Not everything worth reading is hot off the press. In this section, we recommend "something old" that is still well worth reading. "Something Old" can mean anything from a venerable and antique classic to a good book first published four or more years ago.
“BURMESE DAYS” by George Orwell (first published in the USA 1934; first published in the UK 1935)
Recently on this blog I reviewed Anna Funder’s polemic Wifedom in which, while admiring George Orwell’s literary work, she condemned him for having been [in her interpretation] a misogynist and a very flawed man who exploited his first wife cruelly. It should be noted that Funder was not the first woman to take Orwell to task in this way. Back in [appropriately] 1984, there was published Daphne Patai’s The Orwell Mystique – A Study in Male Ideology which, wife or no wife, argued that Orwell was simply incapable of relating reasonably to women. For good measure Patai also characterised Orwell as essentially an elitist who really despised the working classes.
Reading Funder’s book, I started thinking about Orwell’s five novels, one novella and three book-length works of non-fiction. Over the years I have read most of them, as well as many of his essays and reportage. But Funder’s book encouraged me to go back and re-read them, which I haven’t done for years. So in the next few postings, I will be handling Orwell’s novels and book-length non-fictions one by one, in the order that they were published, starting with his first novel Burmese Days.
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Eric Blair (only later did he adopt the pseudonym George Orwell), fresh from school years, joined the Indian Imperial Police and at the age of 19 he was posted to Burma. Burma was then regarded as part of the Britain’s Indian Empire. Orwell worked there as a police officer for just over five years, 1922 to 1927. On the whole (I am judging this from Bernard Crick’s biography George Orwell, A Life) Orwell in Burma acted as a British policeman was then supposed to act. He got on well enough with his police colleagues although he was regarded as a bit of a loner. But, says Crick, Orwell “came to reject imperialism while in Burma, but probably not at once, only gradually.” The same verdict is made in another biography I have on my shelf D.J.Taylor’s Orwell – the Life. Returning to Europe, Orwell spent a number of years working on what eventually became Burmese Days. The novel is set in 1926, which would have been when Orwell had become disenchanted with British imperialism. Orwell offered the novel to a number of English publishers who liked it, but who decided not to publish it because they feared they might face libel cases. The fictional Burmese town Orwell created, Kyauktada, seemed altogether too much like a real town in which Orwell had worked, Katha. Some of its real (British) inhabitants might complain. Indeed a couple called in the novel the Lackersteens seemed to be based closely on a real couple, the Limouzins. That is why Burmese Days was first published in the USA in 1934, and only a year later, in 1935, was it published in Britain.
As a swift and simplified synopsis, John Flory [in some editions he is called James Flory] is a timber merchant in Burma. He frequently leaves his home to go into the jungle supervising Burmese gangs felling and shipping teak and other hard wood. John Flory is in his mid-thirties, is morose, chronically unhappy and completely disillusioned with both his work and with Burma. He has lived in Kyauktada for fifteen years and is near the end of his tether. He finds it almost impossible to relate with his fellow colonialists. Like so many British settlers, he keep a Burmese mistress, or concubine, Ma Hla May, strictly for his sexual pleasure and for no other reason. Whenever he’s tired of her, he kicks her out. He also has a Burmese man-servant who serves him his whisky which he drinks copiously, often nursing a hangover. The local Club [for white people only] is filled with British officials and police constantly demanding they be regarded as superior to the Burmese and all other Asians. Flory goes there to drink, but hates the membership. Apart from his dog Flo, his only real friend is the Indian doctor Veraswami, whom he often visits for a chat and a drink. But here’s a key to the plot. Dr. Veraswami would like to become a member of the Club. Flory champions Veraswami’s membership to the Club. The pukka sahibs are appalled and reject the suggestion vehemently. What Flory at first doesn’t know (but we know from the opening chapter) is that a corrupt Burmese magistrate, U Po Kyin, is deliberately concocting nasty rumours about Dr. Veraswami in order to discredit him… because U Po Kyin himself wants to gain the prestige of being the first Asian to be accepted into the Club. U Po Kyin goes so far as to – in poison-pen letters – suggest that Dr. Veraswami is a rabid Burmese Nationalist (i.e. opponent of British rule) and is planning a local uprising… and to make this credible U Po Kyin will himself surreptitiously stir up such an uprising. But when the “uprising” happens, it fizzles out quickly with little effect.
