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JSTOR is a not-for-profit service that helps scholars, researchers, and students discover, use, and build upon a wide range of content. "If you want to write a real Burmese story", U Nu once told an audience of Burmese writers, "you "must know the real Burmese background" fiction provides a popular entry way for the "average" reader to reach beyond his normal range of knowledge and imagination.
JSTOR is a not-for-profit service that helps scholars, researchers, and students discover, use, and build upon a wide range of content. "If you want to write a real Burmese story", U Nu once told an audience of Burmese writers, "you "must know the real Burmese background" fiction provides a popular entry way for the "average" reader to reach beyond his normal range of knowledge and imagination.
JSTOR is a not-for-profit service that helps scholars, researchers, and students discover, use, and build upon a wide range of content. "If you want to write a real Burmese story", U Nu once told an audience of Burmese writers, "you "must know the real Burmese background" fiction provides a popular entry way for the "average" reader to reach beyond his normal range of knowledge and imagination.
Department of History, National University of Singapore
Burma through the Prism of Western Novels
Author(s): Josef Silverstein Source: Journal of Southeast Asian Studies, Vol. 16, No. 1 (Mar., 1985), pp. 129-140 Published by: Cambridge University Press on behalf of Department of History, National University of Singapore Stable URL: http://www.jstor.org/stable/20070844 . Accessed: 29/04/2014 02:04 Your use of the JSTOR archive indicates your acceptance of the Terms & Conditions of Use, available at . http://www.jstor.org/page/info/about/policies/terms.jsp . JSTOR is a not-for-profit service that helps scholars, researchers, and students discover, use, and build upon a wide range of content in a trusted digital archive. We use information technology and tools to increase productivity and facilitate new forms of scholarship. For more information about JSTOR, please contact support@jstor.org. . Cambridge University Press and Department of History, National University of Singapore are collaborating with JSTOR to digitize, preserve and extend access to Journal of Southeast Asian Studies. http://www.jstor.org This content downloaded from 14.139.69.54 on Tue, 29 Apr 2014 02:04:49 AM All use subject to JSTOR Terms and Conditions Burma through the Prism of Western Novels JOSEF SILVERSTEIN "If you want to write a real Burmese story", U Nu once told an audience of Burmese writers, you "must know the real Burmese background". It is advice that applies to foreign as well as indigenous writers and, in most cases, non-Burmese writers have followed it. The recommendation is important because fiction provides a popular entry way for the "average" reader to reach beyond his normal range of knowledge and imagination; it is more likely that he will have read a novel or short story rather than a history or a scholarly work and it is from this source that he will have formed his ideas and adopted his stereotypes. Thus, it is necessary that the available literature is good, that it is accurate in its descriptions of the locale and the behaviour of the people, that it catches the nuance of local speech and expression, that it reflects the psychology of the subjects when it discusses them rather than imputing alien speech, values, and attitudes. Burma's Western interpreters have, in the main, tried to present accurate descriptions and true representations of the people and the country. Most of the writers have lived in Burma for a period of time and have travelled fairly widely in the countryside. Although the stories that they tell are more likely to interest non-Burmese audiences than local ones, nevertheless, their observations and descriptions together with their presentation of local conditions and the problems of change contain rich insights from which all ? indigenous and alien alike?can benefit. Any survey of this genre of Burmese fiction will reveal that the subject matter and themes that interest most non-Burmese writers are the problems of the Westerner ? and in one case, the Japanese ? in a strange and distant land. They focus more on how the non-Burmese survive and remain untainted by their alien environment than they do on how Westerners adapt to new circumstances and develop new and broader perspectives. In most respects their novels depict the clash of cultures with neither group really being affected by the other. A few writers, especially those with missionary backgrounds, emphasized the triumph of Western culture and Christian values. The great event for most who have written about Burma in the last thirty years was World War II and how Europeans, trapped in Burma, or Japanese, left after the war's end, either escaped capture or responded to the victory of the Allies. Few, if any, have attempted to write about independent Burma and the problems its people faced from civil war, military rule, and isolation in a world growing closer through travel and communications. American writers have shown a particular interest in the minority peoples of Burma, especially the Karens and the Kachins. Some of this interest stems from the fact that the writers were Baptist missionaries who lived and worked amongst the Karens while others were American Special Forces who fought alongside the Kachins in the war. Here, the writers either treat the minorities as primitive peoples benefitting from 129 This content downloaded from 14.139.69.54 on Tue, 29 Apr 2014 02:04:49 AM All use subject to JSTOR Terms and Conditions 130 Josef Silver stein conversion to Christianity or as noble savages from whom modern Western man can recover the eternal truths about himself and his relationship to nature. Only a few Western novelists have tried to write historical novels in which the subject matter is exclusively Burman. Part of the reason for this is that the writers are not Burmese scholars and most are unfamiliar with the language and local literature. The few attempts that were successful were so because their