Hesitation in Kipling's "The Phantom 'Rickshaw"

HESITATION IN KIPLING'S "THE PHANTOM 'RICKSHAW" By William J. Scheick (University of Texas at Austin) Still too persistent in critical assessments of Kiphng's work is the notion that his early stories are measurably less accomphshed than his later tales. Elliot L. Gilbert, however, has demonstrated the error of this judgment, especially when in his excellent study of Kipling's short fiction he focuses on "Without Benefit of Clergy" (1890, 1891).1 Arguing that this short story is not as simple as it appears on the surface—Gilbert is refuting J. M. S. Tompkins' assertion that the work requires no interpretation2—Gilbert emphasizes patterns of ritual behavior in the tale, patterns which comprise a complex network of mutually reinforced meanings pertaining to an indifferent universe in the story. Gilbert not only successfully demonstrates the richness underlying the "simple" artistry in one of Kipling's earliest tales, but he also implicitly instructs us to seek similar adequate critical systems to unearth this sort of richness in other early fiction by Kipling. As Gilbert's attention to ritual in "Without Benefit of Clergy" suggests, finding a suitable critical stance, specifically an adequate critical vocabulary, makes a significant difference in assessing the artistic achievement of Kipling's fiction. With Gilbert's example in mind, we may turn our attention to a very early story by Kiphng that has Deen critically neglected: "The Phantom 'Rickshaw," which first appeared in Quartette (the Christmas annual of CiVi/ and Military Gazette) in 1885 and was first collected in 1888. Regard for this story in Kipling's canon is curious. On the one hand, there is Kipling's comment on the tale: in Something of Myself he says of the story that it was a "serious attempt," but "some of it was weak, much was bad and out of key"; in the Preface to an edition of The Phantom 'Rickshaw and Other Tales (1900) he says that the work "is not a very good specimen" of the ghost story, albeit 'you can credit it from beginning to end."3 On the other hand, there are the facts that Kipling himself still endorsed the story for inclusion in the last selection of his works that he authorized and that some editors of Kipling's stories have included "The Phantom 'Rickshaw" as a representative of his best short fiction.4 Similarly, Kipling's contemporary cntics, at one extreme, remarked that the tale should have been destroyed and, at the other extreme, thought the work was highly original.5 Recent critics fairly routinely refer to it, usually in passing, as an interesting but minor work; they have not probed the story m any test of its artistry.6 To appreciate "The Phantom 'Rickshaw" we need a critical perspective as appropriate as is Gilbert's focus on ritual behavior in "Without Benefit of Clergy." For this purpose, then, we might turn to Tzvetan Todorov's idea of the fantastic as a place to begin. I stress as a place to begin because I do not wish merely to demonstrate how Kiphng's story conforms to Todorov's theory. Rather, I want to use Todorov's structurahst concept as a point of entry in my exploration of the complexity of Kipling's art in "The Phantom 'Rickshaw/ In order to qualify for the genre Todorov classifies as the fantastic, "The Phantom 'Rickshaw" must make the reader hesitate between a natural or a 48 supernatural explanation of the events narrated, a hesitation which the reader usually shares with the protagonist of the story. Todorov explains, "The fantastic occupies the duration of this uncertainty. Once we choose one answer or the other, we leave the fantastic for a neighboring genre, the uncanny or the marvelous. The fantastic is that hesitation expenenced by a person who knows only the laws of nature, confronting an apparently supernatural event."7 Kiphng's story of how Theobald Jack Pansay rejects his lover, who dies in gnef and who apparently haunts him to his own death, satisfies Todorov's criterion for the fantastic. As readers of "The Phantom 'Rickshaw," we remain uncertain whether Pansay's experiences with the apparent ghost of Agnes KeithWessington are real encounters or hallucinations deriving...