If a woman can wear he supplément incorrectly, what else might she be capable of doing? Referring to somebody by their first name? Eating babies? It’s the thin end of the wedge!)… where was I? The problem with all this darned parentheses is that I come out of them with only the mildest awareness of my surroundings… oh yes, there I am… for all that the British system attempts to eliminate the individual, converting bestial human beings into sublime, impartially rationalistic agents and mechanisms of orderly governance, in the home and in the empire, for all that it seeks to transform flawed people into what are essentially flawless avatars of Empire, through whom the Empire’s will flows into the world, Kipling insists that men and women are always no more and no less than men and women. For all that the British system attempts to eliminate the individual, reducing each man to a surname, rank, and posting, turning barbaric, prejudiced, semi-animalistic humans (like the Rajah of Degumber) (and can I tie in here the earlier discussion of high-school fashion police? Because the criticism directed at the eponymous ‘Second-Rate Woman’, and to a lesser degree at other social failures, particularly in the Deodars stories, is precisely that by failing to keep up with the latest fashions – by failing to conform, by remaining as a distinct and identifiable individual – she lowers herself to the level of a ‘Thing’ or a ‘creature’: to be uncivilised in even the most minor way is to be an animal, a thing less of pity than of horror and fear. Above all, he locates the causes of imperialism, and of how that imperialism runs it course on the ground, in the psychology of the individual invader as the ultimate self-made man. He seems willing to approve of the genuine ambition to improve the lot of ‘backward’ peoples, yet he also undermines notions of the irreconcilable otherness of the native, while at the same time suggesting that much evil, as well as good, can come from dragging the native down to the low and conniving level of the British, and questioning how – and in what ways – succesful integration can ever occur.

“The Man Who Would Be King” is a big topic, because it’s essentially a microcosm of British Imperialism – and it’s important to note, in light of the general sentiment toward Kipling, that he presents all this in extremely problematic terms. The review strikes back… don’t worry, almost finished now.

Kipling the man who would be king