authors either had the necessary knowledge or they had access to a body of documents that allowed them to reconstruct history in a fictional form and tell a Burmese and not a Western story. With the exception of the historical novels, Western writers have not placed Burman heroes at the center of their stories. When, on occasion, a Burman is offered as a major figure in the narrative, he is not typical. Usually, he is a member of the ?lite, has had a Western education, speaks English fluently and may have lived part of his life in Europe. Thus, he is able to fit easily into a European environment and be absorbed by it rather than move the story into a Burmese arena. Also, one finds that where a non-European is an important character he usually is an Anglo-Burman or Anglo-Indian and is a bridge between East and West. A second characteristic of this body of fiction is that the story is placed in a rural rather than an urban setting. This allows the writer to give long and detailed descriptions of the country and the people and to provide a context for the clash of cultures as the tiny "island" of Europeans struggle to create what they believe to be a corner of England in the colonial outpost. Burma, in the main, is background and many of the plots and characters could just as easily fit into the Indian or Malay scene. For all practical purposes, the end of colonial rule in Burma brought an end to Western writers using the nation as a locus for their stories or its people and their problems as their subject matter. There are a number of reasons for this: the war and independence saw the end of a permanent expatriate population from which so many of the earlier writers were spawned; the nation discouraged foreigners from coming through limitations on both visits and residence; few, except scholars and diplomats, knew enough about the country to say more than what could be gleaned from past works of literature or travel books, which in the main were drawn from limited secondary sources; there were too many other places in the world to write about where one did not have to know the language, customs, or the people from personal experience. If new novels are not being written by non-Burmese writers, there at least is a corpus of old ones which are useful for what they have to say about the country, its people and the Westerners who lived amongst them; at least two still are widely read and help shape attitudes and values of readers toward Burma and its people. In answer to U Nu, the Burmese backgrounds are real even if the novels do not always tell real Burmese stories. There are four major themes which unite the novels of Burma: colonial rule and its impact on Europeans and Burmese alike; religion and the clash of culture; war, especially World War II; and Burmese history at moments of great change. Probably the best known work on Burma is George Orwell's Burmese Days. In it, the author provides his reader with a damning indictment of imperialism as a corrupting influence on the Europeans who serve it. Shrouded in the myth of the "white man's burden", they claim the right to rule and special privilege.Yet, beneath the mantle, they are ordinary Englishmen, no better or worse than their countrymen who remain at home. However, once they arrive in the colonies, they change and Orwell sees such banal characteristics as pretentiousness and arguing, scheming and boredom as the elements of colonial life that transform these otherwise ordinary individuals into unpleasant, and in some cases, dangerous sojourners in a foreign land. This content downloaded from 14.139.69.54 on Tue, 29 Apr 2014 02:04:49 AM All use subject to JSTOR Terms and Conditions Burma through Western Novels 131 Orwell draws the reader's attention to the fact that in Burma, as elsewhere in the East, the club is the center of European life. It represents an exclusive world where entry depends upon one's skin colour, race, nationality, and position in the ruling ?lite. Despite efforts of liberal administrators, located at great distances in the capital cities, to open these clubs to "natives", the denizens scheme to remain exclusive, believing that any crack in the wall of their closed society would create a flood and they would be lost in a sea of local people. At the root of their reactionary stance was their belief that change would diminish their material standard of living to a level probably no better than if they had remained in England and it would destroy their pr?tentions as members of a ruling class. Other novelists who have written of Burma have examined the club and its members, but no one has been as harsh as Orwell. Maurice Collis, who is better known for his histories and biography, than for his fiction, presents a less damning view in Sanda Mala; but he too finds very little that is redeeming in it or its members. Here, as in Burmese Days, Europeans gather to drink, gossip, and plot against all outsiders. Although the period about which Collis writes, the early 1920s, is more pacific than the next decade, the focus of Orwell's novel, nevertheless, the behaviour, values, and attitudes of the members is nearly the same. In Sanda Mala, the Europeans expect the government's representative to uphold them even when they have cheated their indigenous business rivals. When officials do not, the club members are prepared to appeal to high quarters in order to triumph or plot the downfall of all who stand in their way. If the club is the locus of action, it is the members who tell and act out the story of the corruption of colonial rule. Orwell created a number of stereotypes that successive authors used. There is the District Commissioner and Inspector of Police who are there to maintain law and order. While they are expected to deal even-handedly with Europeans and natives alike, as representatives of a paternalistic government, their sympathies are with the expatriates who represent British business ? timber extraction, mining, rice milling, etc. It is amongst the latter that the reader finds the clearest examples of racists and defenders of privilege. It also is amongst the latter that one finds the outsider, the individual who rejects