Masculinity in Kipling's 'The Brushwood Boy'

Literary Theory and Criticism                    

The Brushwood Boy, Rudyard Kipling: A Journey of a Masculinity

Victorian masculinity was constructed to be perceived as inherently good. Patriarchal Christianity modelled the father, husband, as spiritual head of the house and virtuous, and the father as provider. The male had to be active outside the home in the public sphere of work, acquiring power, status, and the earnings with which to provide. The self-discovery story of boy, Georgie, to highly regarded army officer Cottar the man, is the journey of a public school reared gentlemanly Victorian masculinity which matures more fully by the end of the story, when he gets the girl of his dreams.

Gentlemanly codes of conduct were to civilise. Such codes of behaviour, the “how many were the things no fellow can do” were thought to be superior and virtuous, the same codes that formed the knowing superiority over non-western, non-white cultures, and needed, to ensure the continuity of the empire. Imperialism required a hierarchical masculinity (and masculinities of differing codes for different classes) for a changing industrial age – business expansion through competition, maintaining colonial lands and the activities of war. A focus shift away from religion and piety to science and nature after Darwin’s Origin of the Species required a more rugged Christianity also, embracing the idea of man as adventurer, hunter, explorer, pioneer and colonialist. As Michael Antony discusses extensively in ‘The Masculine Century. From Darwinism to Feminism:The Rise of the Ideologies of Aggression, Part 2’, codes of competition and (economic, cultural, military) dominance were acquired through a focussed obsession with male sports and seen as patriotic – the athlete was a new hero, physical readiness (for combat) pure masculine patriotism.

George Cottar, the terrified boy becomes George Cottar the “worried” but “wards off despair” man, and a perfect developing masculinity in this mode. EM Forster in ‘On British Public School Boys’ remarks that public schools produce ‘…well developed bodies, fairly developed minds, and under developed hearts.’  Cottars underdeveloped heart develops in dream as an internal process, where there is also the hierarchical relationship of child/adult, the actualised powerful, adult male represented there by disliked Policeman Day. “This Policeman Thing had full power and authority” The hierarchical power relations between men are demonstrated through the ranks of the army, and through class, as Cottar introduces his troop to the gentlemanly, civilising sport of boxing, and by a chasing the fox handkerchief game making them his pack of hounds. These comic brutes whom he must not laugh at, become later the transformed troops he paternalistically weeps over. Major and the Father as mentors, and other male voices reaffirm masculinity’s codes of conduct. Of what is heteronormative, they question his lack of sexual activity, the only aspect missing from his masculine virility profile, but these conversations only exalt his virtues, as he is adored and respected by all.  Male friendships of loyalty and trust are highlighted only by the major and Cottars experience of an untold betrayal. It is suggested that he experiences injustice caused by “things no fellow can do”, this brief section reminding of a stanza of Kipling’s poem “If” [1]. Withstanding this injustice, and those who “strove to lure him from the ways of justice”, Cottar will soon “be a man my son.” [1]

Male as protector of woman is demonstrated throughout the dream, and desired female care and comfort protection for the male also demonstrated in dream as the Fantasy girl, as well as the brushwood pile suggested by JMS Tompkins [2], is always his safety, with her appearance “everything was made safe and delightful”. As in reality, there was the housekeeper, and at the theatre, where “Georgie didn’t know what illusions were”, with the real little girl’s sympathy for his cut. Cottar has awe for the major’s wife, he has an overbearing mother, and an older woman’s advances aboard a boat on his crossing back home.  Otherwise he has mild annoyance of women we are told, especially if playing tennis. But women, apart from “It” whose head might spin off and explode, do represent safety, and Cottar’s maturing masculinity on the return to England is shown tolerating conversing almost an hour with the older woman on the boat.

