THE REPRESENTATION OF SUPERSTITION AND THE OCCULT IN STEVENSON'S THE BEACH OF FALESA AND KIPLING'S THE PHANTOM RICKSHAW

Abstract

[...]his story differs from other texts, for example King Solomon 's Mines (1885), as women are not responsible for their superstitions, but men are. [...]violence is "between white men", with all its ugliness (Edmond 1997:173). [...]the notion of superstition is used by both copra traders for their own benefits. [...]he can build his trade station successfully. [...]his belief in superstitions does not stem from the idea that he can use them for his benefit, but rather from his constant stress.

Headnote

Abstract: The aim of this paper is to examine how imperial settings result in superstition and witchcraft mania in two late Victorian stories: Robert Louis Stevenson's "The Beach of Falesa" (first published 1892) and Rudyard Kipling's "The Phantom Rickshaw" (firstpublished 1888).

Keywords: colonialism, the occult, Robert Louis Stevenson, Rudyard Kipling, superstition

1. Introduction

This paper aims to discuss how pressure on white men on the imperial frontier leads to superstition and the occult in two late-Victorian stories, The Beach of Falesa (first published 1892) and The Phantom Rickshaw (first published 1888). These two stories contain characters whose service for their government on colonial lands requires their absence from their home country. The competition over the financial means is the central reason of the witchcraft mania and of haunting spirits in both stories.

The supernatural was a significant part of Victorian life and there was a lot of interest in fairy tales and ghost stories as can be seen in the works of Christina Rossetti and Charles Kingsley. Other texts, such as Wuthering Heights (1847), The Lifted Veil (1859), The Strange Case of Dr Jekyll and Mr Hyde (1886) and Dracula (1897) contain references to second sight, dreams and premonitions. Eve M. Lynch (2004:67) argues that Victorians believed in the supernatural, which was considered terrible and fearful.

This developing interest in the uncanny and the modifications it occasioned in a traditional literary convention indicate a powerful desire, during the nineteenth century, to find some means of escaping from a depressingly materialistic existence. However, the characters in The Beach of Falesa (1981) do not believe in the supernatural but make use of it for economic benefits. They use superstition to defeat each other and make more trade on the island. And in The Phantom Rickshaw (2008), the main character is haunted by his lover's ghost, which always returns in an uncanny way. What these two stories have in common is that they both contain characters who are working hard for their government and their hard work puts a lot of pressure on them, which propels them to explore superstition and the occult. In both stories, terror is the key point. It leads to or engulfs them in the sublime, the immense, and the cosmic. The characters are, as it were, lost in the ocean of fear or plunge directly into it. Horror overtakes their soul from the inside and consciousness shrinks or withers from within.

Andrew Lang (1887:688) advocated the imperial adventures of Rudyard Kipling and Robert Louis Stevenson and defined romance as a masculine way of writing and as naturalistic fiction, which regards female nature as demonic and unholy. He accepted the fact that supernatural events are usual in the stories specifically connected to indigenous cultures. As an anthropologist, he understands the occult as a "survival" practice from an earlier era; however, it was commonly viewed, he declares, as a negative source of supernatural phenomena. In his essay on The Supernatural in Fiction, Lang (1905: 279) asserts that "as this visible world is measured, mapped, tested, weighed, we seem to hope more and more that a world of visible romance may not be far from us".

In the literature of the occult, the supernatural is more often associated with the powers of darkness. The reality at the centre of this kind of fiction is the power of the devil, which destroys the normal patterns of everyday life. Stories such as Mary Shelley's Frankenstein (1818) and Stevenson's Dr Jekyll and Mr Hyde (1886) contain all these ambiguities of power and of the power of darkness. They take the dark protagonist towards what G. R. Thompson (1974:2) calls, in relation to Gothic fiction as a whole, his "metaphysical quest."

In his book, Rule of Darkness, Patrick Brantlinger (1988:230) claims that "in the romances of Stevenson, Kipling, Doyle, and John Buchan, the supernatural or paranormal, usually symptomatic of individual regression, often manifests itself in imperial settings." What Brantlinger suggests can be observed in The Beach of Falesa, in which Stevenson introduces to his audience a range of adventures the white men encounter far away from home and the superstitions they have to challenge. The Beach of Falesa, set on an island in the South Seas, is rich in supernatural events which make his hero, Wiltshire, to confront not only the natives on the island but also a white man coming from "home".

