Burmese Days

by

George Orwell

Elizabeth Lackersteen Character Analysis

Elizabeth Lackersteen, a pale blonde with cropped hair, is a 22-year-old orphan. She comes to live in Kyauktada, Burma, with her uncle Mr. Lackersteen and his wife Mrs. Lackersteen after her mother’s death. During Elizabeth’s teenage years, her tea-merchant father became briefly wealthy and sent Elizabeth to a posh girls’ school that taught her to worship “the expensive.” After her father’s financial ruination and death, Elizabeth and her mother, an untalented amateur painter, moved to Paris; there, Elizabeth worked as a tutor for a French family whose father sexually harassed her. The morning after Elizabeth arrives in Kyauktada, John Flory saves her from a water buffalo that is menacing her. Though racist Elizabeth dislikes Flory’s sympathy for Burmese culture, she admires him for saving her from the buffalo and for taking her on a hunting trip where he kills a leopard. After her uncle Mr. Lackersteen begins sexually harassing her, she plans to marry Flory to escape the Lackersteens—until she learns that Flory has had a Burmese mistress (Ma Hla May), a fact that disgusts her. Elizabeth transfers her affections to Verrall, an aristocratic member of the Military Police. After Verrall jilts her, she is on the verge of taking Flory back when Ma Hla May makes a dramatic scene over Flory’s abandonment of her in Kyauktada’s Christian church. Ma Hla May’s allegations so disgust Elizabeth that she rejects Flory permanently, precipitating his suicide. A few months later, she marries Kyauktada’s deputy commissioner, Mr. Macgregor, and becomes a highly conventional British colonial wife.

Elizabeth Lackersteen Quotes in Burmese Days

The Burmese Days quotes below are all either spoken by Elizabeth Lackersteen or refer to Elizabeth Lackersteen. For each quote, you can also see the other characters and themes related to it (each theme is indicated by its own dot and icon, like this one:
Imperialism and Hypocrisy Theme Icon
).
Chapter 3 Quotes

“You’ve got to be a pukka sahib or die, in this country. In fifteen years I’ve never talked honestly to anyone except you.”

Related Characters: John Flory (speaker), Elizabeth Lackersteen, Dr. Veraswami, Ma Hla May
Page Number: 43
Explanation and Analysis:
Chapter 4 Quotes

“Flory’s embraces meant nothing to her (Ba Pe, Ko S’la’s younger brother, was secretly her lover), yet she was bitterly hurt when he neglected them. Sometimes she had even put love philtres in his food. It was the idle concubine’s life that she loved, and the visits to her village dressed in all her finery, where she could boast of her position as a ‘bo-kadaw’—a white man’s wife; for she had persuaded everyone, herself included, that she was Flory’s legal wife.

Related Characters: John Flory, Elizabeth Lackersteen, Ma Hla May
Page Number: 54
Explanation and Analysis:
Chapter 5 Quotes

There was, he saw clearly, only one way out. To find someone who would share his life in Burma—but really share it, share his inner, secret life, carry away from Burma the same memories as he carried. Someone who would love Burma as he loved it and hate it as he hated it. Who would help him live with nothing hidden, nothing unexpressed. Someone who understood him: a friend, that was what it came down to.

A friend. Or a wife?

Related Characters: John Flory, Elizabeth Lackersteen
Page Number: 72
Explanation and Analysis:
Chapter 7 Quotes

There is a short period in everyone’s life when his character is fixed forever; with Elizabeth, it was those two terms during which she rubbed shoulders with the rich. Thereafter her whole code of living was summed up in one belief, and that a simple one. It was that the Good (‘lovely’ was her name for it) is synonymous with the expensive, the elegant, the aristocratic; and the Bad (‘beastly’) is the cheap, the low, the shabby, the laborious. Perhaps it is in order to teach this creed that expensive girls’ schools exist.

