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Imperial Theatricality
The Role of Rudyard Kipling
from "The White Man's Burden"
Take up the White Man's burden--
The savage wars of peace--
Fill full the mouth of Famine,
And bid the sickness cease;
And when your goal is nearest
(The end for others sought)
Watch sloth and heathen folly
Bring all your hope to nought.
British Masculinity: The Impossible Ideal
Constructs of imperial masculinity by British middle class men during the late Victorian era were conflicted, and even undermined, by contradictions inherent within notions of the ideal, civilized British man. Confidently promoting ambiguous views on civilization, imperial nationalism, and masculinity, British middle class men, whose voices dominated the public sphere, championed an often contradictory premise of national superiority, where the domesticated and civilized male existed alongside the virile adventurer in the imagined landscape of the imperial nation. These anxieties appeared in popular discourse, frequently as tropes of invasion and fears of degeneracy or decline. As such, men combated their anxiety and shored up a hegemonic brand of masculinity at the expense of groups deemed unseemly, such as women, racial ‘others,’ and significantly, Anglo men who failed to conform to dominant gender mores. Middle class rhetoric marginalized these groups, and with a broad streak of paranoia, highlighted a variety of threats to masculinity in the bodies of these ‘others.’ Yet these perceived threats did not wage war on a monolithic brand of masculinity.