The separateness of the dream from real life is emphasised by Cottar clocking off to dream; we are told he never dreams of the troops of the daytime. But the activities of his daytime are represented there, and the dream and real world are interconnected obviously, by the fantasy girl becoming real, by falling asleep in the dream/waking up in the dream, and by the way modes of masculinity restore order in the chaos of the dream. He is mapping his dream world, “by The Sandhurst school of mapping” – it exists in his mind as discovered, ordered, owned, as a colonialist would, and exists in physical form as his sketched map in the real world of the story.

“So thoroughly had he come to know the place of his dreams that even waking he accepted it as real country and made a rough sketch of it.” This mapping of dream is a psychoanalytical process of discovery and revisiting, often scenes of childhood terror and guilt, to reframe them, remap reactions to them, becoming the healthier man. In Jungian terms, he runs the gauntlet in dreams and is reunited with self. Kipling praises Allah for “the two separate sides of my head” in the poem ‘The Two-Sided Man’ [3] and it is known that he had personally struck a balance between his masculine achievements and feminine imaginative sides, believing the world of dreams must be squared with reality. Kipling later insisted Freudian ideas were bad criticism. Mary Hamer states, “In Kipling’s mature stories, dream and trance are not escapes from reality but conduits for knowledge that would otherwise remain inaccessible.” Kipling might or might not also dislike a Jungian approach – that this is a story of a public school groomed Victorian masculinity in search of its anima.

He is every hero archetype: rugged adventurer military colonialist, in boyhood dream also. A perfectly formed budding Victorian masculinity treading on Hong Kong and Java petals, tracking and mapping colonial expansionist footprints over the lily pads of his dreams, and somehow the reader is encouraged to accept or tolerate that the ‘He’ in this story may deserve a fairy tale ending. The Major relates that success at the game of masculinity is not won by another very rare, similarly virtuous young man as Cottar, as he got his head blown off. It seems there is a 50/50 chance in this game of masculinity, that it will pay off – and then perhaps a suggestion present that it is a game one might not want to have to play at all.

Bibliograpy

Antony, Micheal.  The Masculine Century. From Darwinism to Feminism:The Rise of  the Ideologies of Aggression, Part 2. iUniverse, 21 Oct 2009 p21 preview found at https://books.google.co.uk/books?id=S8y_BAAAQBAJ&lpg=PP1&vq=page%2021&pg=PP1#v=onepage&q&f=false

Fordonski, Krzysztof. (2016). ‘E. M. Forster and English Ways of Ex(Sup)pressing                                                                                 Emotions. Polish Journal of English Studies. 2.’ pp 27-37. https://www.researchgate.net/publication/275309283_E_M_Forster_and_English_Ways_of_ExSuppressing_Emotions Forster, EM. essay ‘On British Public School Boys’

Hamer, Mary. ‘Kipling and Dreams’ http://www.kiplingsociety.co.uk/rg_dreams.htm April 20^th 2010, found at www.kiplingsociety.co.uk

Kipling, Rudyard. ‘The Brushwood Boy’ text found at http://www.telelib.com/authors/K/KiplingRudyard/prose/TheDaysWork/brushwoodboy.html

Mangan, James Anthony, James Walvin. (1991) ‘Manliness and Morality: Middle class Masculinity in Britain and America 1800-1940’

Sussman, Herbert. ‘The study of Victorian Masculinities, Victorian Literature and Cuture pg 366-377

Wilson, Alistair. ‘The Brushwood Boy, notes on the text.’ (August 23 2012)  http://www.kiplingsociety.co.uk/rg_brushwood1.htm

Notes

[1] ‘If’ poem by Rudyard Kipling found at  http://www.telelib.com/authors/K/KiplingRudyard/verse/p3/if.html

[2] JMS Tompkins, The Art of Rudyard Kipling, Methuen, London (1959)

Tompkins uses the story to illustrate facets of Kipling’s work identifying the brushwood pile as safety. In chapter 5. Hatred and Revenge, she discusses terror and guilt and the theme of healing in Kipling’s later tales.

[3] ‘The Two-sided Man’ poem found at https://www.poetryloverspage.com/poets/kipling/two_sided_man.html