Undergraduate Dissertation
Trabajo Fin de Grado
Postcolonial identity in Kidnapped, by Robert Louis Stevenson
Author
Sara Arévalo Viñas
Supervisor
Constanza Del Río Álvaro
FACULTY OF ARTS 2018
2 CONTENTS
1. INTRODUCTION ………..……3
2. NARRATION, FOCALIZATION, AND CROSS-CULTURAL INTERACTION………..…6
3. CULTURAL IMPERIALISM AND GEOGRAPHY……….14
4. MASCULINITY IN KIDNAPPED………..……20
5. CONCLUSION………..26
6. WORKS CITED………28
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1. Introduction
In this dissertation I will analyze the theme of colonialism in one of Stevenson's adventure novels, Kidnapped, first published in 1886. I will argue that this novel could be said to have a postcolonial nature and to set a precedent for Stevenson's late fictional works, in which he deals more explicitly with the theme of imperialism and becomes more interested in imperial politics. In his late fictional works, collected in South Seas Tales (1893), Stevenson aimed to portray the colonizer's presence in the Pacific and,
particularly, the relationships between the islanders and the colonizers. Prior to his South Seas fiction or his late non-fictional work set in the Pacific, In the South Seas (1896) – a combination of travel writing, personal impressions, anthropology, sociology, etc. –, Stevenson was not considered a politically committed writer, nor did he seem to show any interest in the ethics of colonial politics or the colonial enterprise.
He was rather considered a writer of boys’ adventure stories and adventure romances with no political resonances. According to Ann C. Colley, it was with his South Seas fiction that “Stevenson periodically broke away from the glorified narratives of boys’
adventure stories and the pervasive imperial myth of Robinson Crusoe, to write ballads based upon Samoan legends and to compose tales, fables, and short novels that drew upon his immediate experiences as a colonial” (4). Nevertheless, in this dissertation I will argue that Stevenson had already dealt with the theme of colonization in Kidnapped, even though he did it in a less explicit way than in his Pacific writings.
Despite being published seven years before his South Seas short fiction and a decade before In the South Seas, and despite being a novel that aimed to entertain a young audience, Kidnapped includes some themes and literary devices that already point towards Stevenson's colonial concerns in his Pacific writings. I will also consider that Kidnapped has a postcolonial nature since Stevenson seems to use this novel as a
4 vehicle to exert a critique of and question colonial practices, as well as to give voice to the 'colonized' peoples of Highland Scotland. The fact that the Highlanders are nor relegated to a secondary plane provides this novel with a postcolonial nature since it is in postcolonial literature that the experiences and feelings of the colonized start to be reflected, whereas in colonial and colonialist literature it is the experiences of the colonizers that are the main focus.
It is necessary to mention at this point that Scotland was never strictly a colony of the British Empire. After the Union of the Parliaments of Scotland and England in 1707, the new state of Great Britain was born. The death of the Stuart Queen Anne of Scotland without offspring in 1714 generated tensions: the Scottish first claimed that the rightful heir to the throne was James Francis Edward Stuart (‘The Old Pretender’) and, then, his son Charles Edward Stuart (‘Bonnie Prince Charles’ or ‘the Young Pretender’). Nonetheless, it was the Hanoverian George I who ascended the throne as King of Great Britain, mainly due to the fact that the Stuarts were Catholic. Opposition to the Union from the start had given rise to various failed Jacobite risings led by James but it was the 1945 Jacobite rising with Charles as leader that would prove more momentous and successful before being finally crushed in April 1746. England’s victory was followed by harsh reprisals against Jacobite supports, mainly Scottish Highlanders.
The novel that will be the subject of study in this dissertation, Kidnapped, was first published in serial form from May to July 1886 in Young Folks Magazine, the same magazine in which Stevenson published one of his most acclaimed novels, Treasure
5 Island (1883). The novel is set in Scotland in 1751, and even though it is not strictly a
historical novel, the story revolves around real historical events, such as the 'Appin Murder', which occurred some years after the Jacobite rising of 1745. The novel also includes real locations and presents characters which are based on real people. The two main characters in the novel are David Balfour and Alan Breck Stewart, the former being a Lowlander and the latter a Highlander, a character based on a real Jacobite soldier who was accused of the assassination of Colin Campbell of Glenure, another character which also appears in the novel.
Adventure novels became considerably popular in the 19th century, particularly in the last decades, while the British Empire continued to grow and assert his role as a world power. During this period, many of these novels “usually purported to chronicle the English adventure in the lands beyond Europe then being explored and colonized, but they did so in such a manner that they formed the energizing myth of English imperialism” (White 6). Moreover, the crisis of masculinity – and of gender roles more generally – that took place in the last decades of the 19th century resulted in a reinforcement and popularization of traditional male values, such as courage and honor, through adventure novels. Kidnapped also makes reference to this crisis of masculinity.
