I dearly hope that the Victorian child who read this novel had an easier time with it than I did. I found the language dense and difficult to get through, as well as the novel containing so many words that are foreign to me (as a 21st century American) that reading Kim is almost more of a chore than a pleasure.
However, I love the incorporation of India into this time period's literature. Kim reminded me very much of Secret Garden where the main character Mary was raised in India for 10 years before returning to England. There are huge contrasts between these two novels though. Mary was raised upper class and she had parents, though they were not often around to care for her so she spent most of her time alone or with her nanny. Kim has lived his whole life in India and is very immersed in the culture. In other words, he knows how to get around - as evidenced by his encounters with the bull in the marketplace and his con performed on the train. In some ways, I think these two novels are representative of Victorian attitudes of the British invasion of India. Secret Garden represents the side that thought the Indians were beneath them, and that the "true home" of the British was in England, even if they had grown up in India their whole life, like Mary. Kim represents the grittier side of the coin. The character of Kim seems to embody a sense of adventure and exploration that the British felt when they first conquered India. As to Kim's attitude compared with Mary's: he is Irish. There is a whole other dichotomy between British and Irish people that is not mentioned, at least in the first part of the novel. Kim being Irish allows him to become more immersed into Indian culture because both of those cultures were seen as inferior to the British.
I am looking forward to reading the rest of this novel. If not entertaining, it is almost guaranteed to be informative about the lives of the British in India which is what I think Kipling wanted to do the whole time writing this novel.
I too struggled with reading the first section of Kim. I am also struggling with calling this text Children's Literature, although I realize that it has been considered a part of this genre for quite a while. The book does address childhood and falls under the adventure fiction category, but I wonder if Kipling meant for this to be a book for children? I don't remember it specifying in the introduction.
ReplyDeleteGetting used to reading the language used in the first part of the novel felt like I was adjusting into reading a Mark Twain novel. It didn't help that at the same time as Kim, I've been reading another book for a Transatlantic Jewish Lit class that writes in the dialect of New York Yiddish in the 1880s. There's been a jarring contrast there, but you are not alone in struggling to get a handle on Kim's language!
ReplyDeleteI think the idea of Kim being Irish and "Indian" is a poignant point that exactly allows him to be the impish chela of the lama as well as be stuffed into regimentals when the British forces discover him. He is able to dress up or dress down to blend in with British India or "bazar India", although his deep immersion in Indian culture allows him an understanding of his India that is not afforded to other European men living in India, making him able to be "Friend of All the World." The fact that even his European blood is Irish, therefore considered lesser, is interesting because no matter where he turns, he is considered "other".
Despite The Secret Garden being my favorite book, from the same era, and involving India, I didn't think to make a comparison until reading this post! Burnett approaches India from a different place than Kipling. Her use of India is as a place distant from the important events in her novel. She writes of India with less detail and emotional power than of the moors of England. In The Secret Garden, India contains only disease and heat, exotic servants and soldiers (and even more peripherally, their families). Kipling's India is another world entirely. He is writing from a place of affection and familiarity. He tells us of all levels of society, of the beauty of the throngs of humanity in the city, the homey smells of campfires along the Grand Trunk. The reader comes to love Kipling's India, while the reader of The Secret Garden is glad that Mary Lenox escaped from that horrible place. I think Burnett's view may closely reflect that of many people in England at the time. Kipling's childhood gave him unique access to the true culture of India, although his perspective was still heavily influenced by Imperialism and his own priveleged place as a white child among a subjugated people.
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