Related Characters: John Flory, Elizabeth Lackersteen
Page Number: 90
Explanation and Analysis:

In anticipation she tasted the agreeable atmosphere of Clubs, with punkahs flapping and barefooted white-turbaned boys reverently salaaming; and maidans where bronzed Englishmen with little clipped moustaches galloped to and fro, whacking polo balls. It was almost as nice as being really rich, the way people lived in India.

Related Characters: Elizabeth Lackersteen
Page Number: 96
Explanation and Analysis:
Chapter 8 Quotes

It was not the pwe girl’s behaviour, in itself, that had offended her; it had only brought things to a head. But the whole expedition—the very notion of wanting to rub shoulders with all those smelly natives—had impressed her badly. She was perfectly certain that that was not how white men ought to behave.

Related Characters: John Flory, Elizabeth Lackersteen
Page Number: 107
Explanation and Analysis:
Chapter 10 Quotes

He so wanted her to love Burma as he loved it, not to look at it with the dull, incurious eyes of a memsahib!

Related Characters: John Flory, Elizabeth Lackersteen
Page Number: 118
Explanation and Analysis:
Chapter 14 Quotes

If only he would always talk about shooting, instead of about books and Art and that mucky poetry! In a sudden burst of admiration she decided that Flory was really quite a handsome man, in his way. He looked so splendidly manly, with his pagri-cloth shirt open at the throat, and his shorts and puttees and shooting boots! And his face, lined, sunburned, like a soldier’s face. He was standing with his birth-marked cheek away from her.

Related Characters: John Flory, Elizabeth Lackersteen
Related Symbols: Birthmark, Leopard Skin
Page Number: 161–162
Explanation and Analysis:
Chapter 15 Quotes

Mr. Lackersteen was sulking. What rot it was, the way these women put on airs and prevented you from having a good time! The girl was pretty enough to remind him of the illustrations in La Vie Parisienne, and damn it! wasn’t he paying for her keep? It was a shame. But for Elizabeth the position was very serious. She was penniless and had no home except her uncle’s house. She had come eight thousand miles to stay here. It would be terrible if after only a fortnight her uncle’s house were to be made uninhabitable for her.

Related Characters: John Flory, Elizabeth Lackersteen, Mr. Lackersteen
Page Number: 175
Explanation and Analysis:
Chapter 17 Quotes

He had not even the heart to be angry any longer. For he had perceived, with the deadly self-knowledge and self-loathing that come to one at such a time, that what had happened served him perfectly right. For a moment it seemed to him that an endless procession of Burmese women, a regiment of ghosts, were marching past him in the moonlight […]. He had dirtied himself beyond redemption, and this was his just punishment.

Related Characters: John Flory, Elizabeth Lackersteen, Ma Hla May , Mrs. Lackersteen
Page Number: 196
Explanation and Analysis:
Chapter 18 Quotes

They would all have fallen at the feet of a lieutenant the Honourable if he had shown the smallest courtesy; as it was, everyone except the two women detested him from the start. It is always so with titled people, they are either adored or hated. If they accept one it is charming simplicity, if they ignore one it is loathsome snobbishness; there are no half-measures.

Related Characters: Elizabeth Lackersteen, Mrs. Lackersteen, Verrall
Page Number: 201
Explanation and Analysis:
Chapter 19 Quotes

He unrolled it on the table they had just picked up. It looked so shabby and miserable that he wished he had never brought it. She came close to him to examine the skin, so close that her flower-like cheek was not a foot from his own, and he could feel the warmth of her body. So great was his fear of her that he stepped hurriedly away. And in the same moment she too stepped back with a wince of disgust, having caught the foul odour of the skin. It shamed him terribly. It was almost as though it had been himself and not the skin that stank.

Related Characters: John Flory, Elizabeth Lackersteen, Ma Hla May
Related Symbols: Leopard Skin
Page Number: 219
Explanation and Analysis:
Chapter 20 Quotes

U Po Kyin’s version (he had a way of being essentially right even when he was wrong in detail) was that Elizabeth had been Flory’s concubine and had deserted him for Verrall because Verrall paid her more.

