scheriederling, unlike her mother who uses it to

gain sympathy. Another example would be when despite her obvious surprise at meeting her old

flame, who is referenced to as The Other Man in the story, she does not weep after the initial

shock of seeing him. This implies that Miss Gaurey is rather an strong emotionally for a woman

of her time. Besides that, Rudyard Kipling has written of her as being ugly, but also a survivor –

he has stated that men like Scheriederling did not marry women who died easily, lending

credence to her trait as a survivor.

Therefore, we can conclude that Miss Gaurey is a character that smashes society’s

expectations at the time, despite her husband and mother’s treatment of her. It is also probable

that Kipling wishes to deliver the message of ‘staying strong and keeping it together’ to the

women of that period through her strong portrayal.

II. Lispeth

In this section, we attempt to analyze the character and character evolution of Lispeth –

one of the most famous of Kipling’s heroines.

In his short story titled “Lispeth” – a part of the collection Plain Tales from the Hills –

Rudyard Kipling depicts the shallowness of Englishmen and brings to the forefront the

discrimination between the ‘superior’ and the ‘inferior’ present in the society during that time,

while still revolving the theme around his heroine.

Kipling introduces Lispeth as the daughter of a hill-man and his wife who is baptized at a

very young age by the Mission. Her pitiable representation begins to shape from this point of the

story itself, as her parents pass away in a bout of cholera, and she is reduced to become a half-

servant and half-companion to the Chaplain’s wife, foregoing her previous title of the ‘Mistress

of the Northern Hills’.

However, she is still painted as growing up into someone “very lovely” and “for her race,

extremely tall”, with her Greek face, and pale and ivory color. Kipling also mentions the

exquisiteness of her eyes, and compares her to the “original Diana of the Romans going out to

slay”. (Kipling 1888, p.7) It is quite evident that Lispeth does not see herself as a native, but

almost as a white woman, as she takes to Christianity readily and does not abandon it upon

reaching womanhood as most hill-girls do. In fact, she washes herself daily, takes classes in the

Sunday school, and reads all the books in the house, making her “own people” hate her. Here,

the intricacy of her character shines through, and it is apparent that Kipling wishes to throw light

upon her indifference towards the natives, and demonstrate her easy compliance to the English

style of living. On the other hand, she is also shown as someone who is not ignorant of her true

identity, as she somehow feels that she does not truly belong with the Chaplains. This is justified

by her fear of being taken away to Simla or “somewhere out into the unknown world.” It is

apparent that she dreads being carried back to the world that forms her roots.

Furthermore, the gullibility and naivetés of her character is revealed eventually in the

story, as the Englishman she falls in love with at first sight leads her on and makes her believe

that he will return to marry her when in truth he has no intentions of doing so. Moreover, the

Chaplain’s wife, who is held in high regards by Lispeth, supports his lies and confirms his

promise to her despite knowing that he is of “superior clay”. Lispeth, blinded by her love for the

Englishman, does not see through their façade and believes them foolishly only to later realize

that she had been lied to all along. This is when her transformation from an ingenuous and pretty

girl who waits for her love, to a strong and somewhat savage hill-woman, takes place as she

takes a stand for herself and leaves the English, feeling betrayed.

Kipling emphasizes this immense change in her character by her dramatic announcement

of the English having “killed Lispeth”, and her return to her own land, later marrying a

woodcutter who beats her. Here, we think that the aim is perhaps to accentuate the thought that

no matter the upbringing, a person’s actions are ultimately consistent with their true bloodlines.

In conclusion, we find Lispeth to be a complex character, painted as both strong and

weak, who gains both admiration and sympathy from the readers, as certainly intended by

Kipling. This is evident by the concluding lines of the story – “It was hard then to realize that

the bleared, wrinkled creature, so like a wisp of charred rag, could ever have been "Lispeth of

the Kotgarth Mission." (Kipling 1888, p.9)

III. Mrs. Bremmil

In this section, we attempt to analyze the character of Mrs. Bremmil, a woman with an

intricate personality, and one not very different, yet not entirely similar, from the character we

examined in the previous section.

