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Chivalry, "Mutiny," and Sherlock Holmes:
Three Aspects of Imperial Grandiosity and Rage

By Diane Simmons

Heinz Kohut Memorial Fund Paper Prize
2002 Prize Winner
"Chivalry, 'Mutiny,' and Sherlock Holmes:
Three Aspects of Imperial Grandiosity and Rage
By Diane Simmons
City University of New York - Borough of Manhattan
[Note]

We should not be afraid, Heinz Kohut wrote, to apply our understanding of the individual to "the field of history," particularly as we try to understand human aggression and its relationship to narcissistic rage ("Thoughts" 635.) This application seems particularly useful as scholars studying colonialism and post-colonialism seek to understand imperial attitudes which, in many ways, have shaped the world in which we continue to live. In this paper, I will focus on imperial Britain in the late 19th century, a country which had become, as the 19th century progressed, increasingly divided between irrational grandiosity on one hand, and fears of decline and decay on the other. The primary aim of my paper will be to read imperial Britain in terms of Kohut's formulations on grandiosity and narcissistic rage; I also, however, attempt in a final note to consider how an understanding of British imperial attitudes may help us gain a perspective on our own superpower status, a status which, like that of imperial Britain after the Indian "Mutiny" of 1857, has faced an unprecedented challenge following the September 11 terrorist attacks.

As the 19th century drew to its close, British Empire, which had once been viewed as a fairly straightforward for-profit venture, was increasingly portrayed as an expression of British racial and moral superiority, and the 1849 remarks of William Kingston of the Society for Promoting Colonization were echoed in hundreds of popular publications and productions. The British, he declared, had been "awarded the office" of peopling the globe and "spreading the arts of civilization. . ." (Qtd. in Druce 188). During this period hundreds of works of fiction, magazines and history books extolled the "peace and civilization which it was the glory of British statesmen to bring to the backward nations of the earth" (Castle 12). The virtue of the British imperial mission was proclaimed by the history lessons taught to the nation's children, which portrayed the British as a uniquely robust people whose special qualities had been distilled from the "conflict, romance and heroism of the British past" ( Castle 5).

For all the prideful declarations, however, there was, beneath the surface of self-congratulation, a current of uncertainty. "Despite its patriotic excesses," Elleke Boehmer writes, "the final decades of the 19th century were a time also of growing self doubt and cultural panic [in Britain]. . .as expressions of anxiety about social regression and national decline were widespread" (33). Toward the end of the century, Denis Judd claims, the British grew more uncertain about their position at home and abroad, sometimes resentful about the failure of empire to be as fabulous as advertised. Displays of imperial might were shadowed by a prevailing mood of pessimism as "feelings of national insecurity were at least partly at the root of much jingoistic exaltation and triumphalism" (139).

Though their voices were few, some began to question the very high-mindedness that was so aggressively claimed for the British effort. How could empire be both a noble-minded mission to civilize the world and simultaneously an opportunity to loot weak countries? Would the deeds done in the name of empire redound to England's everlasting glory, or would they come back to haunt the land, creating, as English liberal J.A. Hobson suggested, a country whose moral fiber and even physical survival could be destroyed by a "parasitic" reliance on the production of others (Hobsbawm 83)? Toward the end of the century, Robert Druce writes, as Victorian confidence gave way to Edwardian self-doubt, the "questionable morality" of empire had to be both "discreetly suppressed" and, at times, "deeply repressed" (191).

Post-colonial theorists have for some time argued that Imperialism should not be seen as a simple march toward nationalist domination, but rather a complex relationship in which, as Homi Bhabha has suggested, neither colonized or colonizer is fully at home or fully in charge (44). Sara Suleri, in particular, has suggested that this relationship is not a comfortable one for the imperial psyche, reading Kipling's works on India, for example as a "terrified vision" of a project that is on some level recognized as doomed (113). Mindful of this insecurity, observed at the moment of apparent triumph, we can understand why the imperial relationship has often been described as a narcissistic one, as imperial subjects are urgently needed to shore up the vulnerable grandiosity of the imperialist. "By subjugating the native," Abdul R. JanMohamed writes, the European is able to "compel the Other's recognition of him and, in the process, allow his own identity to become deeply dependent on his position as master. This enforced recognition from the Other in fact amounts to the European's narcissistic self recognition" (85).