the system and even fights to change it. Orwell's hero, Flory, employed in timber extraction, hates himself for sharing the false lifestyle of British society in Burma; yet, he is too weak to abandon it or fight permanently against it in order to force change. Flory, unlike his fellow countrymen, finds and appreciates the natural beauty of the country and the charm of many aspects of its culture. To bridge the dichotomy between the lifestyle he dislikes and the country he loves, he finds friendship in an Indian doctor, solace in drink, and pleasure in the charms of his Burmese mistress. He has the potential for leadership and demonstrates it when the club is under physical attack, but when he must face his fellow club members and seek their approval for the membership of his friend, Veraswami, the Indian doctor, he fails. In the end the conflicting forces and treacherous plotting of his mistress and a Burmese magistrate overwhelm and destroy him and he finds escape in suicide. In other novels of Burma, there are many variations of Flory. Patterson, in H.E. Bates, The Jacaranda Tree, is a stronger individual; he, too, is part of the commercial establishment and like Flory, is involved in timber. Unlike Flory, he finds both pleasure and love with his Burmese mistress and does nothing to hide his relationship with her from the others. Also, unlike Flory, he rejects the club and lives outside its walls and its rules. Patterson, like Flory, rises to the challenge of danger ? this time from the war ? by organizing and leading the Europeans out of Burma as the Japanese advance. This content downloaded from 14.139.69.54 on Tue, 29 Apr 2014 02:04:49 AM All use subject to JSTOR Terms and Conditions 132 Josef Silver stein In Cecilie Leslie's The Golden Stairs, a third variation of Flory is reflected in the character of Hamish. This time, the unorthodox and nonconformer to the club ethic is the Superintendent of Police. He, unlike Flory or Patterson, is obliged to follow orders from above and carry them out with impartiality. However, when he sees the contradic tion between the commands, which were issued from afar, and the realities on the spot, he too, rises to the challenge of war and does what he thinks is right and good regardless of the rules and orders. Against these opponents of the system stand the defenders and perpetuators. In Burmese Days, it is Elizabeth Lackersteen. She came to Burma mainly because her chances for marriage and social advancement were poor or nonexistent. In the male dominated society of the club, her faded beauty is revived and she is sought after by the lonely men of rank or position. For Orwell, she represents the tragedy of the colonial system ? the never-ending stream of new recruits who accept its rules and keep it alive. In The Golden Stairs, Monica Wadley is the counterpart to Elizabeth. She, too, comes from mean circumstances in England and sets her goal on succeeding in the new opportunity that Burma offers. Monica is older than Elizabeth and is more determined in her quest. She, too, is faced with a greater challenge ? the collapse of empire and the irregular flight of the ill-prepared Europeans from the advancing Japanese. One is unlikely to read a more devastating critique of this type than in the author's account of the unreal life at the hill-station in Maymyo where its emptiness and pretentiousness are starkly drawn and vividly portrayed against the background of the retreating British army and the disintegration of empire. Bates introduces a third variation of Elizabeth in The Jacaranda Tree. Connie McNair, like the other two, came to Burma to find a better life, but unlike Elizabeth or Monica, she is dominated by her mother and therefore cannot realize her own potential until it is too late. The savage death of her mother brings freedom but not marriage because illness and death overtake her before she can blossom. It is through the characters and the club that the reader learns that it is the European and not the Burmese who are corrupted by the political system and that the Burmese, in their isolation, remain relatively untouched by it. By concentrating on hinterland rather than the city, the authors fail to explore the direct impact of the colonial system on the local people who must serve it. How it alters and arouses them and the impact it leaves on their lives and thought is an area unfortunately none of the Western writers explore or even consider. If the novel is to be the source of one's knowledge of the Burmese and their culture, the several that have been published offer a variety of views. In Burmese Days, Orwell looks closely at particular Burmans and finds very little to say about them that is positive. Of the four he presents in detail, Po Khin ? the magistrate ? is the villain who not only understands the colonial system and its weaknesses but is able to manipulate it and its servants, European and native alike, to achieve promotion, wealth, and membership in the club. By focusing on the thought and action of Po Khin, Orwell presents a harsh picture of Buddhism as an opportunistic faith that one can use for one's own ends. Po Khin piles one evil deed upon another as he acquires power and position with the clear intention of using his ill-gotten gains to make religious merit in his declining years. Even though he fails to achieve his ends, the negative impression of Buddhism remains. Ma Hla May, Flory's mistress, is the classic example, in any culture, of the woman scorned who gets revenge. Ma Khin, Po Khin's wife, on the other hand, believes in her faith and worries about her husband's fate because she is aware of all of his evil deeds. This content downloaded from 14.139.69.54 on Tue, 29 Apr 2014 02:04:49 AM All use subject to JSTOR Terms and Conditions Burma through Western Novels 133 Finally, there is Maung San Hla, or as he is called, Ko S'la. As Flory's manservant he is wily, pragmatic, amoral, and devoted to his employer. Given the situation where Flory is away a good deal of the time and, when he is home, his lack of interest in his house hold, his drunken-state, and his long association with Ko S'la, the manservant is allowed to act