Motherhood And Citizenship: Katrina Trask

In a nation dominated by Patriarchal Christian discourse, the role of women was highly problematizes as a source of weakness. In order to counteract decline and promote positive reproduction, women were pushed into traditionally Victorian roles of motherhood and passivity. Katrina Trask wrote in her 1895 article entitled “Motherhood and Citizenship: Woman’s Wisest Policy” that woman should bear children with “the mission of the perpetration of the race” and a woman engaging in sexual acts with any other intention “has failed in her obligation and privilege” (Gavin 124). Through the discourse surrounding motherhood, the female body became a tool of the empire and belonged to the male patriarchal leaders. Heterosexuality’s aim is procreation …show more content…
Once more reinforcing the link between colonial, patriarchal, and Evangelical Christian discourse, came the idea “women who lacked sufficient religious fervor would succumb to the allure of the East of disintegrate in the hot tropical climate” (Krishnaswamy 55). Thus fears regarding the weak female in a climate thought to aggravate her nature were escalated due to the importance of her body to the empire. In Anna Lombard, the dynamic of problematic sexuality and desire are enacted in the relationship between Anna and Gerald, and Victoria Cross questions the stringent British views towards gender roles by embedding the female character of Anna with the sexual appetite that is approved of in a male. In Burma, Gerald is told that he must “settle down, take a wife, and live regularly” rather than fretting over a girl abroad (Cross 36). Here the word “regular” makes the claim that a man needs to have a woman in order to express his sexuality. This is reinforced again when another man tells Gerald “This is a country in which a man can live, but he cannot live alone.” (Cross …show more content…
While Gerald is able to live alone and control his desires, Anna’s sexuality is weak and when Gerald leaves her, her strong sexual desire is likened to a man. Unlike Gerald, Anna cannot live alone and takes a foreigner as a husband. In reversing the desires of men and women and giving her female character the sexual desires allowed men, Victoria Cross explores implications of both female and male sexuality as well as problematic discourse surrounding miscegenation. While it was “natural” for a man to take a foreign wife while abroad and then abandon her and her children when he no longer needed her, the public struggled to accept Cross’s depiction of a woman taking a native to satisfy her own sexual desires and reviews claims “Anna Lombard’s ill-regulated sensuality is disgusting” and find fault with Gerald for accepting such a depraved woman. Cross explores the different treatment given male and female sexuality and desire in Anna Lombard and reveals the extent to which a women’s body belongs to the empire and man’s belongs to