Abstract
This article explores the notion of heroism in Victorian war literature by analyzing the figure of the soldier-hero in two imperial war memoirs: Captain Mowbray Thomson’s The Story of Cawnpore: The Indian Mutiny and John Pearman’s The Radical Soldier’s Tale. While The Story of Cawnpore is an emblematic example of what we call the Victorian hero myth, that is, the effective merging of traditional heroism, war as adventure and imperialism in mid-to late-nineteenth century Britain – The Radical Soldier’s Tale appears to posit an alternative to this widely accepted view, challenging its assumed universality and immutability. By analyzing Pearman’s innovative revision of heroism, in contrast to Thomson’s more conventional representation of the theme, this article attempts to illustrate both the traditional construction and a possible re-reading of the subject taking place in the same period. In order to do so, we focus on the three main aspects around which the representation of the nineteenth-century soldier-hero is articulated: the consolidation of traditional heroic manhood in the context of imperial war, the complex social justification of war and the demonization of the Other as a way of validating the heroic self. Particular attention is given to the fact that Pearman’s shift towards a more complex appreciation of the heroic subject appears to anticipate similar patterns occurring in the literature written during and after World War One.
Highlights
“I want a hero,” Byron famously advertises in the opening of “Don Juan,” and he seems to express a common ground of shared concerns that gained increasing prominence as Victorianism made way for the twentieth century in Britain
In one of the lectures that would frame the discourse on heroism for the century, On Heroes, Hero-Worship and the Heroic in History, Carlyle (2000: I-10) refers to the nature and necessity of hero-worship and its centrality in the popular imaginary: “Heroworship is the deepest root of all; the tap root, from which in a great degree all the rest were nourished and grown.”
Carlyle’s remark gives a concise, though distinctive summary of the point of view from which our study on war heroism begins: the admiration of the deeds of the great men was the outward manifestation of a set of received values and ideas that constituted the core identity of Victorian Britain
Summary
Alicante Journal of English Studies “I want a hero,” Byron famously advertises in the opening of “Don Juan,” and he seems to express a common ground of shared concerns that gained increasing prominence as Victorianism made way for the twentieth century in Britain. Framed in a manner that leads to jingoistic feelings and reverence for the British crowd, the memoir contributes to the development of a new genre – the “Mutiny Fiction.”6 While it is far beyond the scope of this study to carry out an in-depth analysis of all the literary responses to the Indian Mutiny of 1857, we will explore – through a detailed analysis of the representation of the soldier-hero – the articulation of the Victorian hero myth in Thomson’s The Story of Cawnpore, which seems to be radically questioned, as we shall see later in the article, by contemporary soldier-writer John Pearman. Particular attention will be given to Pearman’s innovative understanding of the enemyOther that leads to a reinterpretation of war heroism but appears to anticipate similar patterns occurring on a larger scale in the literature written during and after World War One
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