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THE SKIN OF A WRITER VOLUME ONE: WINSOME OF RANGOON, A NOVEL VOLUME TWO: REPRESENTING ANGLO-BURMESE SUBJECTIVITY MICHELLE AUNG THIN Thesis submitted for the degree of Doctor of Philosophy in Creative Writing Discipline of English and Creative Writing School of the Humanities The University of Adelaide. December 20th, 2012 TABLE OF CONTENTS Title page………………………………………………………………..i Table of contents.…………..…………………………………………...ii Abstract.…………………….…………………………………………..iii Declaration..……………..………………………………………...……iv Acknowledgements…..…………………………………………………vi Volume one: “Winsome of Rangoon” manuscript………………..……1 Volume two: Representing Anglo-Burmese Subjectivity………….…...1 Appendix 3.1 Copy of The Monsoon Bride, published version of “Winsome of Rangoon”………………………………………………………..59 Bibliography 4.1 Works Cited...………………………………………….…...61 4.2 Selected Bibliography……………………………..……….66 ii ABSTRACT Can writing be situated precisely at the point of the limit between not only binaries but also types of difference? Where does a writer representing mixed-race, Anglo- Burmese subjectivity write from? How does such a writer work from a specific place (colonial Burma) but from a perspective that is no place? How will such writing look and read? This thesis considers how a creative writer, writing about mixed-race subjectivity, might position herself and her material in the context of English-language literary traditions. It comprises a novel and an exegesis in two volumes. Both elements address these questions. “Winsome of Rangoon” is a novel set in Rangoon, 1930, that examines colonialism from a position between coloniser and colonised. Winsome Goode is young, attractive, half-Burmese and half-European. On the night train to Rangoon and just married to a man she barely knows, she anticipates life to come in the metropolis of Rangoon. Her husband, Desmond, also of ‘mixed-race’, is determined to work his way into a position of prestige. With a dutiful wife to help him, further promotion is inevitable. Doctor Jonathan Grace has recently arrived from England to test his theories on tropical fever and enhance his professional reputation. What he hasn’t anticipated is the temptations that devour white men in Asia. For each of them, Rangoon will be where they either make something of themselves, or succumb to dissolution. But Rangoon is no city of dreams. It is a place fractured by racial, class and religious prejudice. When Jonathan meets Winsome, these tensions erupt, and the two of them are drawn into a dangerous and shocking affair. The exegesis, “Representing Anglo-Burmese Subjectivity”, offers a reading of texts that depict Anglo-Burmese characters including: The Lacquer Lady by F. Tennyson Jesse; Not Out of Hate by Ma Ma Lay; The Gentleman in the Parlour by Somerset Maugham and Burmese Days by George Orwell. I focus on the way skin is represented, drawing from Didier Anzieu’s ‘skin ego’, Imogen Tyler’s intervention in Anzieu’s thinking, as well as Steven Connor’s analysis of cultural reception of the skin to argue that certain forms of difference are subject to hidden boundaries or iii limits. Authenticity is one such limit. I also rely on the thinking of filmmaker and critic Trinh T. Minh-ha as well as the artist Svetlana Boym. Trinh Minh-ha questions who may comment on difference and to what end while Boym defines ‘cultural intimacy’ as the ultimate form of belonging. Both of these views have informed my critical and creative processes. This thesis as a whole reflects upon the complexity of in-between identities, specifically, how some forms of difference complicate stable identities and make the familiar strange and the strange, familiar. iv DECLARATION This work contains no material which has been accepted for the award of any other degree or diploma in any university or other tertiary institution to Michelle Aung Thin and, to the best of my knowledge and belief, contains no material previously published or written by another person, except where due reference has been made in the text. I give consent to this copy of my thesis when deposited in the University Library, being made available for loan and photocopying, subject to the provisions of the Copyright Act 1968. The author acknowledges that copyright of published works contained within this thesis (as listed below) resides with the copyright holder(s) of those works. I also give permission for the digital version of my thesis to be made available on the web, via the University’s digital research repository, the Library catalogue, and also through web search engines, unless permission has been granted by the University to restrict access for a period of time. Aung Thin, M. “The writerly skin: the potential of the limit in representing Anglo- Burmese mixed-race subjectivity.” Double Dialogues 12 (2010/11). <http://www.doubledialogues.com/archive/issue_twelve/AungThin.htm> Aung Thin, M. The Monsoon Bride. Melbourne: Text, 2011. Aung Thin, M. “Skin, intimacy and authenticity in literary representations of Anglo- Burmese women in The Lacquer Lady.” Interventions: International Journal of Postcolonial Studies, Postcolonial Intimacies Special Issue. (forthcoming) SIGNED: DATE: v ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS I am grateful to Professor Brian Castro and Dr Dianne Schwerdt, my thesis supervisors, whose suggestions improve this thesis. I am also grateful to the University of Adelaide for a Research Abroad Travel Scholarship and to the Commonwealth of Australia for their support through the Australian Postgraduate Award. In addition, I acknowledge the professional assistance of the Library staff, including Margaret Galbraith in Remote Services and Inter Library Loans. vi THE SKIN OF A WRITER VOLUME TWO: REPRESENTING ANGLO-BURMESE SUBJECTIVITY MICHELLE AUNG THIN Thesis submitted for the degree of Doctor of Philosophy in Creative Writing Discipline of English and Creative Writing School of the Humanities The University of Adelaide. December 20th, 2012 TABLE OF CONTENTS Title page………………………………………………………………..i Table of contents.