Milli mála - 01.01.2013, Page 135

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Even though Kalimantan has gained independence from Britain,
most of the British expatriate characters of both stories are shown
to consider themselves superior to the Dusun, Chinese, Malay, and
Indian population of Kalimantan. Furthermore, clear antagonism
to inter-racial marriages is emphasised in the disdain shown to Tom
Bannerman by his fellow expatriates in The Expatriates. Married to
a native woman, Bannerman is thought to have degraded himself
and is accordingly more or less ignored by his compatriots, a fact
rightly referred to as Bannerman’s “immolation […] at the stake of
human prejudice” (Jenkins 1971: 94). This attitude is clearly re-
flected in McDonald and McAndrick themselves: both men con-
template and even mention to their mistress the idea of marrying
her, only to reject the possibility straight afterwards because of their
deep-rooted racial prejudice and their fear that they will be rejected
by the white community for “debasing” themselves in such a man-
ner. It is suggested that both men have some feelings for their mis-
tresses, and yet these feelings cannot dispel their inherent racism
and social cowardice. Therefore McDonald’s feeling of shame at
having a child with a coloured woman causes his first cowardly
desertion of Jenny and their daughter;9 his lack of moral courage is
obviously fuelled by that part of him to which Jenkins refers as “the
white colonialist” (Jenkins 1971: 159). Similarly, McAndrick’s oc-
casional feelings of tenderness for Imelda are undermined by his
colour prejudice; waking up and seeing her face beside him, he is
“startled and dismayed by its darkness [… and knows] then that his
hope of her somehow becoming light enough in colour to pass as
white was a cheat” (Jenkins 1973: 43). For both men, white is the
desired and superior colour of skin and not even their love for a na-
tive woman will change this fact.
The representation of the coloured mistress in Jenkins’s two nar-
ratives also carries serious implications of racial, economic, and
sexual exploitation. Significantly, McDonald commences his rela-
9 This actually refers to when McDonald had gone back to Scotland to live there, a plot detail
relayed through flashbacks in the narrative but which really happened before the beginning of the
story. The novel focuses on McDonald’s return to Kalimantan with his new Scottish bride in order
to bring Nancy back to Scotland. Their arrival in Kalimantan causes some upheaval among mem-
bers of the British community, and Jenny’s eventual surrender of their daughter to McDonald has
unforeseen consequences.
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