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strong and independent women, on whom much of the narrative is
focused. In this respect The Expatriates is very different from “Imelda
and the Miserly Scot,” in which the narrative focus of the short
story rests almost entirely on McAndrick who generally reveals a
disrespectful attitude towards women and sees them mostly as
sexual beings supposed to give him pleasure. This much more mas-
culine and even chauvinist focus—albeit with a generous dash of
irony—further establishes a view of coloured women as white men’s
sexual property. In this context, the reference in the title to
McAndrick as a “miserly Scot,” aside from being highly satirical,
takes on a dual meaning, relating both to his carefulness with
money, and his possession of Imelda. In addition, his miserly nature
affects his general attitude towards women, seen in his reflection
that no woman is worth buying clothes for, since “[a]fter all, what
they had to give him was best done naked” (Jenkins 1973: 47).
Thus McAndrick decides early in his relationship with Imelda that
she is “merely a kind of amah, whose duties were not to wash his
clothes or cook his food, but to pleasure him in bed and raise his
status among his friends” (Jenkins 1973: 35). The language used to
describe McAndrick’s relationship with Imelda is, to say the least,
loaded with mercenary and sexually exploitative meaning; it also
carries further implication that his meanness has great bearing on
and is directly related to his treatment of and disposition towards
her. The examples are abundant: his failure to perform sexually on
the night he seduces Imelda results in him not being “able to make
full use of her”, her acquiescence in bed makes him “feel quite god-
like”, on finding a scar under her left breast he feels cheated since
“the bargain wasn’t perfect after all”, other expatriates’ admiration
for her exceptional beauty and their congratulations to him amount
to “a hundred per cent profit”, and when trying to get rid of her at
the end of the story he feels “as desolate as if he’d lost all his sav-
ings” (Jenkins 1973: 33, 37, 38, 41, 64). Through McAndrick’s
perspective, Imelda is explicitly accorded the status of an object and
possession beneficial to McAndrick on a social, psychological, and
physical level. In related terms, the colony was beneficial to the
Empire both politically and economically.
With this in mind, we can fairly conclude that McDonald’s rela-
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