2. Stevenson, colonial life and the supernatural on an island

Stevenson's story, The Beach of Falesa, demonstrates how the economic interests of the missionaries and mercenaries come into conflict with the Polynesians' native beliefs. It is a story about the fall of Case, who gets control of an island by applying trickery and trade, and about the victory of Wiltshire, who confronts Case's tricks and defeats him in the end. Case rules the island by resorting to superstitions. He wants to get rid of Wiltshire because he is a rival trader in copra trade on the island. But Wiltshire destroys Case and his deceitful system. Case is an exploiter and refuses to rely on civilization policies to rule the island. Edward W. Said (1994:120) states that "all cultures tend to make representations of foreign cultures the better to master or in some way control them". In the context Said suggests, a culture may use another culture's beliefs or traditions to master them. Case does this successfully and is able to achieve power by using native superstitions. The Polynesians believe in demons and Case takes advantage of this to gain power. As a European, he uses his practical knowledge, and the locals' irrational belief in demons makes it easier for him to dominate the island people.

Wiltshire is on the island in order to "make a fortune, and go home again and start a public-house" (Stevenson 1981:105). Yet, he is tricked by Case with a false marriage. As Case considers him a rival trader on the island, he plays on native superstitions and excites the fear of natives claiming Uma, Wiltshire's native wife, has a taboo. The imperial romance contains references to those actions of male heroes in different settings, and as Richard F. Patteson (1981:9) explains, the hero "hates women because he has been betrayed by one of them at some time in the past." In Patteson's words, women are seen as a threat to men in imperial texts. They are mostly portrayed as the source of supernatural activities and men try to defeat them, which leads to women's absence from the plot line. Yet, in Stevenson's story, it is a man who is using the supernatural. Therefore, his story differs from other texts, for example King Solomon 's Mines (1885), as women are not responsible for their superstitions, but men are. The Beach of Falesa suggests that the supernatural is imported by a white man, so women are not absent in the plot line. Uma says, "I shamed... Taboo belong me... Now I go 'way, taboo he 'go away too. Then you get too much copra. Farewell, chief." (Stevenson 1981:126). To Uma's sacrificing offer, Wiltshire protests, "Hold on!". He is convinced that this is a trick used by Case to prevent him from making trade among the natives.

Wiltshire sets his mind on crossing the forest haunted by supernatural powers. As Case is the source of all the superstitions in the forest connected to his devil of a temple and the taboo on Wiltshire, which is the result of his marriage to Uma, he must be confronted and defeated in his tricky dark place in the forest. Local tales also invented the landscape surrounding Falesa with uncanny resonances. Unlike Case's productions, these stories effectively incorporate the natural, and thus acquire a strength that remains undiminished at the end of Wiltshire's narrative. As a native and haunted by the native stories and superstitions, Uma tries to prevent her husband from entering the woods by recounting traditional superstitions. Trying to make her silent, he asks: "T will tell you what, then,' said I. 'You fish out your Bible, and I'll take that up along with me. That'll make me right"'(158). Wiltshire thinks that he can control Uma by using the tactics that white men use in the South Seas to claim their authority among the natives (Jolly 2004:39). However, he is defeated by Uma because he cannot provide any further explanation for their discussion. He does not believe in superstitions; but, when he takes a journey through the island's devil bush, it is clear that he is also vulnerable. He is fearful of the unknown and his imagination gets the best of him even if he does not believe in demons. He is so afraid during his journey that his fear of the unknown makes him very desperate, and he starts to pray.

Wiltshire is on the island to make money and he should remove all the superstitions imposed on him. Yet, he is also haunted by the native stories about devils that inhabit the forest:

... a bit of rush; but the breath jumped right out of me... It wasn't Case I was afraid of, I never thought of Case; what took me... was the old wives' tales - the devil women and the man pigs. (1981:169)

The incident with Wiltshire shows that no individual, whether white or native, can resist the power of superstitions.

