Skin, intimacy and authenticity: literary representations of Anglo-Burmese women in The Lacquer Lady

Abstract

In literary representations of ‘the other’ the borders that define how difference itself is constructed are often hidden or unacknowledged. One senses these limits in the absence of certain kinds of difference in literary texts. For example, British colonialism is frequently portrayed in the English-language literary tradition, yet few novels have at their centre colonial Burma and even fewer an Anglo-Burmese subject. Equally striking is the dearth of postcolonial scholarship in the area. These literary and scholarly omissions seem to replicate colonial practices of inclusion and exclusion based upon judgements about the author's cultural authenticity and choice of subject matter as well as adherence to European social and moral codes. The Lacquer Lady, by F. Tennyson Jesse, is a rare example of a novel set in colonial Burma with a mixed-race, Anglo-Burmese protagonist, yet is overlooked by postcolonial literary critics. In this essay I will offer a reading of The Lacquer Lady drawing on Didier Anzieu's The Skin Ego (1989) and Imogen Tyler's essay Skin Tight (2001). In my reading, I will focus on the representation of Fanny Moroni, the Anglo-Burmese figure, and consider the ways in which intimacy and skin interact with the limit (a literal or metaphoric border that informs subjectivity).