Stevenson’s novel, though, is not set in a non-European land but in Scotland, and, far from contributing to the energizing myth of English imperialism, Stevenson exerts a critique of colonialism and colonialist practices, even though he does it by including some characteristic tropes and stereotypes of colonial adventure novels, such as the journey of a young hero into the colonies, and traditional / patriarchal male values such as courage, honor and loyalty represent an important part of the ethics of the novel. As a result, and as I will try to show in this dissertation, this novel, although ambivalent,
6 could be said to have a ‘postcolonial’ dimension and to appeal for plurality while depicting the struggle between Scottish Highlanders and Lowlanders, using the adventure novel genre as a vehicle for such critique.
The analysis of Kidnapped in this work will be divided into three different sections.
The first section will discuss narration and focalization in the novel, focusing on the ways in which Stevenson manages to deconstruct colonial discourse from within, using an internal narrator and combining both internal and external focalization for the narration of the events in the novel. This section will also consider the interchange of values and ideas between Highlanders and Lowlanders as a way of relativizing and undoing hierarchical dichotomies. The second section will discuss the themes of cultural imperialism and geography, themes which are often used in postcolonial literature and that Stevenson includes in Kidnapped as a way of denouncing colonial practices in the Highlands of Scotland. The last section will deal with the theme of masculinity, a theme that frequently appears in colonial literature, usually associated to the figure of the colonizer, and that Stevenson manages to revert in Kidnapped by making the colonized and, more specifically, the Highlander Alan, the model of masculinity for the Lowlander David, instead of feminizing the colonized, this being a frequent feature of colonial writings.
2. Narration, Focalization and Cross-cultural Interaction
This section aims to explore the different ways in which colonialism is criticized in the novel by means of internal narration, focusing on the non-objective nature of such narration and on the influence that both individual and national identity, as well as
7 cross-cultural interaction have in the type of discourse produced by David. It will also be argued that Stevenson's choice of an internal narrator and point of view is used to challenge colonial discourse from within by suggesting the ambivalence of this type of discourse.
David Balfour acts as both protagonist and narrator in Kidnapped. This type of narrator – internal or auto-diegetic – implies that the information provided “is limited almost entirely to his own thoughts, feelings and perceptions” (Friedman 1176). Internal narration voicing the colonizers’ perspective is frequently used in colonialist literature, as in Treasure Island or H. Rider Haggard's King's Solomon's Mines (1885), whereas in postcolonial literature colonialism is usually criticized by presenting the point of view of the colonized. In Kidnapped, nevertheless, Stevenson utilizes colonial discourse in order to suggest that even when using the point of view of the colonizers, colonialism is something that cannot be blindly justified. Colonial discourse often implies the construction of the native by means of the use and abuse of stereotypes, which leads to the emergence of a reality in which the colonized are only seen through the colonizers' lens. The colonizers usually rely on their own “traditions, conventions, agreed-upon codes of under-standing” (Said 22) and pre-conceived ideas, which are usually related to their own nation's history and identity. As a result, the representation of the colonized might be considered distorted, since the ones in charge of this representation are the 'subjects' of a different nation. In this sense, David initially describes the Highlanders from his own Lowlander perspective and, consequently, he might be classified as an unreliable narrator. The fact that David is not objective when he describes the Highlanders can be appreciated, for example, in the way in which David refers to his use of the English language in contrast to that of the Highlanders'. David describes his
8 English as “the king’s English” (Stevenson 97)1or “the right English speech” (204), whereas the Highlanders' English is described as “very bad and broken” (214). For David, his 'King's English' is the norm and, as the Highlanders' English deviates from this norm and does not adjust to David's pre-conceived ideas about language, it is not considered correct.
A further aspect which underlines the non-objective nature of colonial discourse is the fact that the colonizers tend to project upon the colonized all the characteristics that they refuse to recognize in themselves, which results in the creation of hierarchical binary oppositions. These binary oppositions, according to Said, are “both misleading and highly undesirable”, as they just reflect a “history of interpretations and contesting interests” (336). Binary oppositions expose the existence of “two antithetical groups, the colonizer and colonized, self and other, the second only knowable through a necessarily false representation” (Young 4). In Kidnapped, David is the character that embodies the figure of the colonizer and of the ‘self'’, whereas the Highlanders occupy the space of
‘otherness’. It is this opposition between the 'self' and the 'other' that emphasizes the fact that the Highlanders are the objects of false representations, thus denoting the unreliability of David's discourse. This unreliability and the relative nature of David’s evaluations is also enhanced by isolating him and placing him in a territory in which his own ideas and beliefs are no longer the norm, suggesting that, in this environment, he is the one who may represent the 'other'. Although initially the Highlanders are represented in contrast to the Lowlanders, always to their detriment, with time David
1 Further references to the novel will be to the following edition: Stevenson, Robert Louis. Kidnapped (1886). Puffin, 2009.
