A Princess of Mars is foremost a novel about colonisation. Barsoom doubles Arizona: they have a similar desert terrain, and both are inhabited by warriors who, the book seems to say, it is the white man's destiny to rule. The same words describe the Tharks as the Apaches: they are "vicious" (1), "cunning" (2), "ferocious" (3). The connection is made explicit: "I could not disassociate these people... from those [Apache] warriors" (4).
The scene where Tal Hajus threatens to rape Dejah Thoris plays on the vicious stereotype of the non-white "brute" obsessed with despoiling white women (5). The connection between Tharks and Apaches is, again, made explicit: rather than have Dejah assaulted by Ptormel, "better that we save friendly bullets for ourselves at the last moment, as did those brave frontier women of my lost land, who took their own lives rather than fall into the hands of the Indian braves" (6).
The men of Barsoom are the Thark's natural superiors and Carter's natural allies. These men are descended from the original Barsoom inhabitants, a "lost race of noble and kindly people" (7). Unsurprisingly, these paragons were white: "people like myself, and of a much lighter color than Dejah Thoris" (8). Dejah is an honorary white woman, despite her reddish skin: Burroughs empasises that her skin is "light" (9), and she is "similar in every detail to... earthly women" (10).
The Tharks and the Barsoom men eventually find a way to co-exist, and it is made clear that this is a job only a white man can do: "Can it be that all Earth men are as you?... you have done in a few short months what in all the past ages of Barsoom no man has ever done: joined together the wild hordes of the sea bottoms and brought them to fight as allies of a red Martian people" (11). In A Princess of Mars, it is natural that the white man conquers, even on another planet.
Notes:
1) Burroughs, chapter 1 and chapter 8.
2) Burroughs, chapter 1 and chapter 15.
3) Burroughs, chapter 2 and chapter 3, passim.
4) Burroughs, chapter 3.
5) E.g. Pilgrim.
6) Burroughs, chapter 12.
7) Burroughs, chapter 11.
8) Burroughs, chapter 11.
9) Burroughs, chapter 8.
10) Burroughs, chapter 8.
11) Burroughs, chapter 25.
Works cited:
Burroughs, Edgar Rice. A Princess of Mars. Project Gutenberg. June 23, 2008. Web. September 6, 2012.
Pilgrim, David. "The brute caricature". Jim Crow Museum of Racist Memorabilia. November, 2000. Web. September 6, 2012.
Hmmm, I didn't see the "white men" as winning when the Tharks helped the people of Helium, but I see how you could interpret it that way. I suppose you could consider the "savage" Tharks as being converted to the ways of the "civilized" men.
ReplyDeleteOnly now I find your blog, Lara. How interesting! I'm following you via RSS.
ReplyDelete@ Rachel: You're right, I wasn't very convincing on that specific point. I had a whole paragraph explaining it better but I had to cut it down because of the world limit (and I didn't save a copy of the original). It's true the Tharks helped the red men, but it (naturally!) took a white man to show them the way.
ReplyDelete@Sebastián: Welcome! I'll try to post more often, but I'm still catching up on stuff from my vacation, so just my essays are going up at the moment. I'm about to start on the Coursera Greek and Roman Mythology course soon, so expect some posts about Odysseus et al soon.
I'm on the Mythology course as well, but I plan to audit it... download all videos and subtitles and dedicate a couple of afternoons to watch everything once the course is over. I have books to write, after all! But you might see me in the forums. :)
ReplyDelete