In the short story entitled Three and – An Extra, Kipling portrays Mrs. Bremmil as a

married woman who finds her marriage in jeopardy after the death of her newborn child, as a

woman named Mrs. Hauksbee attempts to ‘steal’ her husband away. At first, it seems that Mrs.

Bremmil is too meek to do anything about it, as her husband and Mrs. Hauksbee are often seen

together, while she contents herself by grieving over her dead child – not even eight of her

friends talking to her seem to do anything about it, even when Mr. Bremmil decides to attend a

ball with Mrs. Hauksbee.

However, Kipling surprises his readers by giving a certain ‘twist’ to her character,

revealing that it had all been a feint – having told her husband that she would be having dinner

with the Longmores, Mrs. Bremmil proceeds to show up at the ball after her dinner, dressed in a

“gorgeous dress”, turning the heads of all the men present. Eventually her husband decides to ask

her for a dance, which she teasingly rejects, but in the end accepts. She is shown as a woman

who knows her husband’s weakness and uses it to her advantage, as by the end of the Ball, Mrs.

Bremmil manages to wrest her husband back from Mrs. Hauksbee; and with style as well.

In this short story, Kipling portrays Mrs. Bremmil in an entirely different manner from

characters like Miss Gaurey; where the latter is more a character that endures suffering without

complaint, Mrs. Bremmil is more proactive – she saw a rival trying to snatch her husband away

and fought back. She is also an emotionally strong woman, as evidenced by her ability to get

over her child’s death and focus on her husband.

Another example would be during the time her husband was dallying with Mrs.

Hauksbee; she was not panicked or enraged; rather, she remained calm and reassured.

Mrs. Bremmil is also rather witty and intelligent, as can be seen with the methods she

used in getting her husband back, as well as Mrs. Hauksbee’s words on her: “The silliest woman

can manage a clever man; but it needs a very clever woman to manage a fool.” (Kipling 1888,

p.12)

Based on this, we can conclude that Mrs. Bremmil is in no way like the women of her

time – she is in many ways, a complete opposite, in that she is willing to stand up for her rights,

emotionally unwavering and capable of intelligent thought, where most women at that time were

portrayed as dull, unintelligent people. This, once again, shows Kipling’s preference for painting

his women in a strong light.

IV. Kitty Beighton

In this section, we explore the character of Kitty Beighton who is yet another well-known

heroine of Kipling’s literature. She is an interesting protagonist as her portrayal in “Cupid’s

Arrows” – from the collection Plain Tales from the Hills – is one that is also quite different from

the way women were usually depicted during the literature in Kipling’s era.

Miss Beighton is the young, pretty, tough, and mischievous heroine whose father is a “poor

but honest District and Sessions Judge”, and mother is an anxious woman who wishes her

daughter to get married to a good and wealthy man. Her character comes off as clever and strong

from the very beginning of the story, unlike Lispeth, as Kipling informs the readers that Kitty is

aware of the power of her beauty and uses it to her advantage.

In an era when female protagonists were usually painted as vulnerable and weak, Miss

Beighton is presented as one who is proud – as is quite apparent by the way she finds being

singled out by a wealthy Commissioner “with letters after his name” fairly pleasing, and takes

pleasure “to fill the hearts of other girls with bad feelings” – and has an opinionated attitude

which is evident in the way she whines at her mother "Mr. Saggot is such--such a-- is so

FEARFULLY ugly, you know!" (Kipling 1888, p.33)

However, despite this, it wouldn’t be wrong of us to say that Kipling doesn’t want his

readers to forget that Kitty is still a young girl possessing a heart, and thus she is presented in

love with Cubbon – a boy with a handsome face, no prospects, and head over heels in love with

the young lady. Moreover, we find that their love is also used by Kipling as a means to throw

light upon Kitty’s bold, strong, and clever disposition.