9 will come to praise them, an evolution in him that signals the artificiality of constructed binary oppositions.
The strategy of “character-as-designation appearing as physiological-moral classification” (Said 119) can be found throughout the novel. By this, Said refers to the fact that the colonized were usually described in terms of race and morality, this resulting in the creation of stereotypes. This approach, as Said argues, relies on the use of generalizations which encompass psychological and physical characteristics alike when describing certain groups or collectivities, such as the phrase ‘wild men’ to refer to native peoples, or, in this case, to the Highlanders. The use of 'character-as- designation' appears in colonial discourse, where the natives are often described as primitive, childish and uneducated, attributes which can also be found in Kidnapped in relation to the Highlanders. Regarding childishness, David states that Alan had “a very childish vanity” (86) and a “childish propensity to take offence and to pick quarrels”
(118), hence the Highlanders are somehow equated to the natives from non-European lands. They are also described as primitive in the way they organize themselves, since the different clans, clansmen and chieftains might recall a quasi-feudal system.
Furthermore, the Highlanders are considered uneducated by David due to their use of language and, when David speaks with John, a tenant living in a clan, he remarks that the “strange language made him appear more backward than he really was” (214). In contrast to these notions of childishness, primitiveness and lack of education, there is David, who considers himself mature, civilized, and educated, as well as culturally superior to the Highlanders. As suggested in chapter XVI, David even thinks that the Highlanders need instruction from the English. For instance, he meets a man on the road, Henderland, and guesses that he is a catechist: “one of those sent out by the
10 Edinburgh Society for Propagating Christian Knowledge, to evangelize the more savage places of the Highlands” (158). This statement has ideological connotations as it shows how the Lowlanders – and the English – believed themselves to be superior to the Highlanders, as they did in relation to other groups such as Native Americans. They thought that these groups were uncivilized and religion was used in order to bring civilization to those considered inferior.
By the use of a non-objective and internal narrator, Stevenson also raises doubts about the notion of nation, national identity and questions cultural authority. As Homi Bhabha argued in Nation and Narration, “the image of cultural authority may be ambivalent because it is caught, uncertainly, in the act of 'composing' its powerful image” (3), and David is an example of how the powerful image of the Empire is composed. In Kidnapped, the Lowlanders represent this image of cultural authority, which is mainly supported by their own beliefs about culture, religion, politics, and especially by what differentiates them from other groups, like the Highlanders. In chapter II, while David continues his trip to the house of Shaws, he contemplates the city of Edinburgh:
“There was a flag upon the castle, and ships moving or lying anchored in the firth;
both of which, for as far away as they were, I could distinguish clearly; and both brought my country heart into my mouth. […] And there [the Glasgow road], to my great pleasure and wonder, I beheld a regiment marching to the fifes, every foot in time; an old red faced general on a grey horse at the one end, and at the other the company of Grenadiers, with their Pope's-hats. The pride of life seemed
11 to mount into my brain at the sight of the red coats and the hearing of that merry music.” (8)
Nations imagine themselves to be historical, as the passage above, where the emphasis falls on national emblems and England’s military power of conquest, strongly indicates: that is indeed the nation. In addition, Stuart Hall also argues that a nation is
“never simply a political entity. It was always also a symbolic formation – a 'system of representation' – which produced an 'idea' of the nation as an 'imagined community', with whose meanings we could identify and which, through this imaginary identification, constituted its citizens as 'subjects'” (355). David is therefore part of this 'imagined community', as well as a 'subject' of the British Empire. For instance, for David the flag and the ships symbolize his country, he identifies himself with such symbols and seems to feel proud when he observes the regiment on his way to Cramond. But these symbols that David identifies with are nothing but a mere construction, a fact which contributes to David’s unreliability and partial approach to reality. The change in tone in David's discourse when describing the Lowlands also brings his biased perspective to the fore, since this territory is portrayed quite sentimentally and romantically, whereas the Highlands seem to be darker, hostile and frightening, as will be seen in the second section of this dissertation.
Kidnapped is also highly “concerned with forms of cross-cultural contact” (Young
3) and, it is precisely this interaction between colonizers and colonized that allows for a critique of colonial discourse and questions the reliability of the notions of nation and national identity. The colonizers' concern with documentation should be mentioned in
12 this respect. The colonial power usually gathered information about the colonized peoples: their culture, their way of life, their customs, etc. Yet the colonizers were not actually interested in interacting and understanding these different cultures. They only documented what they saw in order to extend their own knowledge/power and for their own profit: that is, in order to further the imperial enterprise. Regarding David, it could be argued that, at the beginning, he also interacts with the Highlanders for his own profit as he needs their help to guide him back to the Lowlands, but the more Highlanders he meets, the more his character evolves and his perspective changes. By placing David in an unfamiliar territory for him, Stevenson promotes interaction between this character and the Highlanders and is also able to portray the similarities between these two different communities. David can be considered a 'round character' because he undergoes a psychological evolution as the novel progresses and this evolution is mainly achieved by cross-cultural interaction. The more David gets acquainted with the Highlanders, the more the differences between both communities are overcome and the more objectively he describes the Highlands and the Highlanders.