in ways that are more universal than Burmese, and one should not generalize Burmese behaviour, culture, or values from the things he does or says. Although Orwell presents, in general, a positive and accurate picture of some aspects of Burmese life, the overall impression of the faith and the people is very negative. An opposite view of the Burman, his religion and society, is offered in Ethel Mannin's The Living Lotus. Here Burman society in rural upper Burma is described in loving detail. The people are shown realistically with warmth, jealousy, and treachery being as much a part of their lives as one finds in any other culture. Buddhism and its rituals are described with care and understanding. The people who emerge?the heroine Mala, an Anglo-Burman girl who is raised by a Burman family during the war years, Ma Hla her foster sister, and others ? are shown in a traditional setting that is detailed and believable. The author makes many digressions in order to explain aspects of the faith and ritual, which would do credit to an anthropologist or sociologist. Mannin also provides a clear picture of the clash of cultures as the heroine is seen first, in her early years, living in a home where the cultures of her parents are in conflict; then, through an accident of war, she is brought to a Burman village and raised by her adopted family as one of their own. Finally, through a trick, she is taken to England and there her father tries to supplant her Buddhism with Christianity. In the end she chooses to give up her English heritage and return to Burma and the husband and family she left. In this novel, the reader is challenged to consider the Buddhist faith as practised by genuine believers against the Christian faith and its misuse by those who represent it. A careful reading of this book will not only provide entertainment but a great deal of information about the Burman people and their culture. The theme of mixing cultures is repeated in several of the novels of Burma. In Sanda Mala, Nat Shin Me, the heroine, is the daughter of a Burman prince and a Shan princess who has been educated in the West. Although betroth to a Burman, she is unhappy with the man her parents have chosen. Thus, when the hero, Mangin, arrives from England to paint the portraits of her parents, she acts first as a bridge between her parents and him and, gradually, falls in love. Her mother, Sanda Mala, not only approves but manipulates events so that, in the end, her daughter is able to marry Mangin. Her father, who speaks no English, remains in the background. While the author gives details of his life and personality, the father never emerges as a central figure in the way his English educated daughter and worldly wife do. A less make-believe version of the European-Burmese union is found in The Golden Stairs, where Tom McNeil, a forestry officer and Hla Gale, a wealthy Burman woman are married and their son, Ken, is raised first as a Burman Buddhist and then sent off to school in England only to return to his family as war envelops Burma. He represents the ambivalence and confusion of the person of two cultures in a period of change. Ne vil Shute presents the problem slightly differently in The Chequer Board. There, the European is at best an agnostic; the author allows the British airman, through living with a Burman family and falling in love with one of its members, to be drawn into Burmese life and to understand and respect it. Here, too, the reader is given some fine detail of the faith and its place in Burmese life. There is one other non-Burman tragic type to be found in the environment of the This content downloaded from 14.139.69.54 on Tue, 29 Apr 2014 02:04:49 AM All use subject to JSTOR Terms and Conditions 134 Josef Silver stein Burma outpost, the Indian and the Anglo-Indian. Again, it is Orwell who draws a bitter picture of Veraswami, the doctor living on the edge of the European enclave and Burmese society, without membership in either. He represents the Asian who succeeds in mastering Western science by becoming a doctor and is convinced of the superiority of Western culture and literature. He is like those nineteenth-century Indians who manned the ranks of the infant Indian Congress Party and saw the West as superior to the East. Veraswami's tragedy is that his skin colour and race bar his entry into the "sacred" club while at the same time he is rejected by the local population amongst whom he lives. In The Jacaranda Tree the author provides the reader with an Anglo-Indian nurse, Miss Allison, who while accepted nominally by the European community never really feels a part of it. Initially, she joins with the small band of Europeans as they seek to escape to India. But as the caravan moves forward, she realizes that she is not a part of the European group and India is not her home. She deserts the group and disappears amongst the local population, who are left behind. The author gives no clue whether or not she is successful either in surviving or being accepted by the people. The Anglo Indian, like the Indian, was never accepted by the Burmese and when independence came to Burma, in 1948, many in both communities left the country either for England or India. Those who remained behind either tried to submerge themselves into Burmese society or resolved to remain permanent outsiders and retained their identity and their culture. For most of the authors who wrote of the war, heroism and tragedy were the twin themes they repeated most often. Bates wrote two novels about Burma in World War II, The Jacaranda Tree and The Purple Plain. In the former, he dwells upon the character of Patterson, the hero, who rises to the challenges the war presented and triumphs because of his good common sense, personal courage, and an unswerving devotion to the goal of escape. In the end, he achieves his goal while those who desert his leadership meet tragic ends. In The Purple Plain, Bates created a counterpart to Patterson in Squadron Leader Forrester, whose plane crashes and who assumes the leadership of the survivors; against impossible odds, he leads them to safety. Heroism is so central to the novel that it could have