Wiltshire defeats Case in his devil jungle, in the end. His confrontation with Case concludes with the destruction of his social authority as he has been using the native superstition as an "instrument" to control people (Reid 2005:63). Eventually, Wiltshire understands that native superstitions are not dangerous; the dangerous thing is the way they are used by the white men. Case's hunger for money and trade leads to his end and the revealing of the trick paves the way for Wiltshire to establish his own life as the only trader on the island. Therefore, violence is "between white men", with all its ugliness (Edmond 1997:173).

Thus, the notion of superstition is used by both copra traders for their own benefits. On the one hand, Case is using superstition to further the copra trade. He identifies himself with the natives and thinks that they will be more willing to make trade with him. On the other hand, Wiltshire also realizes that if he is to trade on the island, he has to dispel superstitions. He thinks that he can do the locals good and teach that superstitions are made up, not real. In the end, he can build his trade station successfully. In other words, both traders, who work for the British colonial government, find a way to use superstition to pursue their trades. As they are rivals, they use different means of defeating each other and carrying on more trade on the island.

3. Kipling and "the white man's burden"

As a result of the same economic concerns, in Kipling's Phantom Rickshaw, Jack Pansay, the protagonist, works restlessly day and night, and falls victim of overwork. He starts to see and hear Mrs. Wessington, his beloved, after her death. Jack believes that Mrs Wessington's ghost is haunting him. He hears her calling him and sees her riding in a rickshaw - an image which begins to torment him. It seems that only Pansay can see the ghost and he thinks that the woman's appearance after her death is a punishment for all the pain he put her through when they ended their relationship. However, Pansay's doctor, Heatherlegh, has another explanation for the hero's illness. He attributes it to overwork:

He says that more men are killed by overwork than the importance of this world justifies. He maintains that overwork slew Pansay, who died under his hands about three years ago. He has, of course, the right to speak authoritatively, he laughs at my theory that there was a crack in Pansay's head and a little bit of the Dark work came through and pressed him to death. "Pansay went off the handle", says Heatherlegh, "after the stimulus of long leave at Home. He may or he may not have behaved like a blackguard to Mrs Keith-Wessington. My notion is that the work of the Katabundi Settlement ran him off his legs and he took too brooding and making much of an ordinary P. & O. Then he took a feverish chill and all that nonsense about ghosts developed. Overwork started his illness, kept it alight, and killed him, poor devil. Write him off the System that uses one man to do the work of two and a half men. (Kipling 2008:127)

Moore-Gilbert (1986:15) claims that "the extraordinary demands made by the state are everywhere apparent in Kipling's writing". Based on Moore-Gilbert's opinion, it is evident that Pansay's service for his country is very hard.

He works in a different country, which makes him believe in superstitions, in the end. The fact that nobody is able to see Mrs Wessington and the rickshaw suggests that Pansay was going crazy. He believes he is walking around with Mrs Wessington in Shimla and this does not seem to stop. The doctor protests when Pansay says that he is going crazy and suggests that what he need to get better is to take a break from work. Pansay is doing hard work in India not only because he is fulfilling the tasks set by the government, but also because he is trying to deal with a culture he is not familiar with. In a similar way, Lynch (2004:70) thinks that "fear of deranged spatial and psychological boundaries, feelings of desertion and isolation, ancestral longings and guilt... alienated from the traditional regulatory terms" may add to madness. This is what Pansay is suffering from. He is away from his country and his hallucinations, interpreted as something occult and mysterious, are the result of overwork rather than of his sense of profound guilt for having wronged someone.

Pansay is engaged to Kitty Mannering, and this engagement can be an opportunity for him to lead a normal life and be happy. Yet, he cannot avoid seeing Mrs Wessington's ghost, which causes gossip around Simla about his madness. Martin Green (1979:286) argues that:

British Imperialism in India, which Kipling knew the first and best, was quite different from imperialism in Africa; in India, England administrated a highly structured and civilized society, and the cultural image of the Englishman there was Roman.