As previously noted, the non-objective nature of David's narration in Kidnapped will in time come to suggest the ambivalence of colonial discourses and the fact that different systems of belief, traditions and cultures will lead to different, all of them biased, representations of the Highlanders.
David’s transformation is particularly relevant in terms of morality and ethics. As a result, his narration undergoes a parallel transformation, becoming more objective towards the end of the novel. In Kidnapped “much of the opposition to cultural imperialism is implicitly founded in the liberal values of respect for the plurality of ways of living” (Tomlinson 6). In this sense, the longer David spends in the Highlands,
13 the more he starts to respect this plurality of ways of living. Even though David may not agree with some Highlanders’ behavior, he learns to respect them. For instance, David states that Alan's “morals were all tail-first”(178), but he also praises Alan as “he was ready to give his life for them, such as they were”(178), indicating that he was willing to do anything to defend his moral values. The novel, then, seems to invite the readers to embrace this plurality as well by using the character of David as a vehicle. When David interacts with the Highlanders, sometimes he leaves behind his prejudices towards them and even admires their values and beliefs, such as when he discovers that the Highlanders pay two rents and commends “the generosity of these poor Highlanders”(113), calling it 'noble'. He also admits that he has “seen much to admire among the Highlanders”(161) and realizes that his pre-conceived ideas about wilderness and backwardness were not actually true when he states the following: “If these are the wild Highlanders, I could wish my own folk wilder” (144).
In conclusion, narration is quite relevant in the novel regarding Stevenson's critique of colonialism. Through the use of internal narration from the perspective of the colonizer, David's narration progressively challenges colonial discourse from within and claims for respect and plurality. Moreover, David's non-objective narration indicates that there are no absolute truths concerning nation or identity, as these notions depend on individual and national beliefs that have been constructed and imagined historically by the citizens of a certain nation. Together with Reid, I would say that “Stevenson's sympathies in Kidnapped seem to lie with the suffering members of a dying culture”
(130) and that Stevenson succeeds in questioning colonial discourse from within by using a colonial narrator as a vehicle to conduct his critique.
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3. Cultural imperialism and geography
Apart from the issues discussed in the first section of this dissertation, mainly related to narrative voice and cross-cultural relations, there are other elements in the novel that show Stevenson's more critical facet as regards colonialism and colonial practices.
Firstly, this section will analyze the theme of cultural imperialism in the novel: that is, how Highland culture was threatened by English domination, which aimed to impose its own culture upon the Highlanders, thus dispossessing them of their own culture.
Cultural imperialism therefore serves as a vehicle for making a critique of colonialism and sets a precedent for Stevenson's South Seas fiction. Secondly, geography and representations of the Highland territories of Scotland will be discussed in comparison to colonial literature written by the colonizers, highlighting the similarities between representations of non-European colonies in this type of literature and the representation of the Highlands in Kidnapped. It will be argued that the theme of geography in the novel is used by Stevenson not only to depict the physical/topographical differences between the Lowland and Highland territories of Scotland but also the social and cultural differences between both societies.
As previously argued in this dissertation, the situation in the Highland territories of Scotland and the relationship between English, Lowlander, and Highlander subjects after the Jacobite rising of 1745 shares some elements with that between the colonizers and colonized peoples in non-European colonies. For instance, the Highlanders in the novel could be argued to bring to mind the colonized as depicted in Stevenson's South Sea Tales and his posthumously published work, In the South Seas, where he establishes an explicit comparison between both groups. In Colley’s words: “Stevenson
15 recognized a similarity between the ‘savage’ South Sea islanders and the ‘barbaric’
Highlanders exploited and harmed by fellow Scots (Lowlanders)” (5). For Stevenson,
“Scotland had, after all, been a victim of English policies as some areas of the South Seas had been subjected to foreign rule” (Tales 5). In both the Highland territories of Scotland and the state of the Marquesas in the Pacific an alien authority was enforced,
“the clans disarmed, the chiefs deposed, new customs introduced, and chiefly that fashion of regarding money as the means and object of existence” (Stevenson 36), this quotation clearly referring to the implementation of alien cultural and social patterns.
Tomlinson defined imperialism as a form of domination that exists “not just in the political and economic spheres but also over those practices by which collectivities make sense of their lives” (7). In non-European colonies, westernization “was itself a form of imperialism, a way of dispossessing other peoples culturally, whether or not any further material advantage was to be taken of this” (Porter 7). As Porter argues, “the idea of ‘cultural imperialism’ is not new. It used to be associated particularly with Christian missionaries, whose efforts to convert the pagan (usually outside Britain, but not always) can be regarded as imperialist, in our sense, in a number of ways” (5).