been located anywhere as the setting, the people, and the country are only incidental to the story. Even the Burmese village, where Forrester finds love, is a Christian village and, therefore, is very atypical of Burma. One of the best and least well-known stories of the war in Burma is The Golden Stairs. Again, the central theme is escape from the Japanese. A group of Europeans, Indians, and Anglo-Burmans encounter a variety of dangers as they pass through the heart of Burma to the deadly Hukong Valley to reach safely in India. The author writes accurately and sensitively of the country and its people as the Europeans and their retainers make their way out of the country. In choosing to focus on the last leg of the escape, the author is able to give a vivid feeling of the remote areas of northern Burma where few Westerners have been. The "Golden Stairs" is the final test for the evacuees as they descend through a quagmire, which the rains have made of the thousand steps of clay that divides this area of Burma from India. The book provides vivid and accurate descriptions of the human struggle along this route because the author relied upon diaries and interviews with evacuees as the main sources of her information. The story of the exodus allows her to introduce actual historical events and characters. It also permits her to introduce a new character not found in the other literature of Burma. Daw Hal Palai, the sister of Hla Gale and the aunt of Ken, is the bridge between the Nationalists of the 1930s and the Burmese revolutionaries of the war period. She is represented as having This content downloaded from 14.139.69.54 on Tue, 29 Apr 2014 02:04:49 AM All use subject to JSTOR Terms and Conditions Burma through Western Novels 135 been a follower of Saya San in the futile revolt in the early 1930s and a supporter of the Burmans who saw the war as a means of achieving the nation's independence. The presence of the Nationalists and Daw Hal Palai provides one set of pulls upon young Ken, which are counterbalanced by those exerted by Monica Wadley, Ken's father, and the other Christian Europeans. Again, the clash of cultures creates the tensions within the characters and gives depth and meaning to the story. If Bates and Leslie were concerned with the war's effect on the Europeans, there is an important novel about its impact on the Japanese. Michio Takeyama's Harp of Burma, is truly unique. It was written by a man who never visited nor, before he wrote the novel, studied Burma. Nevertheless, he produced an exceedingly accurate picture ofthat land. More important, he gives rich insights to the meaning of Buddhism.to the people of Burma. He wrote his story from the information he gleaned from the soldiers who were repatriated from Burma. It is directed at the Japanese who, in the first years after the war's end, were trying to understand it, their defeat, and themselves. Like the novels about the British in Burma, Harp of Burma is about the Japanese in Burma at the war's end. Throughout the earlier days of combat, a company of soldiers were inspired by one among them, Corporal Mizushima, who led them in song through the accompaniment of a Burmese harp, which he had taught himself to play. When the war ended and his company surrendered, he escaped, and having donned the yellow robe of the local Burmese monks he gradually learned its meaning and found his life's mission ? to find and bury the bodies of the fallen Japanese ? and gives up the opportunity of returning to his homeland. Unlike the Europeans writing about themselves in the environment of Burma, but really untouched by it, Takeyama looks at Burma's impact upon the Japanese who went there as soldiers and stayed long enough to be affected by their experiences with Burmese culture. One gets to know rural Burma and its people through Japanese eyes and especially gains a positive view of Burmese Buddhism. Unlike Orwell, Takeyama does not see Burmese character differing from Buddhist teachings. The question he asks at the end is a universal one: cannot everyone learn from the Burmese and recover a bit of their humanness from their material and scientific preoccupations? It is a question neither Orwell nor any other writer about Burma ventured to ask. Patrick Cruttwell provides a different kind of war novel and insight to Burmese life. In A Kind of Fighting, his hero, Lin Soe, is a thinly disguised version of Burma's national hero, Aung San. If read only as a novel about the war's impact upon Burma, it provides an interesting story of a young man who knows that he is destined for greatness and early death. As a fictionalized version of modern Burmese history it is a poor imitation of life. In order to develop his narrative, the author places himself at the center of the story, as the link between Lin Soe and the world. He provides a number of snapshots of the man and his time: the university where Lin Soe studies; in hiding where the author and the hero meet and plan for unity between the Burmese Nationalists and the British; the hero's final hours. But through all of this the reader learns little about Burma, the rising generation of nationalist leaders, or the values and ideals of the people. Unlike in the other novels noted earlier, in this one the author is the man in between. As the univer sity professor, he teaches the hero about the ideals and values of the West; later, as the agent for the Allies, he is called upon to return to wartime Burma and convince the hero to join forces with the British in the final stages of the war. Finally, he is asked by the Burman Nationalists, who succeed Lin Soe, to write of their fallen leader so that they can learn more about him. Thus, the author sees himself both instructing the Burmese about This content downloaded from 14.139.69.54 on Tue, 29 Apr 2014 02:04:49 AM All use subject to JSTOR Terms and Conditions 136 Josef Silver stein the West and about their own hero, while he informed the British and the Allies about the new Burman man whom they will have to deal with at war's end. Overall, the novel fails to give a clear and consistent picture of Burmese society in the throes of war and a highly unlikely