…………..…………………………………………...ii Representing Anglo-Burmese Subjectivity 2.1 Introduction………….………………………………...…....1 2.2 Skin, Creative Writing and ‘Authentic Alterity’..….……...14 2.3 Skin, Intimacy, Writing and Representations of The Lacquer Lady……………………………………………………..….......28 2.4 Skin and the Potential of the Limit in Creative Writing…....40 2.5 ‘Skin’, ‘Limit’ and Writing “Winsome of Rangoon”……....48 2.6 Conclusion……….………………………………..………..55 Appendix 3.1 The Monsoon Bride, published version of “Winsome of Rangoon”………………………………...……...59 Bibliography 4.1 Works Cited...………………………………………….…...61 4.2 Selected Bibliography……………………………………...66 ii DECLARATION This work contains no material which has been accepted for the award of any other degree or diploma in any university or other tertiary institution to Michelle Aung Thin and, to the best of my knowledge and belief, contains no material previously published or written by another person, except where due reference has been made in the text. I give consent to this copy of my thesis when deposited in the University Library, being made available for loan and photocopying, subject to the provisions of the Copyright Act 1968. The author acknowledges that copyright of published works contained within this thesis (as listed below) resides with the copyright holder(s) of those works. I also give permission for the digital version of my thesis to be made available on the web, via the University’s digital research repository, the Library catalogue, and also through web search engines, unless permission has been granted by the University to restrict access for a period of time. Aung Thin, M. “The writerly skin: the potential of the limit in representing Anglo- Burmese mixed-race subjectivity.” Double Dialogues 12 (2010/11). <http://www.doubledialogues.com/archive/issue_twelve/AungThin.htm> Aung Thin, M. The Monsoon Bride. Melbourne: Text, 2011. Aung Thin, M. “Skin, intimacy and authenticity in literary representations of Anglo- Burmese women in The Lacquer Lady.” Interventions: International Journal of Postcolonial Studies, Postcolonial Intimacies Special Issue. (forthcoming) SIGNED: DATE: iii 2.1 INTRODUCTION British colonialism is a frequently explored historical moment in the English- language literary tradition, particularly in novels. Many of these postcolonial novels are set in India, but few are located in Burma although it was annexed by the British and ultimately governed as an Indian province. Of these texts, fewer still have at their centre a mixed-race consciousness, in particular Anglo-Burmese or Anglo-Indian.3 Instead, many novels that represent colonialism do so either from the point of view of the European coloniser or the oppressed colonised subject. This binary is pervasive in contemporary literary as well as postcolonial scholarship. Therefore, while colonialism seems well explored within literary and academic writing, this exploration rarely takes place from a mixed-race consciousness—a ‘hybridised’ view—one that connects both the colonised and the coloniser. My novel “Winsome of Rangoon” (published August 2011 as The Monsoon Bride) represents Anglo-Burmese4 subjects in colonial Burma during 1930, at the height of colonial rule. I write about a group and place rarely represented in English-language literature and when I began the novel, I felt this absence as a political pressure. I wondered if my writing, although wholly imagined, ought also to be representative rather than only a representation. I was conscious that, like it or not, my work might be read as a kind of social documentation. Was I not therefore also obliged to make my novel utterly authentic—in the sense of truthful; quantifiable; recognisable—with the same rigour an anthropologist might apply to a piece of field research? Given the political inequity experienced by the Anglo-Burmese on one hand and the charges of complicity with the colonial oppressors often laid against this group on the other, I felt I had to at least consider showing the cultural, socio-demographic and political circumstances of my characters to rehabilitate the community’s reputation. 3 Many Anglo-Indians migrated to Burma post annexation, merging with the Anglo-Burmese population as Burma was administered as a province of India. Thus, I refer to both Anglo- Burmese and Anglo-Indian in this exegesis. 4 I use ‘Anglo-Burmese’ and ‘Anglo-Burman’ interchangeably in this exegesis. These terms both mean the same thing but Anglo-Burman is a slightly older form.
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