Stevenson makes reference in Kidnapped to these Christian missionaries through the character of Henderland, who is sent to the Highlands in order to “evangelize the more savage places” (158). This character represents the colonizers’ will to impose their own beliefs and values over those of the Highlanders, considered to be in need of civilization.
Nevertheless, Stevenson also draws attention to the damaging consequences that different policies carried out by the British Parliament had on Highlander culture and how they altered the population's daily lives. Thanks to Alan’s relevance in the novel, the reader has access to testimonies of how these policies changed the Highlanders’
16 lives, as well as of how they felt about them. For instance, in chapter XII, Alan explains to David what happened to Ardshiel’s clansmen after the defeat at Culloden and how
“the English rogues, that couldnae come at his life, were striking at his rights.” (113) Alan continues with the following words:
They stripped him of his powers; they stripped him of his lands; they plucked the weapons from the hands of his clansmen, that had borne arms for thirty centuries;
ay, and the very clothes off their backs – so that it’s now a sin to wear a tartan plaid, and a man may be cast into a goal if he has but a kilt about his legs. One thing they couldnae kill. That was the love the clansmen bore their chief. These guineas are the proof of it. (113-114)
In this passage Alan refers to the Dress Act (1746), which made the 'Highland dress' illegal, as well as to the Disarming Act and the Act of Proscription of 1746, which aimed to put an end to the clan system. Both the clothing (directly related to the clan system) and the social organization of the Highlanders were characteristic elements of Highland culture and, through the enforcement of these policies, the English sought to assimilate the Highlands to the 'superior' culture of the 'colonizers’. Stevenson provides the Highlanders’ point of view here as an effective way to criticize cultural imperialism, yet what is peculiar to Kidnapped is the fact that Stevenson also criticizes colonial practices through Lowland characters. The most influential one in this respect is David, who, as remarked before, is eventually able to acknowledge the nobility of some Highlanders’ acts and even claims that he sees “much to admire among the Highlanders” (161). The Highlanders are presented as the victims of cultural
17 imperialism and, since culture is a crucial cohesive element for all communities and nations, it becomes easier for the readers to sympathize with these characters and their struggle to protect their culture and identity. David describes the Highlanders’ reaction to the Dress Act in chapter XV:
Some went bare, only for a hanging cloak or great-coat, and carried their trousers on their backs like a useless burthen: some had made an imitation of the tartan with little parti-coloured stripes patched together like an old wife’s quilt;
others, again, still wore the Highland philabeg, but by putting a few stitches between the legs transformed it into a pair of trousers like a Dutchman’s. All those makeshifts were condemned and punished, for the law was harshly applied, in hopes to break up the clan spirit; but in that out-of-the-way, sea- bound isle, there were few to make remarks and fewer to tell tales. (144-145)
Stevenson invites the readers to develop “sympathy with the workings of represented minds” (Greiner 28) by presenting a character, David, who despite his convictions and origins is able to understand the Highlanders’ struggle and admire their resistance, while also being critical of English policies, for instance, when he states that
“they had framed the Act more severely against those who wore the dress than against those who carried weapons” (159).
Kidnapped also deals with the theme of geography, as well as with the importance of cartography for the colonial enterprise. A duality in terms of geographical and
18 landscape representations can be perceived throughout the novel. The Highland and the Lowland territories of Scotland are differentiated in this novel, and the way in which these territories are described by David resembles landscape representations in colonial literature. As remarked by Ashcroft et al. in The Empire Writes Back (1989), “during the imperial period, writing in the language of the imperial centre is inevitably, of course, produced by a literate elite whose primary identification is with the colonizing power” (7). In Kidnapped, David is the representative figure of the colonizer and, therefore, as Ashcroft argues, his primary identification is with the colonizing power.
As a result, Highland landscapes are usually described in comparison with those of the Lowlands. The Highlands are presented as a wild, challenging and threatening natural world, whereas the Lowlands appear to be a more tranquil place to live, without the natural challenges and inconveniences that are present in the north. In Ashcroft’s et al.
words, the colonizers’ “reportage of landscape, custom, and language, […] inevitably privilege the centre, emphasizing the ‘home’ over the ‘native’, the ‘metropolitan’ over the ‘provincial’ or ‘colonial’, and so forth” (5). Instances of these differences and binary oppositions between Highland and Lowland territories can be found in David's speech.