picture is presented of the nation's future hero and those who supported him. It does represent an original attempt to create a truly Burman hero who, although a product of Western education, never really loses his national identity. It also departs from the other novels of modern Burma in that it treats the hero and his supporters as secular figures. This is not the story of Aung San ; instead, it is a view through a prism that distorts reality as it allows little of the man's strength of character and unswerving devotion to an ideal to shine through. From the perspective of a purely American war story, probably the best that has been published thus far is Tom Chamales' Never So Few. The locale is in northern Burma where a small group of American forces live and fight alongside the Kachins. This special group of American fighting men is the forerunner of the modern CIA who work behind the lines with local resistance fighters. The author provides rich descriptions of Kachin life and, especially, the Kachin fighting man. The Americans, who make the rules that they live by as they go along, anticipate the cruelty and inhumanity in war the American public will come to know and feel a generation later as national shame for their behaviour at My Lai. Con Reynolds is the American hero in Never So Few. In his war deeds, his intelligence, and his revenge, he is larger than life. He drinks excessively, he administers justice by a code he makes up as situations arise, and fights to win regardless of the method or tactic. He stands in awe of Nautaung, the Kachin whom the author idealizes as an example of native nobility. The Kachins and their way of life not only stimulate the author's and the hero's interest, but provide a frame of reference for considering their own. No anthropologist has provided a more positive picture of the Kachin value system, rituals and behaviour both in peace and battle. This is a uniquely American story and one not likely to interest the Burmese or British reader. Yet, it provides an important dimension to the war stories in that it examines the conflict from the perspective of the minorities, who the author believes will lose, regard less of the outcome. It suggests some of the problems that were bound to arise after the war when the Kachins were left to fend for themselves against the Burmans, and it expresses the fear that they might not be able to retain their political freedom and way of life once the fighting ends. As part of the literature on Burma, it offers one of the best descriptions of life amongst the Kachins one is likely to find in popular literature. If Chamales sees the minorities as noble savages, Harry I. Marshall sees them quite differently. Given his background as an American Baptist missionary and a trained anthropologist whose scholarly study of the Karens is a classic, his novel Naw Su is a mixture of both traditions. Looking at the Karens as a backward hill people, he makes the case for Christianity as a civilizing and enlightening vehicle. The Karens in this novel, which was set in the period just following the third Anglo-Burmese War (1885? 86), are hill dwellers, primitive, dirty, and filled with superstitions and fears of the Burmans who have dominated them. Naw Su is the story of a Karen girl who rejects native superstitions and searches for something different and better. She finds it when she leaves the hills and enters a missionary school where she learns to read and to live in a different way. Cleanliness, godliness, and self reliance gradually transform her. In time she returns to the hills to bring new ideas and techniques to her people. Although written very simply and almost as a parable, it nevertheless contains excellent cultural detail which gives an accurate picture of Karen life in the hills of Burma where, even today, This content downloaded from 14.139.69.54 on Tue, 29 Apr 2014 02:04:49 AM All use subject to JSTOR Terms and Conditions Burma through Western Novels 137 there are many who have had little or no contact with the outside world and still live much as they did before the arrival of the Westerner. This author, too, sees a kind of nobility amongst the Karens, especially when they allow themselves to surrender to the teachings of the missionaries and gain new strength from their foreign doctrines and techniques. If, in this case, the clash of cultures is uneven, it is intended to be. For the reader who will not be put off by the special pleading of the author, the novel will reward him with the best portrait of the hill Karens he is likely to find in fiction. John Slimming, a British writer who earned his reputation as a novelist of books on Malaya, joins his American counterparts, Chamales and Marshall, in presenting a sympathetic portrait of the minorities, again the Kachins, in his novel The Pass. This is one of the few books on Burma that is set in the post-independence period and its action takes place against the background of the Cold War. Again, the conditions of the people and the action of the story is narrated by a Western journalist who comes to this area in search of a story of escape from Communist China. Under the Chinese, the Kachins are forced to labour long hours under the most difficult conditions and therefore are willing to seek escape rather than remain. Within this frame of reference, the author is able to compare the life of the Kachins in China and the majority who live under Burmese rule. He makes modest criticisms of the Burma government for its failure to give refuge to all who are lucky enough to escape from China and for its general neglect of the minorities. Once again, Christian missionaries are found living amongst the Kachins; however, unlike their counterparts in Naw Su, these are less certain of their mission and their place in independent Burma. Living with this Western family is a young Kachin woman, who embraced Christianity while still very young and living in China; persecuted for her attachment to this Western belief, she escaped across the pass, found religious freedom and devoted herself to work in the missionary hospital that is run by her protectors. Although Slimming is not the equal