Aesthetic imperialism did not solely enforce racial hierarchies that legitimized British supremacy on the basis of racial hierarchy, perhaps aesthetic imperialism’s effectiveness lies in its ability to enforce multiple indigenous and imperial hierarchies concurrently. The ideal nature of the British woman was “constructed [in] middle-class domesticity,” and was championed as a “force of domestic stability and familial love” necessary to the health of the empire-nation (191). To the ends of aesthetic imperialism, the English literary romance genre that espoused domestic British women sought to: “create romantic bonds of attraction in the colonial relationship and, in doing so, to propagate a kind of colonial domesticity of middle-class [devotion]
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Misappropriations of Mary Wollstonecraft’s observation that “men who are inferior to their fellow men, are… most anxious to establish their superiority over women” aptly predicted the reactive creation of a “masculine cultural space” legitimizing and necessitating the domination of Indian men over Indian women in the private sphere (“Maria” 79). The masculine cultural space implicated the Indian man as an active proponent of aesthetic imperial objective “[to] change from the government of families to government through the family” (Heath …show more content…
Rani’s masculinization was not sufficient, her actions could only attain respect and political viability because her resistance was attributed to protecting the birthright of her son to rule over Jhansi. The entanglement of “female virtue and the ideal of the Indian family” diminish “a comprehensive critique of the multiplicity of women’s lives [and] power relations… [inhibiting] many Indian women’s freedom” or cultivation of an identity, specifically a politically empowered national identity, outside men (Banerjee 64). Rani’s personal convictions or devotion to her constituency are entirely inconsequential, lacking tangibility without a legitimizing masculine presence fulfilled by her infant son. Rani, as product of imperial aesthetics and the subsequent creation of the Indian masculine cultural space, is alienated from her contributions to domestic stability, reformulated to an apolitical non factor tasked with preserving the masculine hierarchy within her family at the expense of her
Misappropriations of Mary Wollstonecraft’s observation that “men who are inferior to their fellow men, are… most anxious to establish their superiority over women” aptly predicted the reactive creation of a “masculine cultural space” legitimizing and necessitating the domination of Indian men over Indian women in the private sphere (“Maria” 79). The masculine cultural space implicated the Indian man as an active proponent of aesthetic imperial objective “[to] change from the government of families to government through the family” (Heath …show more content…
Rani’s masculinization was not sufficient, her actions could only attain respect and political viability because her resistance was attributed to protecting the birthright of her son to rule over Jhansi. The entanglement of “female virtue and the ideal of the Indian family” diminish “a comprehensive critique of the multiplicity of women’s lives [and] power relations… [inhibiting] many Indian women’s freedom” or cultivation of an identity, specifically a politically empowered national identity, outside men (Banerjee 64). Rani’s personal convictions or devotion to her constituency are entirely inconsequential, lacking tangibility without a legitimizing masculine presence fulfilled by her infant son. Rani, as product of imperial aesthetics and the subsequent creation of the Indian masculine cultural space, is alienated from her contributions to domestic stability, reformulated to an apolitical non factor tasked with preserving the masculine hierarchy within her family at the expense of her