In chapter XIV, after the wreck of the Covenant, David finds himself marooned on an island and it is the roughness in David's descriptions of the Highlands that establishes a contrast with life in the Lowlands. David finds himself “starving on an isle at the extreme end of the wild Highlands” (136), “alone with dead rocks, and fowls, and the rain, and the cold sea” (134). The Highlands are a wild country, which “appeared to be a desert” (196), “a piece of low, broken, desert land” (220), “lying as waste as the sea”
(221), “rugged and trackless” (142). On the other hand, the Lowland territories are portrayed as a “quiet country-side” (6), “pleasant round about, running in low hills, pleasantly watered and wooded, and the crops, to my eyes, wonderfully good” (10),
“being all set with hawthorn bushes full of flowers; the field dotted with sheep; a fine
19 flight of rooks in the sky; and every sign of a kind soil and climate” (12). This is a representation of industrious nature, conquered and tamed by humanity in order to serve humanity’s needs.
Cartography is another element present in Kidnapped pointing towards the colonizers’ interest in mapping unfamiliar territories. Mapping for the colonizers was a way of possessing the land and making it theirs. In this sense, Phillips has remarked that
“the authority of maps lies in their ability to circumscribe geography, by enclosing, defining, coding, orienting, structuring and controlling space” (14). Stevenson includes a map at the beginning of Kidnapped, an empty map with no signs of British presence in the Highland territories of Scotland. This map somehow turns the land into a virgin land, a 'terra incognita', a fact which could suggest that the Highlands were still not fully possessed by the English, since the Highlanders continued their fight to recover their authority over their lands. Moreover, David's hostile perception of the Highland environment may suggest that, despite the English effort to dominate the land, they will never be able to tame or ‘civilize’ Highland geography and possess it integrally. In Jaëck’s words, “as they cut across the heather, David and Alan trace a fictive line of resistance” (74). It is a line of resistance because, as opposed to the English attempt to control and measure up everything, David and Alan “opt for anarchic development, deviations and discontinuities, carefully avoiding these territorialisation lines, the roads or even the smaller paths; they cut through the English plan” (74). The fact that the only line that appears in this map is Alan and David's path is also a way to “enable indigenous Alan to re-appropriate the usurped territory of the Highlands” (74).
20 In conclusion, cultural imperialism and geography are considerably relevant regarding colonial criticism and lend Kidnapped a postcolonial nature, while setting a precedent for Stevenson's South Seas writings. By providing some Highlanders’
testimonies on the consequences that cultural imperialism had for the Highland territories of Scotland and for the population’s daily lives through the character of David, Stevenson manages to present a different point of view from that of the narrator or colonizer. Moreover, by exposing David to interaction with the inhabitants of the Highlands, Stevenson questions the fixity and authority of colonial discourse and provides an optimistic vision regarding human nature, presenting a character who undergoes an evolution and is eventually able to put himself in the Highlanders’
position and understand their struggle. Furthermore, Geography also opens the path for colonial criticism. On the one hand, David offers a biased representation of the Highland landscapes of Scotland which emphasizes the non-objective nature of his discourse, as well as enhances the differences between the Highlands and the Lowlands, the colonizers and 'the Other'. Nevertheless, it is David’s inability to adapt to Highland geography that establishes a contrast with this type of discourse, thus suggesting the colonizers' failure to entirely possess or conquer the Highlands. Additionally, cartography is also relevant in the novel and the map included at the beginning of the text may illustrate the Highlanders’ resistance to colonialism and intimate English inability to exert full control over the territory.
4. Masculinity in Kidnapped
The theme of masculinity in Kidnapped will be first contextualized in this section within the gender crisis that occurred in Britain at the end of the 19th century. I will then
21 analyze the representation of masculinity in the novel in comparison to colonialist literature by examining contact points between Stevenson’s narrative and this type of literature, but, most importantly, the ways in which the text deviates from these works. I would like to clarify that the purpose of this comparison is to show how Stevenson manages to challenge colonialist literature and, once again, make a critique of colonialism by presenting different masculinities that seem to go against the tide of the masculine model offered in this literary tendency.
Kidnapped reflects the crisis of masculinity at the end of the 19th century, a period characterized by a deep transformation in gender roles, some of them brought about by the increasing industrialization of the country, which, for example led to the establishment of the railway system. Before, “travel was largely the culturally imagined province for masculinity” (Dorré, 21), but eventually the railway “gave all people the right to travel, regardless of gender and class” (22). Industrialization also implied women’s entry in the labor market – frequently seen by men as an undesired and threatening invasion – and coincided with the stirrings of the First Wave of Feminism and women’s demands for suffrage, equal rights to further education, etc. These, and other issues brought about “late-Victorian anxieties about the loss of distinction between men and women, the appearance of the New Woman and the decadent man”
(Hughes et al. 340). A renewed interest in the category of masculinity became evident, and was frequently materialized within the genre of the adventure novel, where the male was at the center, usually placed in a colonial setting where he was able to prove his
‘proper’ masculinity. The adventure novel offered a valuable venue to ally masculinity with Empire building and to put forward traditional male values, at the time felt to be vanishing and in need of rescue, in an attempt to reinvigorate society and the imperial
22 enterprise. In these novels, most of the characters are men, and the few feminine figures are relegated to a secondary plane. The absence of women can also be a reaction to the changes in the late 19th century, since women were felt to pose a threat to male dominance and patriarchal masculinity. Therefore, erasing them from the narrative was a way to eliminate this threat so that masculinity can go unchallenged.