In the light of the words uttered by Green, it is clear that another burden weighs on Pansay's shoulders. As an Englishman, he is representing his country in India, and he tries to be careful not to create any bad image of his host land: "I, Jack Pansay, am in Simla, and there are no ghosts here" (43). He repeats this to himself to stay calm and stop hearing Mrs Wessington's voice. However, he cannot avoid hearing the supernatural voice, always saying: "Jack! Jack, darling! It's some hideous mistake, I'm sure. Please forgive me, Jack, and let's be friends again" (33).

Pansay's conversation with Mrs Wessington's ghost creates a bad image not only of himself, but also of the British in general. Noticing this, Dr Heatherlegh comments:

You've too conceited Brain, too little Stomach, and thoroughly unhealthy Eyes... I'll take a sole medical charge of you from this hour, for you're too interesting phenomenon to be passed over." (Kipling 2008:39)

Dr Heatherlegh urges him to get treatment as his health is deteriorating. He dos not get better and, in the end, his engagement with Kitty is broken. After that, he strongly believes that he killed her and this is why he is suffering. The ghost seems to have succeeded in causing Pansay to break off his engagement to Kitty and he thinks this is the main reason why he is seeing the phantom rickshaw. Although Pansay cannot stop feeling that his illness is connected to his having caused Mrs Wessington's death, Dr Heatherlegh diagnoses his illness as "overwork".

Kipling believed in "the strong man", yet his characters often fall sick and die from "disease and overwork" (Gilmour 2002:79). Pansay fails to embody the author's belief in the strong man. Although he is reported fit for duty, he dies in the end. Superstition affects Pansa's life drastically. He cannot find the opportunity to get better and be strong both physically and psychologically. He says:

Heatherlegh... told me that I ought to send in an application for sick leave. An application to escape the company of phantom\ A request that the Government would graciously permit me to get rid of five ghosts an airy rickshaw by going to England! Heatherlegh's proposition moved me to almost hysterical laughter. I told him that I should await the end quietly at Simla; and I am sure that the end is not far off. Believe me that I dread its advent more than any word can say; and I torture myself nightly with a thousand speculations as to the manner of my death. (Kippling 2008:48)

Pansay's wish of going back to England is a vivid example of how he suffers from the hard work he is doing for the government. The above quotation can make the reader believe that the phantom is the creation of the work he is doing. However, Pansay's suffering is not understood and he is called back to work to wait for his death. His work in India puts a lot of responsibilities on his shoulders and a lot of pressure accordingly. Thus, his belief in superstitions does not stem from the idea that he can use them for his benefit, but rather from his constant stress. Although the story is short, it is rich in superstitions and the occult. Not surprisingly, the supernatural is represented by a female. Similarly to The Beach of Falesa and differently from other imperial romances, female characters are not absent from the plot line. And like in The Beach of Falesa, the prevalence of interest in superstitions and the occult is linked to the experience of the Empire. The supernatural is the result of all the hard work the Empire puts on Pansay's shoulders.

4. Conclusion

In The Phantom Rickshaw, we see the mechanism of self-destruction ironically contained in the heart of the system, the minotaur produced by the colonial system - the colonized mind that is the fragmented, all-too-human victim. To adapt Eagleton's (2006:133) colourful image of capitalism, colonialism "gives birth to its own gravedigger, nurturing the acolyte who will one day stab the high priest in the back". The Phantom Rickshaw represents superstitions and occult beliefs as nothing more than a psychological formation of the ghost borne out of the hard work the character is doing. What is interesting about this story is that Pansay thinks he is suffering from seeing Mrs Wessington's ghost, because he feels guilty for having left her. However, it is not his guilt but the guilt of the government, which does not "write him off the system", but reports him fit for duty. In The Beach of Falesa, the superstitious beliefs of the natives are used as a negotiating method for continuing the copra trade. The characters in both stories have a lot of responsibilities on their shoulders and these responsibilities bring a great amount of pressure in their life; as a result, they deal with superstition and the occult far away from their homes. Despite the common notion of Victorian stories that supernatural and superstitious events should be attributed to the devilish doings of women, it is the male heroes that are the sources of the witchcraft mania on the colonial frontier of India in Kipling and the South Seas in Stevenson. In both stories, we see that the every Englishman of the Empire is metonymically dark, self-destructive and unknowable.

References

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