The young lady is described as radical in her ways as she rebels against the Victorian

values practiced on a large scale by her contemporaries by brazenly refusing to bow down to

society and standing up for her love. She does this through a very sly yet deliberate method

during the archery tournament for ladies arranged by the Commissioner. The terms are set

skillfully by Mr. Saggot who sets a diamond-studded bracelet as the prize, obviously intended

for Kitty as it is aforementioned that she is the best lady archer in Simla; the acceptance

carrying with it “the hand and the heart of the Commissioner.” However, Miss Beighton is not

trapped in the situation as she shocks the town by intentionally losing the competition in a

skillful and awe-inspiring way, indirectly flaunting her rejection of Mr. Saggot to the whole of

Simla, publicly disregarding her parents, and departing boldly with her love Cubbon. In our

opinion, this majorly reflects the extraordinariness with which Kipling has handled his central

female character.

Therefore, we can conclude that in Cupid’s Arrows, Kipling strays away from the norm

and provides a rare perspective on literary women. He emphasizes the uniqueness of Kitty

Beighton’s character as opposed to how other authors portrayed their heroines in that period, by

focusing on her audacious and shrewd nature, which is very prominent throughout the story, and

is the most perceptible towards the end.

V. Miss Youghal

In this section, we explore the character of Miss Youghal, another female protagonist in a

short story written by Rudyard Kipling.

In the story “Miss Youghal’s Sais” from the collection Plain Tales from the Hills, Miss

Youghal is the daughter of a presumably high-class family who falls in love with a British

policeman named Strickland, who had in a sense, ‘gone native’ in order to blend in with the

natives in British India. Their love is not looked on favorably though. When Strickland tells Miss

Youghal’s parents, her mother claims that she will not throw her daughter into the “worst paid

Department in the Empire”, while her father says that he distrusts Strickland’s ways and works,

and wishes that Strickland would stop contacting his daughter. When her family goes off to

Simla in April, Strickland follows after them three months later, disguising himself as a sais and

endearing himself to Mrs. Youghal, all while continuing his love affair with the lady.

Eventually though, the flirting of suitors gets to him, and when an old General does so, he

loses his composure, and the lie breaks. With the old general’s help though, the two manage to

get married, with the understanding that Strickland would stop ‘going native’.

Unlike other characters, Miss Youghal is quite similar to the young women of her

time, and from what can be seen in Kipling’s story, acts like one. However, she does show a

streak of rebelliousness in conducting her affair with Strickland through having him disguise

himself as a sais, and her similarity to girls of that age could represent an inability to break the

social norms that were prevalent during those times; in other words, Miss Youghal reflects the

inability of women to make their own choices back then. This could possibly imply that Miss

Youghal’s Sais is a story aimed at the upper class families – and one mocking their separation of

class, as the ending of the story has Miss Youghal, a well-placed young lady marrying a

policeman who has, to her parents’ point of view, adopted the mannerism and culture of

uneducated savages.

VI. Mrs. Hauksbee

In this final section, we examine the character of Mrs. Hauksbee who is quite a prominent

character in Kipling’s works, as she appears in many of his stories. Here, we will be focusing on

her role in “The Rescue of Pluffles” – another short story from the collection Plain Tales from

the Hills.

Mrs. Hauksbee, being one of the recurring characters in Kipling’s stories, exemplifies

many of the characteristic features of his idiosyncratic writing. We find her to be partly a

stereotype – a clever woman of the ruling classes i.e. the British in India; and the administrative

class of them – and yet a clearly delineated individual member of this stereotypical group.

