LUMEN: The LUX Blog
Published: Thursday 28th July 2016
Author: Elleni Harpa
What Makes an Englishman? Colonialism and Reverse Colonialism in Rudyard
Kipling’s “The Mark of the Beast”
At the end of Rudyard Kipling’s short story “The Mark of the Beast”, the nameless narrator states
that he and his companion have “disgraced [them]selves as Englishmen for ever” (95). This blog
post will examine if this disgrace stems from the way they appear to have been contaminated by
the natives of colonial India, or the horrific way they have treated these natives.
Anjali Androndekar notes that “[i]t is … not the machinations of the natives and their
‘exotic’ customs that animate Kipling’s imagination but rather the effects of empire on
Englishmen,” a statement which frames my reading of this text (69). Kipling’s focus is on how the
people of a colonising nation retain a sense of national identity in a country so unlike their own. By
the end of “The Mark of the Beast”, Strickland, Fleete and the narrator have clearly lost their own
sense of identity, and in fact their claim to Englishness at all, but Kipling does not explain why this
is; the reader is left to draw their own conclusion as to which actions lead to this stripping of
national identity.
A possible explanation is given in the narrator’s comment immediately before he claims his
disgrace, where he acknowledges the fact that he and Strickland “had fought for Fleete’s soul with
the Silver Man in that room” (95). It could be that engaging with the native religion, given by
Kipling an atmosphere of the supernatural not unlike witchcraft, is what has disgraced the men.
This apparent reverse colonisation, where the colonisers are somehow influenced by the natives
into taking on what is portrayed as a regressive form of humanity, is further evidenced in this story
by the curse put on Fleete by the Silver Man.
Fleete’s curse is provoked by his defiling of a statue of “Hanuman, the Monkey-god,” after
which the Silver Man, a leper, bites him, leaving a bite in the shape of “five or six irregular
blotches arranged in a circle” (Kipling 85, 87). The narrator indicates the similarity of the mark to
the markings of a leopard, immediately drawing a parallel between the natives and wild beasts
(Kipling 87). This comparison is extended when Fleete’s symptoms worsen: he begins eating raw
meat and howling like a wolf, and eventually he is described as “a beast that had once been Fleete”
(Kipling 90-1). The bestial nature of the curse suggests that the natives are animalistic, and perhaps
that touching them—for it is by touch that Fleete is cursed—will cause the men to become
animalistic themselves, and lose their identity as Englishmen. Androndekar mentions the “growing
fears around degeneration and avatism” during this period, which are clearly addressed in a Gothic
fashion by Kipling in this story (70). It is possible that Kipling also had in mind the 1857 massacre
of English men, women and children by Indians, as the curse punishes the colonising people
causing them to apparently regress and take on an animal nature. This leads us to theorise that the
way in which the characters are “disgraced as Englishmen” is in their dealings with Indians, who
somehow ‘infect’ them with a lower form of humanity, thus stripping them of their English—and
therefore civilised—identity (Kipling 95).
However, an alternate reading of the narrator’s lament over his actions when “[fighting] for
Fleete’s soul with the Silver Man” causing him to be “disgraced” suggests that it is not the Indians’
treatment of the Englishmen which causes them to lose their national identity, but the men’s
treatment of the Silver Man (Kipling 95). Thus this story is not about how reverse colonisation and
devolution causes English colonisers to lose their identity, but rather it draws attention to the brutal
mistreatment of natives in colonised countries, implying that this brutality is what causes
Englishmen to lose their Englishness. This reading seems more plausible considering Kipling’s
own views of India and colonialism: U. C. Knoepflmacher writes of Kipling’s own life that “[a]fter
a strange England had displaced India, [he] felt as if he too had ‘lost his own country’,” suggesting
that he would condemn colonial brutality far more readily than condemning the colonised (924).
In a narrative device often employed by Kipling, the narrator refuses to describe the torture
which he and Strickland inflict upon the Silver Man, rather saying “[t]his part is not to be printed”
(94). However, the reader can deduce from the preparations of making the gun-barrels “red-hot”
that they intend to seriously hurt him, and indeed the narrator describes the “horrible feelings” they
could see passing through the Silver Man’s slab of a face (Kipling 93). Omitting a graphic
description of the torture means the reader is free to imagine the horrific scene themselves, perhaps
even creating something worse that what Kipling intended. The obvious brutality of the
Englishmen is pronounced by both the Gothic details of the “mewl[ing]” of the Silver Man and in
the omitted events, which presumably the narrator finds too awful to repeat (Kipling 93). This
method of “[fighting] … for Fleete’s soul” could well be what the narrator comes to recognise as
the event which strips him and his companions of their identities as Englishmen, instead
“disgrac[ing]” them (Kipling 95).
As we have seen, while Kipling certainly expresses contemporary concerns about
devolution and reverse colonisation in “The Mark of the Beast”, the reason for the men’s loss of
national identity is not a question simply resolved. However, taking into account Kipling’s own
views and experiences, it seems likely that the colonial treatment of natives was intended to be the
catalyst for this disgrace and subsequent identity loss. The final reason I believe this is the case is
that “The Mark of the Beast” has what is described by Kipling as a “Native Proverb” as an
epigraph (84). This, from the very beginning of the text, shows Kipling’s empathy with the
colonised as opposed to the colonising nation.
Works Cited
Arondekar, Anjali. “Lingering Pleasures, Perverted Texts: Colonial Desire in Kipling’s AngloIndia.” Imperial Desire: Dissident Sexualities and Colonial Literature. Ed. Phillip Holden
and Richard J. Ruppel. Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press, 2003. 65-89. Print.
Kipling, Rudyard. “The Mark of the Beast.” Late Victorian Gothic Tales. Ed. Roger Luckhurst.
New York: Oxford University Press, 2005. 84-95. Print.
Knoepflmacher, U. C. “Kipling’s ‘Mixy’ Creatures.” Studies in English Literature, 1500-1900 48.4
(2008): 923-33. Web. 28 Jul. 16.