In both Shakespeare's The Tempest and Rider Haggard's King Solomon's Mines, the native is portrayed in a derogatory, Euro-centric manner. Shakespeare's Caliban and Haggard's native tribe are all depicted at times in ways that are less than human. Their reactions to the Europeans show a servile, naive attitude.
Shakespeare's Caliban is constantly portrayed as devilish or animalistic. These traits undermine his humanity and separate him from the European interlopers on his isle. Trinculo alludes to this separation when he states: "There would this monster make a man - any strange beast there make a man. When they would not give a doit to relieve a lame beggar, they will lay out ten to see a dead Indian. Legged like a man, and his fins like arms!" (II.ii). Here, he both perpetuates and criticizes the European treatment of natives. Trinculo furthers the idea that Caliban is a beast, a monster, and less than a man. However, he seems to critique the European practice of paying to view native bodies as if they were specimens. Rider Haggard's Gagoola is portrayed as equally animalistic: "It crept on all fours, but when it reached the place where the king sat, it rose upon its feet" (Haggard 121). Haggard's narrator prefaces Gagoola's appearance with his introduction, where he states that he considers her a fiend rather than a woman. Like Trinculo's analysis of Caliban, Haggard's narrator is portraying Gagoola as less than human from the view of a European man.
Caliban himself also perpetuates the idea that a native is naturally servile, or less than Europeans. After a taste of alcohol, he professes his loyalty to the Europeans, just moments after cursing his indentured debt to Prospero: "I'll show thee every fertile inch o' th' island -/And I will kiss thy foot. I prithee be my god" (II.ii). Similarly, the natives in King Solomon's Mines profess the European explorers as gods. The element of the unfamiliar - alcohol in The Tempest and white skin, a monocle, and dentures in King Solomon's Mines - brings out the naive qualities in the natives. By claiming the Europeans are gods, both sets of natives are portrayed as uneducated and illogical, and therefore "less than" the Europeans.
Haggard, Rider. “King Solomon’s Mines.” Puffin Books, 1966. 1885. Print.
Shakespeare, William, G. Blakemore Evans, and J. J. M. Tobin. The Riverside Shakespeare. Boston:
Houghton Mifflin, 1997. Print.
Although I am only familiar with Caliban, I think you are spot on with the dehumanization aspect. It's interesting how other characters simultaneously berate and depend on natives. If Caliban wasn't in the story, Prospero would find survival on the island very difficult. Yet even with Caliban's assistance, his less than human features entitle Prospero to exercise an absolute and defaming command over him.
ReplyDeleteIn addition to Caliban's knowledge of the island, he also had some of the most beautiful lines and passages in the play. He was very articulate but even his qualities of knowledge and speech could not override physical appearance, a sad but true reality that Shakespeare presents well I think.
Both of the instances you show are examples of Europeans exoticising a racial "other," but, though I haven't read it, I would imagine King Solomon's Mines would have more of an agenda involved in such exoticism. Like we discussed in our tutorial together, the temporal context of Shakespeare was prior to British colonialism, so it's kind of hard to say that he would have an agenda in portraying Caliban in such a way, especially since his character is more complexly drawn than most other examples of Romantic exoticism. I don't know much more about the context of King Solomon's Mines, but I would imagine that since it was written around the time of British (and more generally Western European) expansionism and colonialism, it would make sense for them to describe racial "others" as animalistic and, in fact, in need of European grooming, in order to justify their racist agendas. Not saying that I find it justifiable, just that portraying them in such a way would shape the audience's perception of the government's colonialist policies as more favorable than it might otherwise seem.
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