Related Characters: John Flory, U Po Kyin, Elizabeth Lackersteen, Ma Hla May , Verrall
Page Number: 227
Explanation and Analysis:
Chapter 24 Quotes

With death, the birthmark had faded immediately, so that it was no more than a faint grey stain.

Related Characters: John Flory, Elizabeth Lackersteen
Related Symbols: Birthmark
Page Number: 282
Explanation and Analysis:
Chapter 25 Quotes

Her servants live in terror of her, though she speaks no Burmese. She has an exhaustive knowledge of the Civil List, gives charming little dinner-parties and knows how to put the wives of subordinate officials in their places—in short, she fulfills with complete success the position for which Nature had designed her from the first, that of a burra memsahib.

Related Characters: John Flory, Elizabeth Lackersteen, Mr. Macgregor
Page Number: 287
Explanation and Analysis:
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Burmese Days PDF

Elizabeth Lackersteen Quotes in Burmese Days

The Burmese Days quotes below are all either spoken by Elizabeth Lackersteen or refer to Elizabeth Lackersteen. For each quote, you can also see the other characters and themes related to it (each theme is indicated by its own dot and icon, like this one:
Imperialism and Hypocrisy Theme Icon
).
Chapter 3 Quotes

“You’ve got to be a pukka sahib or die, in this country. In fifteen years I’ve never talked honestly to anyone except you.”

Related Characters: John Flory (speaker), Elizabeth Lackersteen, Dr. Veraswami, Ma Hla May
Page Number: 43
Explanation and Analysis:
Chapter 4 Quotes

“Flory’s embraces meant nothing to her (Ba Pe, Ko S’la’s younger brother, was secretly her lover), yet she was bitterly hurt when he neglected them. Sometimes she had even put love philtres in his food. It was the idle concubine’s life that she loved, and the visits to her village dressed in all her finery, where she could boast of her position as a ‘bo-kadaw’—a white man’s wife; for she had persuaded everyone, herself included, that she was Flory’s legal wife.

Related Characters: John Flory, Elizabeth Lackersteen, Ma Hla May
Page Number: 54
Explanation and Analysis:
Chapter 5 Quotes

There was, he saw clearly, only one way out. To find someone who would share his life in Burma—but really share it, share his inner, secret life, carry away from Burma the same memories as he carried. Someone who would love Burma as he loved it and hate it as he hated it. Who would help him live with nothing hidden, nothing unexpressed. Someone who understood him: a friend, that was what it came down to.

A friend. Or a wife?

Related Characters: John Flory, Elizabeth Lackersteen
Page Number: 72
Explanation and Analysis:
Chapter 7 Quotes

There is a short period in everyone’s life when his character is fixed forever; with Elizabeth, it was those two terms during which she rubbed shoulders with the rich. Thereafter her whole code of living was summed up in one belief, and that a simple one. It was that the Good (‘lovely’ was her name for it) is synonymous with the expensive, the elegant, the aristocratic; and the Bad (‘beastly’) is the cheap, the low, the shabby, the laborious. Perhaps it is in order to teach this creed that expensive girls’ schools exist.

Related Characters: John Flory, Elizabeth Lackersteen
Page Number: 90
Explanation and Analysis:

In anticipation she tasted the agreeable atmosphere of Clubs, with punkahs flapping and barefooted white-turbaned boys reverently salaaming; and maidans where bronzed Englishmen with little clipped moustaches galloped to and fro, whacking polo balls. It was almost as nice as being really rich, the way people lived in India.

Related Characters: Elizabeth Lackersteen
Page Number: 96
Explanation and Analysis:
Chapter 8 Quotes

It was not the pwe girl’s behaviour, in itself, that had offended her; it had only brought things to a head. But the whole expedition—the very notion of wanting to rub shoulders with all those smelly natives—had impressed her badly. She was perfectly certain that that was not how white men ought to behave.

Related Characters: John Flory, Elizabeth Lackersteen
Page Number: 107
Explanation and Analysis:
Chapter 10 Quotes

He so wanted her to love Burma as he loved it, not to look at it with the dull, incurious eyes of a memsahib!

