Abstract
Rudyard Kipling’s The Light that Failed (1890) has been overshadowed and cast into relative obscurity by his more famous work, such as Kim (1901) and The Jungle Book (1894). Subsequently, the story has been critically neglected and the opportunity to examine how such a prolific and (in)famous writer engages with the idea of masculinity has been missed. By re-centering it as a focal point, I will examine how Kipling portrays masculinity through the character of Dick Heldar. It is my contention that Dick’s masculinity is tempered by several external influences: his love interest, male friendships, ill health, financial status and interaction with the Empire. I will explore how these factors act to reaffirm or destabilise Dick’s masculinity and consider whether his death reflects the fragile reality of masculine identity in the nineteenth century.
Original language | English |
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Publication status | Published - 4 May 2023 |
Event | Victorian Recollections, Revolutions, and Realities Undergraduate and Graduate Conference - Online Duration: 4 May 2023 → … https://victorianist.wordpress.com/2023/03/28/cfp-31-03-23-victorian-recollections-revolutions-and-realities-an-electronic-undergraduate-and-graduate-conference/ |
Conference
Conference | Victorian Recollections, Revolutions, and Realities Undergraduate and Graduate Conference |
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Period | 4/05/23 → … |
Other | From death photography to Arthuriana to sentimental novels, Victorians seemed to revel in the act of memorializing. Simultaneously, technological innovations rapidly remade political, social, and environmental landscapes, hurling Victorians into what often seemed an uncertain future. Further, the rise of the realist novel coupled with what were often-bleak socio-political realities provided a sometimes jarring counterpoint to the tender sentimentalism or the soaring optimism that often marked the time period. And, as our keynote talk emphasizes, objects, often the result of the Industrial revolution, flooded the era, prompting new ways to mourn, shop, and interact. We invite proposals from undergraduate and graduate students about any aspect of recollections, revolutions, and realities as these concepts were broadly conceived during the Victorian era. We also encourage analyses of twentieth or twenty-first century adaptations of Victorian texts as well as analysis of pre-Victorian source texts. Finally, we would like this to be a conference that considers a myriad of local and global issues, and we invite proposals that consider texts and cultural productions from Britain, the British Empire, the United States, or anywhere in the world. |
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