Constructions of Colonialism: Perspectives on Eliza Fraser's Shipwreck by Ian J. McNiven , Lynette Russell , Kay Schaffer (review)

Abstract

against the 'Papal Aggression', the re-establishment of the Roman hierarchy in Britain after I850. The English as they came to see themselves were disciplined, moderate, virile, and Protestant.They rowedfor Eton. They took cold baths. Alderson'sstrategyin dealing with this easily caricaturedtheme is twofold. First, he laysbare the superimpositionof elements that compose the stereotype.Christian Socialism, as expounded by F. D. Maurice and Charles Kingsley, for instance, is viewed as an endeavour to hold the middle ground against all manner of religious or political extremes. Kingsley, we are reminded, blamed the Terror on the repressivetactics of the Society of Jesus. Muscular Christianity, Christian Socialism 's ally, is interpreted as a sort of deflected, channelled homoeroticism through which the male body became a zone of a quasi-religioussanctity:chaste, athletic, the muscled Temple of God. Alderson'ssecond strategyis to concentrateon the interestingindividualstrapped between the contradictionsin the national mood, notably on English Catholic, or Catholic-friendly,writers.John HenryNewman waswidelyderidedforhissupposed effeminacy,a personaljudgement thatbolsteredtheAnglican BroadChurch'ssense ofitsown heterosexualrighteousness.GerardManley Hopkinsimbibedaestheticism from Paterat Oxford and then became aJesuit, to the enrichment of his poetry but the confusion of his own ardentlypatriotictemperament.Alderson takesthe title of his book fromHopkins'spoem 'ABugler'sFirstCommunion', which describeshow, as a young curate at the Church of St Aloysius, the poet administeredthe host to a young member of the Oxfordshire and BuckinghamshireLight Infantry,kneeling 'in regimental red'. The soldier, to whom Hopkins evidently felt attracted,had an Irish Catholic mother and 'an English sire', and thus appeared to the priest tojoin the two poles he was vainly attempting to reconcile within himself. Only when appointed Professor of Greek at University College, Dublin, where he was surroundedby Catholic Irishnationalists,does Hopkins seem to have registeredthe full divisiveness of the course that he had chosen. The 'terriblesonnets' were the brilliantresult,but for Hopkins himselfthe mental cost was as dear as it was dreary. Predictablyperhaps, it was Oscar Wilde, homosexual son of an Irish nationalist poetess and a womanizing father, who grasped the horns of the English dilemma and shook them, making mickle merriment in the process. All Wilde's work, his Socratic dialogues, his social comedies, his epigrams, ThePictureof DorianGray, expose John Bull at his dour, hypocritical game. If Hopkins paid the price of his predicament with depression, Wilde paid with imprisonment. Only now, perhaps, arewe learningto recognize how savagethe Englishmiddle class,MathewArnold's Philistines,could be. Newman; Hopkins;Wilde:what more convincing, yet more unlikely,manifestations arethereof thatheroismso admiredby the Calvinisticbigot, Thomas Carlyle? They write best, it seems, as well as live most courageously, who step out of line. Their achievements,variousand defiant,shine as brightlyasAlderson'slean prose. OPEN UNIVERSITY ROBERT FRASER Constructions of Colonialism: Perspectives on Eliza Fraser'sShipwreck.Ed. by IANJ. MCNIVEN, LYNETTE RUSSELL, and KAy SCHAFFER. London and New York: Leicester University Press. 1998. viii + 192 pp. ? I6.99. The element of mysteryinvolved in shipwreckhaunts the imagination of survivors; the unresolved trauma of the sinkingof the Titanicenables the storyto be retold in differentmedia. The wreck of the StirlingCastle in 1836, off the Great BarrierReef in what is now the surfers'paradise of Queensland, has a comparable resonance, against the 'Papal Aggression', the re-establishment of the Roman hierarchy in Britain after I850. The English as they came to see themselves were disciplined, moderate, virile, and Protestant.They rowedfor Eton. They took cold baths. Alderson'sstrategyin dealing with this easily caricaturedtheme is twofold. First, he laysbare the superimpositionof elements that compose the stereotype.Christian Socialism, as expounded by F. D. Maurice and Charles Kingsley, for instance, is viewed as an endeavour to hold the middle ground against all manner of religious or political extremes. Kingsley, we are reminded, blamed the Terror on the repressivetactics of the Society of Jesus. Muscular Christianity, Christian Socialism 's ally, is interpreted as a sort of deflected, channelled homoeroticism through which the male body became a zone of a quasi-religioussanctity:chaste, athletic, the muscled Temple of God. Alderson'ssecond strategyis to concentrateon the interestingindividualstrapped between the contradictionsin the national mood, notably on English Catholic, or Catholic-friendly,writers.John HenryNewman waswidelyderidedforhissupposed effeminacy,a personaljudgement thatbolsteredtheAnglican BroadChurch'ssense ofitsown heterosexualrighteousness.GerardManley Hopkinsimbibedaestheticism from Paterat Oxford and then became aJesuit, to the enrichment...