THE HALF-CASTE: A HALF-TOLD TALE

Abstract

Dinah Mulock Craik's 1851 short story The Half-Caste tells us less about the title character, a young woman of mixed British and Indian descent, than about Cassia, the embedded narrator. The most revealing parts of Cassia's narrative are her silences, those places where she skirts around the unspeakable. In addition to Cassia's apparent sexual repression, this article considers the ways in which the gaps in the narrative serve to draw attention to the repression of colonial problems, particularly the discrepancies between colonialist attitudes and Craik's egalitarian ideals. The narrative gaps are only partial ones; secrets are half-told rather than untold, and this serves to heighten their significance. Cassia's silences reveal her desires all too clearly, and although, as this article argues, the story ultimately centers on Cassia herself as the quintessential Englishwoman, the importance of the colony to her very identity is apparent in the characterization in, and the form of, The Half-Caste.