of Chamales in providing detailed and graphic portraits of individual Kachins and does not share the latter's reverence for the native nobility of the Kachins, nevertheless, he does provide interesting and accurate portraits of this minority group as they existed in the 1950s. His discussions of the Kachins bear out some of the fears for their future that Chamales had expressed in his earlier novel. Finally, there are two historical novels which deserve attention. Maurice Collis, She was a Queen, is set against the reigns of the last two monarchs of the Pagan dynasty, Usana and Narathihapate, while F. Tennyson Jesse, The Lacquer Lady, takes place during the reign of the last king of the Konbaung dynasty, Thibaw. In style, content, and source, they are as different as two novels can be. Collis used the English translation of the Hmannan Yazawun or the Glass Palace Chronicles, which were prepared in 1829 by Burman scholars under the direction of the king, as his chief source. Jesse, on the other hand, relied on documents and interviews with Burmese and Europeans who either had first-hand knowledge of events or assured her that they had received their information from participants or observers. Collis tells the story of the rise of a peasant girl, who was destined for greatness, to the station of chief queen, and the life she spent at the court; Jesse follows the intrigues of a jealous and demanding chief queen, Supayalat, as she maneuvers and dominates her husband, Thibaw, and helps bring down the empire. Unlike Collis, Jesse provides a lady-in-waiting, Fanny, the Lacquer Lady, who, if the story is to be believed, caused the third Anglo-Burmese War through her jealous actions. In a historical sense, the two stories are similar; both dynasties fell to foreign invaders, the Chinese in the case of the Pagan dynasty and the British in the time of the Konbaung dynasty, while in fact both dynasties are in the process of internal collapse. This content downloaded from 14.139.69.54 on Tue, 29 Apr 2014 02:04:49 AM All use subject to JSTOR Terms and Conditions 138 Josef Silver stein Ma Saw, the heroine of She Was A Queen, is shown from two perspectives: as a girl growing up in an upper Burma village and as a queen at the court. In each, the author provides insightful discussion of the interrelationships between the people, their lifestyle and, more important, their belief system. Here, the reader is introduced to the magical world of omens, signs, spirits, and other supernatural forces that govern the beliefs of commoners and royalty alike. Collis also gives an excellent picture of court instability through his descriptions of intrigue and plotting, reward and revenge, which were the ongoing activities of the courtiers as they sought power and authority in a system that did not have an orderly process of succession or a stable civil service. In this brief volume, the reader finally will feel that he has entered the world of the Burman people and is seeing them from within. Granting the fact that the author is an outsider who depended upon translations from his sources, nevertheless, he has tried to remain faithful to the chronicles and, in Burma, his work generally is recognized as reliable. The Lacquer Lady will seem more familiar to the Western reader who knows nothing of Burma or the area. Jesse fills her pages with detailed descriptions of the court and palace, the city of Mandalay and its European and Burmese inhabitants and the influences upon both by Rangoon, Calcutta, London, and Paris. Once again, the bridge is an Anglo-Burman, Fanny; she was the daughter of a Burman mother and an Italian father, who was educated in England, and became a lady-in-waiting at the Burman court. Given her knowledge of both worlds, she moves easily between them as she slips in and out of the palace. Through her, the reader meets a host of historical as well as fictional characters who mesh and clash as the story unfolds. For the reader who is interested in learning about life at court or comparing the court of the nineteenth century with that of the thirteenth, the period of She Was A Queen, he will find the descriptions and dialogue to be rich and colourful in their detail. He also will find excellent descrip tions of architecture of the old palace, which still stood at the time the novel was written, the daily life of the queen and her ladies-in-waiting, the relationship between the king and his queens as well as the intrigue both in and outside the palace. Many have quarreled with the author's interpretation of life at the court and the sprawling city outside. Burmese have been offended by her presentation of their last king as easily manipulated and not in complete control of his mental faculties; his cruelty and lack of judgement were widely publicized during his lifetime in the Western press. Supayalat, the queen, too, is presented in the most negative fashion possible. She, too, is shown as cruel, petty, revengeful, and ignorant of the outside world as she seeks power and influence. Whether later day historians will reverse these judgements remains to be seen. Jesse presents the court and its inhabitants as Western historians have described them and makes no allowances for the biases that they may have harboured. It is Fanny who provides not only the link between the Burman court and the outside but, in addition, represents the different mentalities found in the two places. When Fanny is in the court she behaves as do the other women; when outside, she is the modern and for her times, liberated, woman who is in contact with missionaries and businessmen, government officials and charlatans. Through her, the reader gets the feeling of being a part of this Asian capital where traditional Burma is in open conflict with the agents and ideas of the West. The narrative is filled with real historical figures and Jesse brings them to life. Arthur Phayre, Dr. Marks, the Kinwun Mingyi and many others leap from the pages of history and are presented, not as idealized types, but as living characters with known strengths and weaknesses. Fanny, Captain Bagshaw her husband, and Bonvoisin her lover, may This content downloaded from 