Characters of Ulysses and Telemachus in the context if imperialist masculinity.

 Theme of Masculinity and Imperialism in “Ulysses” 

Or, Characters of Ulysses and Telemachus in the context if imperialist masculinity.

Or, How is Ulysses and Telemachus antithetical to each other in the social context of imperialism. 

 Literature, since time immemorial, played a pivotal role in the construction or in the representation of contemporary socio- political ideologies. Consequently, literature becomes both the reflection and the critique of certain social paradigms. Tennyson's Ulysses was remarkable for being the mouthpiece of “high Victorianism”, a time of growing state and economy, and its inclination to imperialism simply to look upon the colonies as both the sources of raw materials and a promising market of circulating the production of their growing industries. 

British historian Andrew S. Thompson wrote in 1997 that in colonial Britain, the terms “empire” and “imperialism” were “like empty boxes that were continuously being filled up and emptied of their meanings”.These meanings, influenced by the changing cultural discourses used to define, locate and sometimes, stiffen social roles and gender representations in accordance with the need of the hour. This resulted in forming certain socio-moral perspective and religious obligations for sustenance. On one hand, there was an urgent need for exploration and stabilization of governance in colonies that required multiple ‘men’, on the other hand, the state also required law-abiding citizens to preserve and execute certain cultural practices. 

In this regard, Alfred Tennyson’s “Ulysses” moulds manhood to equate masculinity with imperialist work, serving to secure men’s place in the public sphere, engaging in acts like extensive travel, seeking unknown realms of human world and “civilizing” the so called “primitive” cultures. The narrative that age is not a restriction, rather, an experience, a determination to carry forward and become immortal through deeds__was made popular. Tennyson’s Ulysses, further extends the narrative of heroism by equating it through Achilles and a promising “reward” of “happy isles” once the hero strives, seeks, finds and never yields. Thus, Ulysses becomes the literary logo of the Victorian urge for growth through voyage and exploration by inaugurating a notion of masculinity that may have been significant with regards to the growth of imperialistic desire and the ruthlessness deemed necessary for colonial success. "Ulysses" explores the ways in which these constructions of masculinity pervade all aspects of Victorian social life—from fantasy and entertainment to tangible and grounded foreign policy debate. 

Now the question is, then why did Ulysses talk so high of Telemachus? The answer is, probably, the ‘hero’ Ulysses needs his antithesis—--- a common “blameless”(signifying innocent and simple, unlike him) man upon whom he can thrust his domestic duties, as in the socio-economic phenomena of imperialistic zeal, it is imperative to ground and typify the discourse surrounding gender roles. Thus, Telemachus was given the “sceptre and the isle”___ he was made an official incharge to look over the acts of “storing and hoarding” through “soft degrees”. This is how Telemachus preserves what Ulysses is leaving behind. This juxtaposed notion of masculinity sometimes seems critical as often we may feel that Telemachus, by being the ruler of the “savage race” or “rugged” people, proves to be unworthy of Ulysses' magnanimity, but the simplicity of Telemachus might be a deliberate project to generate the narrative of sustenance to “perform” well in offices of tenderness and paying “meet adoration” to the household deities. Thus, Telemachus’s stasis compliments Ulysses' restless urge to move and “become a name”.  

Tennyson's “Ulysses”,in the process of creating the notions of masculinity through exploration and preservation, also equated femininity with mundane and barren because of their incapability to “produce” something which is meaningful to Ulysses. The poem begins as the speaker attempts to separate himself from any effeminate qualities, asserting that to possess them would be a detriment to his happiness and personal pleasure. The opening lines, 

It little profits that an idle king

By this still hearth, among these barren crags

Match’d with an aged wife, I mete and dole

Unequal laws unto a savage race.

make this intent clear: Searching for success and prestige on a more grand and glorious scale, Ulysses finds homebound labour dull and unfulfilling for a man with a “hungry heart” like him. This type of “idle” labour—labour that was often depicted as globally insignificant and small in scale—such as chores, child-rearing, and providing overall care for local communities—was often marketed towards women via conduct books such as Sara Stickney Ellis’s The Women of England and Samuel Beeton’s Complete Etiquette for Ladies. Furthermore, Ulysses reveals his aversion to domestic life by lamenting the routine he would adopt if he chose to remain 

in Ithaca with his “aged” wife instead of spending his life travelling and conquering new lands. In doing so, he reveals his most pressing fear: that he will grow old (signifying “unproductivity”) and become haunted by feelings of failure and disappointment. From the way he discusses domesticity, we can come to understand that Ulysses’s attitude towards domestic work is not that it is useless, but rather that it is not suitable for an impassioned and tempestuous man like him.

The restless, and aggressive “New Man,” depicted in “Ulysses” was, for Victorians, a relatively new construction___ refering to the cultural shift that replaced the “entrepreneur, the missionary, and the affectionate family man” with the “untamed frontiersman, the impetuous boy, and the unapologetically violent soldier”. This is a clear shift between principles of community and philanthropy to absolute individualism and fierce competition. Women, then, were left to embody the humanitarianism and selflessness that Victorian men began to oppose: Literary critic Mary Poovey notes that in the Victorian era, so-called “female nature” was deemed to be intrinsically “noncompetitive, nonaggressive, and self-sacrificing” exactly what is hinted in the “aged wife” of Ulysses who considers it a “little profit” to spend few words on her. Her entire identity is reduced to “an aged wife”, suggesting her “unproductivity” in terms of the heroic notion of masculinity that Ulysses endorses. The expression like “offices of tenderness” aligning the affections of motherhood is deemed as domestic, echoing the typical Victorian ideology of the woman as “the angel of the house”. While the poem’s male characters, with “One equal temper of heroic hearts” seem to separate themselves from larger society—namely, their families and friends in Ithaca, to realize their primary intentions__ “to strive, to seek, to find, and not to yield”. This brotherhood of the athletic, ambitious, and blessed men with competitive spirit, was contingent to a time when the British empire was competing against other emerging empires for resources and prestige. Ulysses’s strong desire to “seek a newer world” and to “not … yield”.  

 

But, it is noteworthy that Tennyson also credits traditionally feminine work done at home as important as his own hyper-masculinized labour, done for the prosperous development of society for a larger goal of preserving what one is achieving. On this account, Kipling and Tennyson both argue for a similar type of violent and restless hegemonic masculinity but differ in how they believe that this concept exerts its influence over society at large.