Amidst all his morbid ennui, and in his ignorance of U Po Kyin’s full plans, John Flory suddenly finds a new interest to invigorate him and make life a bit worth living. A pretty young Englishwoman called Elizabeth, aged twenty, arrives to stay with her uncle and aunt, the profoundly snobbish Lackersteens. Though she doesn’t admit it, she comes from a poor background but she plays at being well-bred, even aristocratic, and her chief motive is finding an acceptable, preferably wealthy, husband. Flory “saves” her from a water buffalo [in fact quite a harmless beast], they strike up a friendship, and in no time Flory is dreaming about marrying her. At first she takes no particular interest in him – and being an English gel, she is appalled by Burmese customs and doubly appalled when Flory takes her to a Burmese festival of dancing with its erotic undertones…. But she is impressed with Flory when he takes her on a shooting expedition and they bag many birds and one tiger (with Burmese coolies doing the hard work of bringing the tiger in range). To her, he seems a he-man. For a while Flory is sure that he will be able to marry her. He even unceremoniously kicks his concubine Ma Hla May out of his house for good, paying her off with less than she expects. Alas, Elizabeth grows cold on Flory when she learns that he had a Burmese mistress. Worse, Flory has a rival who appears in the form of an arrogant young British official, obsessed with playing polo, called Lieutenant Verrall. (His name seems a deliberate pun on “virile” in contrast with Flory). Elizabeth drops Flory completely and spends her time with Verrall… when he isn’t galloping around on his polo pony. She hopes to marry Verrall, especially as she now wishes to get away from her uncle who sexually harasses her.
I won’t go into all the details (you’ve had almost enough of them already) but later, after an obnoxious British bigot called Ellis, another timber merchant, has blinded a young Burmese in an angry outburst, there is a genuine local uprising. Angry Burmese surround and besiege the Club, with nearly all the British members trapped inside. Flory has been scorned up to this point because of his friendship with Dr. Veraswami. But Flory now becomes a hero when he swims down the river and takes command of the armed police, getting them to disperse the angry mob. Suddenly he is in favour. Better still, not too much later the caddish Verrall takes the train to Mandalay without so much as a goodbye to Elizabeth. Once again, Flory believes he has a chance to woo Elizabeth… but he is definitively crushed when the whole British community attends their six-weekly church service. When the vicar is in full swing, the church door is thrown open, and in the hearing of the whole congregation the discarded concubine Ma Hla May loudly and vulgarly denounces Flory for leaving her, for not paying her, for mistreating her. She even rips open her clothes to suggest the physical damage he has done to her. She has of course been put up to it by the conniving U Po Kyin. And that is the end of woebegone Flory’s reputation. There can be no wooing of Elizabeth. He can have no comfort, no love, no peace.
He goes back to his bungalow, shoots his pet dog and then blows his brains out.
In its opening chapters at least, Burmese Days appears to be completely anti-colonial and anti-imperial, showing how colonisers mistreated and exploited indigenous people. This is particularly true when Flory witnesses the type of talk that bursts out in the Club when he suggests Dr. Veraswami should be made a member. The thoroughly racist Ellis rants thus: “My God, I should have thought in a case like this, when it’s a question of keeping these black, stinking swine out of the only place where we can enjoy ourselves, you’d have the decency to back me up. Even if the pot-bellied greasy little sod of a nigger doctor is your best pal. I don’t care if you choose to pal up with the scum of the bazaar. If it pleases you to go to Veraswami’s house and drink whisky with all his nigger pals, that’s your look-out. Do what you like outside the Club. But, by God, it’s a different matter when you talk of bringing niggers in here.” etc. etc. through a much longer rant (Chapter 2) In the same discussion, a slightly more congenial character nevertheless shows himself to be at best patronising about lesser breeds without the law: “Mr Macgregor stiffened at the word ‘nigger’, which is discountenanced in India. He had no prejudice against Orientals; indeed he was deeply fond of them. Provided they were given no freedom he thought them the most charming people alive. It always pained him to see them wantonly insulted.” (Chapter 2) After Flory has listened to this sort disgusting chatter “He must get out of this room quickly, before something happened inside his head and he began to smash the furniture and throw bottles at the pictures. Dull boozing witless porkers! Was it possible that they could go on week after week, year after year, year after year, repeating word for word the same evil-minded drivel, like a parody of a fifth-rate story…? Would none of them ever think of anything new to say? Oh, what a place, what people! What a civilisation is this – this godless civilisation founded on whisky, Blackwood’s [a popular magazine that carried simple short stories] and the ‘Bonzo’ pictures! God have mercy on us, for all of us are part of it.” (Chapter 2) To Dr. Veraswami, Flory says that there is “the lie that we’re here to uplift our poor black brothers instead of to rob them… We Anglo-Indians could be almost bearable if we’d only admit that we’re thieves and go on thieving without any humbug.” (Chapter 3) Yet, in this conversation, it is Dr. Veraswami who endorses the British regime and lauds the good it does. Could it be that Orwell is suggesting imperial subjects are corrupted by their imperial masters and lose the bearing of their own culture?