In Thompson’s words, adventure novels “encouraged young men to seek out adventures on the frontier, through their depiction of the 'Wild West' as a place where manliness could be demonstrated, and a range of male fantasies fulfilled” (177).
Transposing this statement into a British context, in Kidnapped, this ‘Wild West’ is represented through the Highland setting, emphasizing the fact that the situation in the Highlands of Scotland was similar to that of other non-European colonies. In colonialist literature, British male explorers “tended to be represented as adventurous, courageous, unemotional and civilized as opposed to whom native men, whichever part of the world they inhabited, were found wanting” (Vijayasree 88). Non-white characters or the colonized peoples were usually background characters in comparison to the colonizers or white characters, who were placed in a superior position and were the main focus of the narrative. Nevertheless, and as already stated in this dissertation, in Kidnapped the Highlanders are not background figures and Stevenson sometimes makes them the more relevant characters in the novel, up to the point that, occasionally, Alan seems to be the protagonist of the novel. It could be said that Stevenson exerts a critique of colonialism by taking colonial discourse as reference only then to subvert some of its tenets.
It could be argued that in this novel “white masculinity can no longer be regarded as the unchallenged normative reference point in fiction” (Yekani, 14), contrary to what
23 often happened in colonial literature, in which the white male hero or the colonizer, was portrayed as “uncompromisingly, uniformly masculine” (Phillips 55). Moreover, in colonial literature the colonized were described as effeminate, this feature connoting weaknesses and inferiority. In Kidnapped, as in other colonial texts, there is also a binary opposition in terms of masculinity concerning, in this case, the Lowlanders and the Highlanders. Yet the Highlanders represent a primordial masculinity that seems to be what the Lowlanders are found wanting. In this sense, and according to Martin, Stevenson's presents a quasi-colonial setting in which “troubled Lowland masculinity can found new empowering vitality by choosing to appropriate the primitive masculinity associated with the Highlands” (88). Highland masculinity is thus not relegated to an inferior position but presented as a choice for David, as an alternative to Lowland masculinity. Martin refers in the quotation above to ‘troubled Lowland masculinity’, a statement that may be linked to the absence of adequate models of Lowland masculinity for David. For instance, David's father just makes a fleeting appearance in the novel and he is described by Mr. Rankelior as “weak, dolefully weak”
(298), and Ebezener, David's uncle, is presented as greedy, cruel and unscrupulous. As Martin argues, “Alan's friendship thus offers David access to an alternative paternal heritage, rich in the boldness, warrior spirit and ancient dignity that, by the time of the novel, had become closely associated with the Scottish Highlands” (89). In a similar vein, David hardly mentions his relatives whereas Alan praises his and argues that his father “was the prettiest man of his kindred; and the best swordsman in the Hielands”
(109). In chapter XI, while still on board of the Covenant, Alan offers David one of his silver buttons while stating the following: “from my father, Duncan Stewart; and now give ye one of them to be a keepsake for last night’s work. And wherever ye go and show that button, the friends of Alan Breck will come around you” (101). The silver button Alan gives to David is quite symbolic as it is through that button that David
24 eventually manages to get help, whereas the money provided by Mr. Campbell proves to be useless. The money may in fact be symbolic for Lowland masculinity, linked to financial success, modernization and capitalism, whereas the button symbolizes Highland masculinity, rooted in more primitive masculine values such as loyalty and courage. This is also an example of how “the Lowland merits and manners that will serve David well in Edinburgh render him deficient as a Highland stag, a deficiency that Alan's bold Highland spirit seems to relieve” (Martin 90). In the novel, Stevenson questions Lowland masculinity by presenting David as weak on many occasions. For instance, in chapter XX David refers to “that kind of anger of despair that has sometimes stood me instead of courage” (198). References to David’s lack of courage recur in the novel, suggesting a weakened masculine ethos. However, in spite of criticizing Lowland masculinity, Stevenson also mentions some negative features related to Alan also present in colonial discourse as belonging to colonized cultures. For instance, even though Alan is represented as a courageous and adventurous hero he is also portrayed as childish and impetuous. According to David, Alan has “a very childish vanity” (86) as well as a “childish propensity to take offence and to pick quarrels” (119). Alan is also described as impetuous: “like a bull, roaring as he went”
(95). As a result, Stevenson presents flaws and virtues in terms of masculinity in both groups and it is David's choice to decide which features of Highland masculinity he may adopt.
