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Chapter 7
Themes
Key
LitCharts assigns a color and icon to each theme in Burmese Days, which you can use to track the themes throughout the work.
Imperialism and Hypocrisy
Status and Racism
Class, Gender, and Sex
Freedom of Speech, Self-Expression, and Loneliness
Friendship and Loyalty
Summary
Analysis
After meeting Elizabeth, Flory has a barber cut his hair and shave him. He also orders Ko S’la to put out his nicest suit in anticipation of going to the club that evening. After shaving a second time, he dresses and goes to the club. He finds Elizabeth alone in the library and invites her on a walk. As they stroll along, Flory hears distant drums, realizes there’s a pwe going on, and suggests to Elizabeth that they go see it. Though Elizabeth is hesitant, they go. They find a stage set up in the middle of the road with a large crowd around it. U Po Kyin, sitting in the crowd’s center, invites them to come sit with him. Secretly, Elizabeth doesn’t want to enter a “smelly native crowd,” but she follows Flory because she trusts him.
A pwe is a kind of traditional dance performance. Flory’s enthusiasm for the pwe contrasts with Elizabeth’s fear of a “smelly native crowd,” showing that whereas he is interested in Burmese culture, Elizabeth has already absorbed dismissive, racist attitudes toward colonized peoples. The contrast between the two again seems to indicate that Elizabeth is not the sympathetic, open-minded confidante Flory hopes her to be.
Themes
In Burmese, U Po Kyin orders a boy to bring out the best dancer in honor of Flory and Elizabeth. Flory translates the command for Elizabeth. As the orchestra plays, a thin girl takes the stage and begins a traditional dance. Elizabeth secretly feels both “boredom” and “horror” at the sight, which is strange to her. Flory whispers at length that he knew she would like the dance because she’s well-read and open-minded enough to recognize the “centuries of culture” embodied in the dance—until he realizes he sounds pretentious. Meanwhile, Elizabeth has no idea what he's talking about, dislikes his praise of art, and wonders why he brought her to sit among native people.
That Elizabeth feels “boredom” and “horror” at the pwe merely because she’s unfamiliar with it as a cultural form shows her narrow-mindedness and racism—which contrast sharply with the open-mindedness and literacy that Flory, in his loneliness, naively attributes to her.
Themes
When the dancer begins to shake her buttocks to the orchestra’s music, Elizabeth stands up and demands to go home. When Flory suggests they stay a bit longer to avoid insulting the dancer brought out early in their honor, Elizabeth storms off. Flory follows her. He apologizes profusely, but he’s not sure what he’s apologizing for. In fact, Elizabeth is angry because she thinks Flory’s enthusiasm for the pwe and willingness to sit with native people is “not how white men ought to behave.”
Elizabeth leaves when the dancer begins shaking her buttocks, which would seem to indicate that Elizabeth is offended by the dance’s overt sexuality—but in fact, Elizabeth is angry because she thinks Flory is diverging from the norms of British whiteness: his open-mindedness and interest in Burmese culture are “not how white men ought to behave.” Again, the novel is emphasizing how Elizabeth’s racism makes her a poor potential confidante for Flory, who finds British racism and imperialism hypocritical.
Themes
Elizabeth also worries that Flory’s speech praising the dance makes him like the “beastly artists” she hated in Paris. Yet she still remembers how he saved her from the buffalo. When he suggests she not tell the others where they’ve been, she agrees “warmly”—and he knows that she’s forgiven him, though he still doesn’t know what he did wrong. They enter the club one by one without needing to consult one another.
Implicitly, Elizabeth hates the “beastly artists” in Paris because the remind her of her and her mother’s poverty. In other words, she associates art with low social and economic status. Yet she associates manliness with high status, and she thinks of Flory as “manly” because he saved her from the buffalo. Thus, she has internally conflicting opinions about Flory’s status and personality—and, by extension, his attractiveness as a potential husband.
Themes
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In the club, all the Europeans are waiting to meet Elizabeth. Macgregor introduces her to everyone, after which Ellis pulls Flory and Westfield into the card-room and insinuates that Mrs. Lackersteen plans to marry Elizabeth off to Flory unless Flory is “careful." When Flory protests that Elizabeth’s only been in town a day, Ellis warns Flory that Elizabeth won’t have sex with him before marriage and claims that English girls only come to Burma to catch husbands desperate “for the sight of a white woman.” He then compares Elizabeth to fresh meat at length.
Ellis’s explicit and sexist comparisons of Elizabeth to fresh meat again emphasize that the British Burmese cultural context treats women as sexual accessories to men, not independent individuals. Moreover, Ellis’s racist claim that English girls come to British colonies to find husbands desperate “for the sight of a white woman” highlights that racist hierarchies inflect the sexual behavior British men in the colonies: they may sexually exploit “native” girls, but they are only become romantically serious about white women.
Themes
At the end of the evening, Macgregor walks the Lackersteens home. He believes that Elizabeth is an unusually clever girl because—unlike everyone else at the club—she’s a “good listener” who doesn’t interrupt his boring stories.
When Macgregor imputes intelligence to Elizabeth because she’s a “good listener,” it hints at the qualities that are desirable in women according to the conservative cultural mores of the club: quietness, submissiveness, and attentiveness to male ego.
Themes
