Unmade and Unmanned Men: Reading Traumatized Masculinity in Late Nineteenth-Century British Adventure Fiction through the Lens of the Indian “Mutiny” of 1857

Unmade and Unmanned Men: Reading Traumatized Masculinity in Late Nineteenth-Century British Adventure Fiction through the Lens of the Indian “Mutiny” of 1857 examines the selected adventure fiction of George Alfred Henty, Rudyard Kipling, and Joseph Conrad through the historico-political context of India’s First War of Independence, known in Victorian Britain as the Indian “Mutiny” of 1857. Examining masculine trauma in adventure fiction reveals how British men, who were themselves colonized by the Empire’s expectations of them, sought not only to recover from the scars inflicted by imperialism, but also to expose the Empire for inflicting the psychologically damaging expectations that produced their masculine trauma. The Introduction explains the historical significance of the “Mutiny” and the gap in the scholarship on masculine trauma in relation to this event. Chapter one summarizes the history of masculinity and adventure fiction scholarship and argues that the Indian “Mutiny” of 1857 was responsible for the traumatization of British masculine identities. Chapter two analyses the use of shock in Henty’s Rujub, the Juggler (1893) to argue how inherited historical remembrances of the violent “Mutiny” gripped Henty, prompting his depiction of re-imagined imperial masculinity. Chapter three analyzes the use of psychic splitting in Kipling’s The Jungle Books (1894, 1895) to argue how internalized, racially fraught remembrances of the repressed “Mutiny” haunted Kipling, prompting his depiction of destabilized imperial masculinity. Chapter four analyzes the use of post-traumatic stress disorder in Conrad’s Lord Jim (1899-1900) to argue how psychologically damaging remembrances of the unspeakable “Mutiny” unsettled Conrad, prompting his depiction of shattered imperial masculinity