One of the elements in the novel which also reminds of colonial literature is the setting. The exotic settings of colonial literature offered an area for the colonizers in which “their new masculinity was made possible and plausible” (Phillips,55). In the case of Kidnapped, the wild Highlands is a territory in which David can develop his masculinity. The Highlands are described as uncanny in comparison to the Lowlands, as
25 surrounded by an aura of mystery and exoticism. As David states in chapter XVI, the Highlands are “full of prodigious wild and dreadful prospects” (175). It is the challenging nature of the Highlands that allows David to evolve in terms of masculinity by offering a suitable setting for heroic adventures. If Lowland masculinity is defined by “religiosity, thrift and domesticity” (Martin, 88), as well as by civilization, David’s adventures in the wild Highlands will serve to distance himself from domesticity and start his “initiation into [other] codes of masculine behaviour” (Kestner 27). As Yekani remarks, “masculinity is not so much something that one can claim; rather, it is a position that needs to be achieved often in terms of a heroic struggle” (36). In Kidnapped, there is indeed a heroic struggle and David's adventures in the wild
Highlands of Scotland are somehow a “rite of passage from boyhood to full, adult masculinity” (Thomson 174).
Another significant element related to the setting is the Highlanders’ relationship with nature. Alan uses nature and the landscape resourcefully for his own benefit. After the assassination of Colin Campbell of Glenure in chapter XVII, Alan and David run away to hide from the English soldiers and it is nature which provides them with shelter. Alan is the one who knows the landscape and is able to deal with natural inconveniences. Likewise, in chapter XX, David and Alan find themselves standing
“side by side upon a small rock slippery with spray, a far broader leap in front of us, and the river dinning upon all sides”(197) and, while Alan is able to leap over the farther branch of the stream and land safely, David's hands “slipped, caught again, slipped again”(198) until Alan seizes him. Alan's relationship with nature is significant in terms of masculinity. As previously stated, the Highlanders represent a more primitive kind of masculinity, which is also noticeable in their relationship with nature. Usually, when the colonizers arrived in foreign lands they aimed to exploit the land to make it profitable,
26 whereas the natives did not see the land as something who can be owned and exploited in the ways in which the colonizers did. Therefore, the relationship between the Highlanders and nature may recall more primitive groups as well as suggest a pre- modern, pre-capitalist and unspoiled type of masculinity.
In conclusion, the theme of masculinity in Kidnapped reflects the changes that were taking place during the last decades of the 19th century. On the one hand, Stevenson uses a genre that was very popular at that time and that often dealt with colonialism and the colonizers’ journeys to colonized territories. On the other hand, Stevenson challenges and tries to destabilize the long-established superiority of the colonizers in terms of masculinity by giving an important role to the Highlander Alan and by showing David as deficient in terms of masculinity. The fact that the colonized occupy a relevant role in the novel and are not relegated to a secondary plane, but appear as an alternative in terms of masculinity, also gives Kidnapped a postcolonial nature.
Moreover, the treatment of masculinity of the novel also shows a change in Stevenson's literature that comes closer to his South Seas fiction. In terms of masculinity, Stevenson does not establish a standard, but portrays two different types of masculinities, showing what both of them have and lack. Thus, it could be argued that, regarding masculinity, this novel also sets a precedent for his South Seas fiction, where Stevenson appeals for plurality.
5. Conclusion
In conclusion, there are several elements in Kidnapped that display Stevenson most critical facet towards colonialism as well as give the novel a postcolonial nature. The novel establishes an implicit comparison between non- European British colonies and
27 Scotland, and it also denounces that, even though the Highlands were not a colony of the British Empire, some of the imperialist practices taking place abroad were also taking place in Scotland, within Great Britain’s own borders. Stevenson manages to question imperialist practices in the Highlands by using strategies that where characteristic of colonial literature, as well as by presenting both the experiences of the colonizers and the colonized. It is this opposition between the point of view and perspective of the colonizers and the experiences and feelings of the colonized that allows Stevenson to highlight the non-objective nature of colonial discourse in colonial literature, placing the protagonist in an environment in which he is not in control and, even though he is a representative figure of the Empire, in the Highlands he is no longer superior to the ‘natives’. It is due to the fact that Stevenson gives voice to the Highlanders and presents the injustices of colonialism through their testimonies that David's superior position is challenged. Moreover, the evolution that David undergoes throughout the novel and how he changes his preconceived ideas about the Highlanders also embodies the change of perspective and discourse from colonial to postcolonial literature, in which progressively the colonized entered the narratives and were given a voice. The way in which Stevenson deals with themes such as cultural imperialism and masculinity suggests a change in Stevenson's fiction and sets a precedent for his later works, in which he explores the theme of colonialism in a more explicit way.
Furthermore, I think that this novel can be said offer a template for Stevenson's later writings, not only due to its political implications, but also due to the interest that Stevenson displays regarding different cultures and human groups. Although in South Sea Tales and In the South Seas Stevenson's political and moral ideas are much more perceptible, these ideas can be said to have their roots in prior fiction, such as Kidnapped, since as a Scottish man he had also been a victim of English imperialism.
28
6.
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