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Chapter 19
Themes
Key
LitCharts assigns a color and icon to each theme in Burmese Days, which you can use to track the themes throughout the work.
Imperialism and Hypocrisy
Status and Racism
Class, Gender, and Sex
Freedom of Speech, Self-Expression, and Loneliness
Friendship and Loyalty
Summary
Analysis
The following day, rebellion breaks out in Thongwa. Flory, who marches back to his camp in the jungle the same day, doesn’t hear much about it until he receives a letter from Dr. Veraswami a few days later. In the letter, Veraswami explains that U Po Kyin brought Maxwell and the police to put down the rebellion, though there were only seven rebels. One escaped, but U Po Kyin and Maxwell arrested six. Afterward, one of the captured rebels tried to run away. Maxwell shot him to death, causing the other villagers to hate him. Dr. Veraswami laments how U Po Kyin’s false heroism in capturing the rebels will give him more standing with the Europeans to attack Veraswami himself.
By implication, Maxwell had no cause to shoot the escaping “rebel”: the miniscule rebellion had ended, and the “rebels” had been disarmed. Maxwell’s fatal violence against the fleeing villager thus illustrates the brutality of British imperial rule, which contrasts with the ideals of “uplifting” and “civilizing” colonized peoples that the Empire claimed to espouse.
Themes
The rebels had so few guns (most broken), and the rebellion is so clearly over, that Maxwell goes back to his camp without a guard. Flory, meanwhile, plans to stay in his own camp until the club meeting where he will propose Veraswami’s membership. Weeks pass. Flory works hard, drinks too much, and fantasizes miserably about Elizabeth’s possible liaisons with Verrall. He now understands her to be “silly, snobbish, heartless,” but he still wants her, though he feels he deserves her rejection due to his birthmark and past sexual history.
Flory still desires Elizabeth despite having decided that she is “silly, snobbish, [and] heartless”—a desire showing he is so lonely that he would accept even a very flawed life partner. His sense that he deserves her rejection because of his birthmark, which represents his social alienation, suggests that despite his progressive attitudes, he has still internalized the imperialist and racist ideas according to which he is a “bad” colonizer and a “bad” white man for criticizing the British Empire and sympathizing with colonized subjects.
Themes
In fact, it’s unlikely that Verrall and Elizabeth have had sex—it’s hard to hide a sexual relationship in Kyauktada. Yet after three weeks, though Verrall and Elizabeth are constantly together, Verrall has not proposed. Mrs. Lackersteen, annoyed and worried at the delay, makes insinuating speeches to Elizabeth about how girls shouldn’t make themselves “cheap” and how a pitiable girl she knows failed to get married in Burma and had to return home to work in a kitchen. Then she says how unfortunate it is that Verrall will be leaving in June.
Mrs. Lackersteen’s use of the word “cheap” in this context underscores that marriage is essentially an economic transaction for women: Elizabeth is supposed to trade her sexual availability for marriage and economic support, so if she has sex before marriage, she has made herself a “cheap” commodity and effected a bad trade. Notably, Mrs. Lackersteen tries to scare Elizabeth with the story of a girl who had to work in a kitchen, a tactic illustrating that women of high social status are not supposed to work for money.
Themes
The next day, Mrs. Lackersteen mentions to Elizabeth that Flory will return to Kyauktada around the same time and suggests that they might invite him to dinner. A few days later, Mr. Lackersteen returns from camp and tries to rape Elizabeth while his wife is out of the house. At the same time, some further rebellion is brewing about which even U Po Kyin knows nothing.
Mr. Lackersteen’s attempted rape of Elizabeth reminds readers of the stakes of her marriage prospects: she needs to get married to escape the household of a man who feels entitled to sexually use her because he is paying for her room and board. Meanwhile, the rebellion about which U Po Kyin knows nothing hints that resentment and resistance to British colonization may be growing among the Burmese villagers.
Themes
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