Related Characters: John Flory, Elizabeth Lackersteen
Page Number: 118
Explanation and Analysis:
Chapter 14 Quotes

If only he would always talk about shooting, instead of about books and Art and that mucky poetry! In a sudden burst of admiration she decided that Flory was really quite a handsome man, in his way. He looked so splendidly manly, with his pagri-cloth shirt open at the throat, and his shorts and puttees and shooting boots! And his face, lined, sunburned, like a soldier’s face. He was standing with his birth-marked cheek away from her.

Related Characters: John Flory, Elizabeth Lackersteen
Related Symbols: Birthmark, Leopard Skin
Page Number: 161–162
Explanation and Analysis:
Chapter 15 Quotes

Mr. Lackersteen was sulking. What rot it was, the way these women put on airs and prevented you from having a good time! The girl was pretty enough to remind him of the illustrations in La Vie Parisienne, and damn it! wasn’t he paying for her keep? It was a shame. But for Elizabeth the position was very serious. She was penniless and had no home except her uncle’s house. She had come eight thousand miles to stay here. It would be terrible if after only a fortnight her uncle’s house were to be made uninhabitable for her.

Related Characters: John Flory, Elizabeth Lackersteen, Mr. Lackersteen
Page Number: 175
Explanation and Analysis:
Chapter 17 Quotes

He had not even the heart to be angry any longer. For he had perceived, with the deadly self-knowledge and self-loathing that come to one at such a time, that what had happened served him perfectly right. For a moment it seemed to him that an endless procession of Burmese women, a regiment of ghosts, were marching past him in the moonlight […]. He had dirtied himself beyond redemption, and this was his just punishment.

Related Characters: John Flory, Elizabeth Lackersteen, Ma Hla May , Mrs. Lackersteen
Page Number: 196
Explanation and Analysis:
Chapter 18 Quotes

They would all have fallen at the feet of a lieutenant the Honourable if he had shown the smallest courtesy; as it was, everyone except the two women detested him from the start. It is always so with titled people, they are either adored or hated. If they accept one it is charming simplicity, if they ignore one it is loathsome snobbishness; there are no half-measures.

Related Characters: Elizabeth Lackersteen, Mrs. Lackersteen, Verrall
Page Number: 201
Explanation and Analysis:
Chapter 19 Quotes

He unrolled it on the table they had just picked up. It looked so shabby and miserable that he wished he had never brought it. She came close to him to examine the skin, so close that her flower-like cheek was not a foot from his own, and he could feel the warmth of her body. So great was his fear of her that he stepped hurriedly away. And in the same moment she too stepped back with a wince of disgust, having caught the foul odour of the skin. It shamed him terribly. It was almost as though it had been himself and not the skin that stank.

Related Characters: John Flory, Elizabeth Lackersteen, Ma Hla May
Related Symbols: Leopard Skin
Page Number: 219
Explanation and Analysis:
Chapter 20 Quotes

U Po Kyin’s version (he had a way of being essentially right even when he was wrong in detail) was that Elizabeth had been Flory’s concubine and had deserted him for Verrall because Verrall paid her more.

Related Characters: John Flory, U Po Kyin, Elizabeth Lackersteen, Ma Hla May , Verrall
Page Number: 227
Explanation and Analysis:
Chapter 24 Quotes

With death, the birthmark had faded immediately, so that it was no more than a faint grey stain.

Related Characters: John Flory, Elizabeth Lackersteen
Related Symbols: Birthmark
Page Number: 282
Explanation and Analysis:
Chapter 25 Quotes

Her servants live in terror of her, though she speaks no Burmese. She has an exhaustive knowledge of the Civil List, gives charming little dinner-parties and knows how to put the wives of subordinate officials in their places—in short, she fulfills with complete success the position for which Nature had designed her from the first, that of a burra memsahib.

Related Characters: John Flory, Elizabeth Lackersteen, Mr. Macgregor
Page Number: 287
Explanation and Analysis: