Mrs. Bathurst Mrs. Bathurst is one of the central characters in the story. She is the subject of a story told by Mr. Pyecroft and Sergeant Pritchard to Mr. Hooper and the narrator. Her name does not appear until almost midway through the story. She is the manager of a hotel and restaurant in Auckland,…
Tag: Rudyard Kipling
Mrs. Bathurst by Rudyard Kipling – Summary
“Mrs. Bathurst” takes place in Glengariff, South Africa, in the years following the Boer War (1899- 1902). The main story is told through a conversation between three men and the narrator; the four men discuss the tragic tale of Mrs. Bathurst, a hotel owner in New Zealand, and her lover, Mr. Vickery (also known as…
Rudyard Kipling’s “The White Man’s Burden”: Clarifying the relationship between oppressors and the oppressed
Even after a hundred years since its publication, Rudyard Kipling’s poem ‘The White Man’s Burden’ continues to be debated, discussed and reinterpreted in various ways. When we look at the context in which the poem was written and published (originally written for Queen Victoria’s Diamond Jubilee celebrations), it becomes clear that Kipling is promoting the…
White Man’s Burden: The social, religious and cultural excuses to justify imperialism and gunship diplomacy
European imperialism of the last few centuries were heavily centered on the perceived moral responsibility of its leaders toward other supposedly backward regions of the world. Also referred to (not without a sense of irony) as the White Man’s Burden, this notion of cultural, religious, scientific and administrative superiority over far-off civilizations had led to…