14.139.69.54 on Tue, 29 Apr 2014 02:04:49 AM All use subject to JSTOR Terms and Conditions Burma through Western Novels 139 or may not be real, but they are believable and they help the reader to understand both the Anglo-Burman and the Europeans who populated Burma during the last days of Thibaw's reign. Historians may quarrel with Jesse over her subplot, the jilting of Fanny by her French lover and the heroine's revenge: revelations to the British of a French plot to dis place their European rival as the ally of Burma. Burmese historians, especially, Dr. Maung Maung, dispute the notion of a French plot as the basis of British aggression against the Burmans in 1885. Certainly it was a factor, and Jesse tries to make it more important than it probably was. Nevertheless, it is a plausible story and, given the British fears of French advancement westward from Indochina, it borders so closely to real events that the reader will find the fictionalized account of big power rivalry to be a useful way of examining both the behaviour of the court and its European adversaries. The era of Westerners writing about Burma is over. The restrictions on travel and residence in Burma makes it impossible for an outsider to learn and observe the nation and its people in their daily lives. More important, the era of expatriates living at a higher standard than they would at home is finished. The novels of Burma in the future will be written by Burmese writers. A large body of Burmese novels exist, but have not been translated. Therefore, the writers and their stories are all but unknown to the outside world; thus, the modern epics of Burma's struggle for independence, for unity amongst its people, and for modernization without loss of national character, exist or are in the process of being written. However, until either Burmese or Western translators make these novels available in English and Western publishing houses bring out these works, they are likely to remain unknown to the world beyond Burma. That in the end would be a tragedy because it would be a part of the perpetuation of Burma's isolation and a loss of contact between peoples at a very time when communications and media are bringing the peoples of the world together. The novels of Burma do provide an important prism through which the strands of light propel images and ideas of Burma to the reader that help him to understand aspects of Burmese life and culture. They are useful to scholar and layman alike and it is hoped that the growing body of those written by Burmese novelists will soon refract their light on independent Burma and help us to know it better. This content downloaded from 14.139.69.54 on Tue, 29 Apr 2014 02:04:49 AM All use subject to JSTOR Terms and Conditions 140 Josef Silverstein A BRIEF ANNOTATED BIBLIOGRAPHY 1. Bates, H.E., The Jacaranda Tree (London: Penguin Books, 1977), 250 pp. (available only in England). The story of escape from the Japanese invasion of Burma by a small party of Europeans and Burmese. 2. _ , The Purple Plain (London: Penguin Books, 1977), 233 pp. (available only in England). The story of war heroism as a small party of downed fliers make their way to safety. This novel was made into a film. 3. Collis, Maurice, She Was A Queen (London: Faber and Faber Limited, 1952), 248 pp. (out of print). A historical novel of the last years of the Pagan dynasty. Follows the rise of a peasant girl to chief queen and life at court. 4. _, Sanda Mala (New York: Carrick and Evans, Inc., 1940), 328 pp. Also published in England by Faber and Faber Limited (out of print). A love story between a European painter and a Burmese girl, and life in lower Burma in the 1920s. 5. Chamales, Tom T., Never So Few (New York: Charles Scribner's Sons, 1957) (out of print). An outstanding war story about American special forces fighting alongside Kachins in Northern Burma. This novel was made into a film. 6. Cruttwell, Patrick, A Kind of Fighting (New York: Macmillan Company, 1960), 272 pp. (out of print). A thinly disguised story of Burma's nationalist leader, Aung San. 7. Marshall, Harry I., Naw Su (Portland, Maine: Falmouth Publishing House, 1947), 351 pp. (out of print). A simple story of a young Karen girl who leaves her village and lives with American Baptists as she adopts Christianity and later imparts it to her people 8. Jesse, F. Tennyson, The Lacquer Lady (New York: Macmillan Company, 1930), 441 pp. (available in new paperback edition). A historical novel of courtlife and intrigue during the reign of Burma's last monarch, Thibaw. 9. Leslie, Cecilie, The Golden Stairs (Garden City: Doublday and Company, Inc., 1968), 286 pp. (out of print). A haunting and sensitive story of escape from the Japanese invaders by a group of Europeans and Asians who eventually reach India. 10. Orwell, George, Burmese Days (London: Penguin Books, 1969), 272 pp. The best known novel of Burma. The story of a small group of Europeans living in upper Burma who are corrupted by the colonial system they serve. 11. Mannin, Ethel, The Living Lotus (New York: G. P. Putnam's Sons, 1956), 255 pp. (out of print). The story of an Anglo-Burman girl who is raised by a Burman family during World War II; later she is lured to England by her father who tries to make her a Christian and English and fails on both counts. 12. Shute, Nevil, The Chequer Board (New York: William Morrow and Company, 1947) (out of print). Only a portion of the novel deals with Burma; it provides the background of a subplot about an English pilot who is shot down during the war and finds love and happiness amongst the Burmese. 13. Slimming, John, The Pass (New York: Harper Bros., 1962), 256 pp. A novel set in post independent Burma, which takes place in the border region of the Kachin State where Kachins, against difficult odds, seek to escape from China. 14. Takeyama, Michio, Harp of Burma (Rutland, Vermont; Charles E. Tuttle Co., 1968), 132 pp. (translated by Howard Hibbett). The unique story of Burma's impact upon a defeated company of Japanese soldiers who await repatriation home. This content downloaded from 14.139.69.54 on Tue, 29 Apr 2014 02:04:49 AM All use subject to JSTOR Terms and Conditions