As well as suggesting imperial subjects are corrupted by their masters, it is clear that the colonialists are themselves corrupted, seeing themselves as masters beyond the law when it comes to the indigenous peoples. When, late in the novel, a European called Maxwell is killed “The unforgivable had happened – a white man had been killed. When that happens, a sort of shudder runs through the English of the East. . Eight hundred people, possibly, are murdered every year in Burma; they matter nothing; but the murder of a white man is a monstrosity, a sacrilege….” (Chapter 22) After we are given the fruitless backstory of Flory’s life, we are made aware of the roots of his loneliness. He believed that “each year he had been lonelier and more bitter than the last. What was at the centre of his thoughts now, and what poisoned everything, was the ever bitterer hatred of the atmosphere of imperialism in which he lived… he had grasped the truth about the English and their Empire. The Indian Empire is a despotism – benevolent, no doubt, but still a despotism with theft as its final object. And as to the English of the East, the sahiblog, Flory had come to so hate them from living in their society, that he was quite incapable of being fair to them. For after all, the poor devils are no worse than anybody else… On the other hand, the sahiblog are not to be idealised. There is a prevalent idea that the men at the ‘outposts of Empire’ are at least able and hardworking. It is a delusion. Outside [some limited services] there is no particular need for a British official in India to do his job competently. Few of them work as hard or as intelligently as the post-master of a provincial town in England. The real work of administration is done mainly by native subordinates; and the real backbone of the despotism is not the officials but the Army…” (Chapter 5)
When he writes about colonisers and empire-builders in this vein, Orwell is very much writing in the shadow of Joseph Conrad, who in Heartof Darkness, Victory and other works suggested that colonisers often go to pieces and lose their humanity in an alien environment. One could even suggest the influence of Somerset Maugham, with all his stories of Britishers going to the dogs in the tropics. As for the novel’s narrative line, many have suggested that Burmese Days was influenced by E.M.Forster’s A Passage to India.
Another important related point is that, for all his loathing of imperialism, Flory remains essentially English. When the twittery Elizabeth turns up “by coming into his life, [she] had so changed it and renewed it that all the dirty, miserable might never have passed. Her presence had changed the whole orbit of his mind. She had brought back to him the air of England – dear England, where thought is free and one is not condemned forever to dance the danse du pukka sahib for the edification of the lower races. Where is the life that late I led? he thought. Just by existing she had made it possible for him, she had even made it natural to him, to act decently.” (Chapter 13) Decency, clean air and freedom are associated with England. And of course Flory turns to his imperial duty (saving the besieged inmates of the loathsome Club) when push comes to shove. This makes for a very ambiguous assessment of imperialism in Burma. And regrettably there are moments when Flory [or Orwell?] slips into his own racialism as when he is talking with Dr. Veraswami about the empire and he says “The British Empire is simply a device for giving trade monopolies to the English – or rather to gangs of Jews and Scotchmen..” (Chapter 3) Or when he says to Elizabeth while they’re watching Balinese dancers “It’s grotesque, it’s even ugly, with a sort of wilful ugliness. And there something sinister in it too. There’s a touch of the diabolical in all Mongols.” (Chapter 8). In addition to this, some readers might protest that the arch-villain of the novel, the conniving, corrupt magistrate U Po Kyin, is Burmese. Is this a slur on the Burmese people? Personally I think not. All Orwell is demonstrating is that there are criminal people in any ethnicity. Remember too that U Po Kyin is attempting to vilify an Indian; and U Po Kyin himself is attempting to gain status in British terms – another case of somebody warped by the British regime.
While these are the main ideas of the novel, it’s necessary to say something about its quality as a work of literature. Orwell’s depiction of steamy, sweaty, rainy Burma is convincing. We are frequently reminded of the damp, dense foliage of Burma, the downpours, the incessant heat driving the British crazy (or driving them to drink), the way it irritates people into pointless squabbles. In fact, the descriptions of place are sometimes a little laboured, a little too lush.
There is some straining at symbolism. Frequently, in his elaborate imagery, Orwell characterises people as animals, especially the members of the Club, who in effect become themselves a sort of wild jungle. John Flory has a large birthmark disfiguring one side of his face, and we are frequently told how self-conscious he is about it, how often he instinctively turns the blemished side of his face away from others. Here is the external image of a maladjusted man who doesn’t quite fit in with his peers. Indeed Flory’s birth mark has been interpreted as “the mark of Cain” – the friendless man doomed to wander the Earth alienated from others, just as Flory is alienated from the Club and does not really identify with the Burmese either.
There are some awkward jumps into melodrama. There is a point (in Chapter 15) where Flory is just about to propose marriage to Elizabeth when, at that very moment, there is an earthquake and the matter is obviously dropped. Ma Hla May’s bursting though the church door could almost belong to a shocker novelette of yore.
More than anything though, there is the strained
dialogue once Flory is conversing with Elizabeth. It is stilted, formal, rather
unbelievable, especially in the closing chapters where, having been disgraced,
he is still begging for her love. To this I must add that Elizabeth is such a
flighty, flippant, shallow person, one wonders why a presumably intelligent
person like Flory is taken by her. It must be the heat, or the sheer frustration
of his thwarted life. Or could I be misreading this? Perhaps Flory is so
desperate, so alienated and lonely, that he is clutching the last straw when he
falls for Elizabeth?
A very patronising conclusion on my part: Burmese Days as a very good first novel, not the author’s best. As literature it is very flawed, but Orwell’s assessment of tacky British imperialism is heartfelt and reasonable, even if in 1935 it may have caused angry harrumphs from retired colonels in Poona or choleric police inspectors in Rangoon. I do not quite believe in the suicide of John Flory (it simply does not have the tragic inevitability even of the suicides in Drieu La Rochelle’s Le Feu Follet or in John O’Hara’s Appointmentin Samarra) but I do believe that Orwell depicted colonised Burma accurately. It is still well worth reading over ninety years since it was written.
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