Her character is first introduced as one whose involvement in a situation causes a “fair

chance of trouble” with her bye-name being “Stormy Petrel.” This is delivered to the readers by

Kipling in another one of his short stories called Three and an Extra. Yet, in the same story, she

is also described as clever, witty, brilliant, and “sparkling beyond most of her kind”, though

possessing many “devils of malice and mischievousness.” Apparently, she is disliked by most

women, as they rise up and call her “not blessed” whenever her name is mentioned during

afternoon teas. (Kipling 1888, p.10)

However, four stories later in the same volume, another shade of Mrs. Hauksbee’s

character is brought to the forefront. Here, in The Rescue of Pluffles, she is painted in a positive

light, shown as one who uses her cleverness in what can be considered a ‘good’ way.

At the beginning of the story, Kipling states that Mrs. Hauksbee is sometimes nice to her

own sex, which seems like a conflicting statement, emphasizing both on the negativity and

positivity of her character. This seems like another one of Kipling’s unique ways to represent his

women.

Mrs. Hauksbee is described as one who is “honest as her own front teeth” yet has a love

for mischief. She hates Mrs. Reiver with a passion, and decides to ‘rescue’ Pluffles – a callow

subaltern who “always trusted his own judgment” – from her rival who treated him like a slave

and also charged money for it.

Apparently, Kipling wants his readers to realize his protagonist’s caring and

compassionate side along with her manipulative and cunning persona as well, as is evident by

this statement: “She played her game alone, knowing what people would say of her; and she

played it for the sake of a girl she had never seen.” (Kipling 1888, p.30)

Mrs. Hauksbee is shown as an experienced and quick-witted woman who has “three and

twenty sides” to her character, perhaps even more. She takes on the role of a mother to Pluffles,

manipulates his thoughts in a very gentle yet effective way, and gets him to agree to marry his

fiancé whom he had previously considered a “folly.” We can thus derive that Kipling aims to

highlight the “power of a woman” through this ordeal, painting his female protagonist yet again

in a way that was rarely observed during that era.

Therefore, we conclude Mrs. Hauksbee to be a multifaceted character, managing to

exhibit goodwill along with some hostility. Kipling has carved her character as one whose

motivations are neither simple nor clear cut. She is thus yet another character whose personality

is quite different from that of other women characters written during the same period.

Conclusion

After our analysis of the six varied female characters, taken from six different stories

from Kipling’s collection Plain Tales from the Hills, we can conclude that Kipling preferred to

portray his women in ways that were usually not found in the literature of the late nineteenth and

early twentieth centuries. The picture he paints of his female characters is unique, diverse, and

entertaining, with a touch of reality – reality of the women in that era.

List of Works Cited

1. Beeton, I., 1861. The Book of Household Management [e-book], USA: David Price.

Available through: Project Gutenberg Literary Archive Foundation website

<http://www.gutenberg.org/files/10136/10136-8.txt> [Accessed 1 May, 2012]

2. Boumelha, P., 1982. Thomas Hardy and Women: Sexual Ideology and Narrative Form.

Sussex: John Spiers.

3. Eliot, G., 1856. ‘Silly Novels by Lady Novelists’, Westminster Review, Vol 10: 442-61.

4. Kipling, R., 1999. Plain Tales from the Hills [e-book], USA: David Price. Available

through: Project Gutenberg Literary Archive Foundation website

<http://www.gutenberg.org/ebooks/1858> [Accessed 12 March 2012]

5. Kovářová, M., 2007. British women in India as Portrayed by R. Kipling, E.M. Forster

and P. Scott [thesis online], Czech Republic: Masaryk University. Available through:

Masaryk University Information System website < http://is.muni.cz/?lang=en> [Accessed

29 April 2012]

6. Merriman, C.D., 2006. Rudyard Kipling [e-journal], USA: Jalic Inc. Available through:

The Literature Network website <http://www.online-literature.com/kipling/> [Accessed 4

May 2012]

7. Patmore, C.K.D., 1854. The Angel in the House [e-book], USA: David Price. Available

through: Project Gutenberg Literary Archive Foundation website

<http://www.gutenberg.org/ebooks/4099> [Accessed 1 May 2012]