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for his interests.10 Her death is simultaneously a symbolic reminder
of the destructive effects of imperialism on native people and their
culture.
On the other hand, Imelda’s gruesome revolt against McAndrick
demonstrates her refusal to obey and be enslaved to male authority;
accordingly, Imelda’s murder of her lover can represent radical
feminist deconstruction of patriarchal ideologies. In postcolonial
terms, Imelda’s resistance epitomises the colony’s refusal to be sub-
jected to Western domination, suggesting that such refusal, if not
taken seriously by the imperial power, can become brutal and
bloody rebellion. Jenkins’s portrayal of Imelda’s rebellion against
McAndrick is further interesting in his description of her in her two
attacks on McAndrick. In these scenes Imelda has become like her
forefathers, the head-hunters:
Instantly she heaved it [the parang] up. […] Her eyes were bloodshot.
Her lips had gone thick. Her feet were paws. […]
In the doorway, […] with her hair hanging about her face […] stood
Imelda, or rather crouched, with her bare feet wide apart. In her hands,
held like a spear, was the blowpipe, that genuine relic of Kalimantan
headhunting days.
It was aimed at him [McAndrick]. Before he could yell or put up his
hands as a shield, she charged at him, with a strange bounding action no
doubt inherited from ancestors used to hopping over logs and roots.
(Jenkins, 1973: 58, 64)
It is as if Imelda has reverted back to her roots; her behaviour dur-
ing these scenes is, by implication, specific to her culture and his-
tory. Jenkins clearly attributes this interpretation of Imelda to
McAndrick, whose perspective on her “primitive” appearance and
movements accords closely with traditional racist and imperialist
10 McDonald’s reaction to Jenny’s death—as seen through his wife’s perspective—arguably under-
lines his moral cowardice as well as demonstrates his discomfort over having treated Jenny the way
he did; although stricken by some kind of grief for the mother of his child, he nevertheless seems
in some strange way relieved that she is dead. Moreover, his wife reflects that while sobbing he is
also “in a way enjoying his grief” (Jenkins 1971: 253). Since Jenny is dead, he does not have to
agonise over having left her in Kalimantan grieving for her lost child. Perhaps Jenny’s removal also
means that it will be easier for him to assimilate Nancy into a “white,” Western cultural mental-
ity.
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