This last view of the imperial relationship as a narcissistic one is particularly interesting for it is the dual sense of self - the alternation between grandiosity on one hand, and a terrified sense of emptiness, loss and vulnerability to destruction on the other - that is the hallmark of narcissistic disturbance as defined by Kohut in the essay, "Forms and Transformations of Narcissism." Here Kohut shows the narcissist "tend[ing] to vacillate between an irrational overestimation of the self and feelings of inferiority, and [reacting] with narcissistic mortification to the thwarting of its ambitions" (438). That mortification translates, for Kohut into shame and a particular "flavor" of rage, as the "narcissistically vulnerable individual responds to actual (or anticipated) narcissistic injury" ("Thoughts" 637). This rage which Kohut describes in his essay "Thoughts on Narcissism and Narcissistic Rage" as "distinct" in the realm of human aggressions, is marked by the need for revenge, by the need to "undo the hurt by whatever means," and by a "compulsion" in the pursuit of revenge which "gives no rest to those who have suffered a narcissistic injury" (638). Finally, Kohut posits that while the narcissistic disturbance is an individual condition, it is one which may also be shared by groups. These may share a "grandiose self" and "group aggression" can take on "the flavor of narcissistic rage in either its acute or, even more ominously, it its chronic form" (658).

Below I will attempt to relate these formulations to the mid- to late 19th century British imperial experience through three case studies: Britain's enraged response to the Indian "Mutiny" of 1857, its relatively sudden discovery of an exalted mythic past, and finally its group fantasy of narcissistic grandiosity as seen through an examination of the era's best-loved literary figure, Sherlock Holmes.

First, however, I would like to consider what may be said about creation of narcissistic disturbance in the children of empire. While it is obviously impossible to make claims for all or most children of the time, it is possible to suggest that many British children, especially, perhaps, boys, were not raised under conditions which would assist them to integrate "early narcissistic fantasies of power and greatness" into the ego's "reality-oriented organization" ("Forms" 440). Narcissistic fantasies can be healthily integrated, Kohut shows, when inevitable frustrations are mediated by a lovingly supportive caregiver. However, disturbance can occur if, instead of consistent and loving support, the child is subjected to "various overt and covert attitudes of rejection" or to "overindulgence," or a pernicious mix of the two ("Forms" 439).

To consider the conditions under which children of British empire were raised, we may look first at the phenomenon of middle and upper class children who were cared for almost entirely by servants. The typical middle class child saw its parents at morning prayers, and between five and six in the evening, Laura Wilson writes, spending the rest of the time with a nurse, and taking all meals in the nursery (26). And while there were undoubtedly many devoted and loving servants, employment depended upon the ability to tend to the externals of a child's life rather than his inner development. Not surprisingly, there are many reports of servants who failed utterly to take on the role of the caring, involved parent. In some cases, children were overindulged, thus inappropriately prolonging primary narcissism. Others were treated harshly, thus driving infant grandiosity underground, and building up a fund of narcissistic rage. Rudyard Kipling, for example, creator of the phrase "white man's burden," and some have argued, the man who more than any other defined the late imperial idea (Boehmer 52), experienced both extremes. Raised by servants for his first five years in Bombay, so continuously in their presence that he could barely speak English, he reports himself to have been the overindulged, undisputed "despot" of Bombay. Returned to England, he was deposited by his parents into the care of a sadistic English woman whom his parents had found through a newspaper advertisement and who took it as her task to destroy every fragment of the child's self-esteem, to make his life from age 5 to 11 one of "punishment and humiliation," he would later write, "above all humiliation" (Something 8).

Further, during the Victorian period, both parent and servant were likely to subscribe to the idea, derived from the Puritan movement of the late 16th century, that children were inherently evil (Marshall 20). Despite the views of Jean-Jacques Rousseau, that children were born in a state of purity and that it was the role of the parent to nurture the child's inborn benevolence, the Puritan view of the child as evil is most frequently reflected in child rearing advice of the time. It would follow from this view that the grandiosity of a child's primary narcissism was something to be crushed, often with physical punishment as the method, and that caregivers would be little inclined to "reflect [the infant's] own sense of infantile perfection back to him," as Kohut advises. Rather the child's will was to be broken, and books on child development suggested that caregivers "inflict bodily pain so steadily and so invariably that disobedience and suffering shall be indissolubly connected in the mind of the child" (Marshall 24). Not only should evil be beaten out of children, but parents were also advised to regiment a child's life within a few months of birth, and to avoid sentimentality such as kissing or rocking, as it would be taken by children as "a sign of weakness" which could retard the development of respect for authority (29).

Finally, there were many British children who, from the age of six and sometimes younger, were raised neither by parents nor by servants but were brought up in effect by other children at a boarding school. Children typically spent ten years at such schools, many of which prided themselves on a system of self governance. This meant that most authority over younger boys was delegated to older boys, who were, apparently, sometimes benevolent, but also free to tyrannize their juniors until the younger boys were old enough for their turn to tyrannize others. Typically boys of all ages were locked up at night in huge dormitory rooms and left without supervision until morning. The men who passed through this system, John Chandos writes, could differ about its "benefits and injuries" but on the point of its hardship nobody disagreed. It was, one alumnus reported, "'As hard, and as barbarous as the treatment of the negroes in Virginia'" (Chandos 87). Indeed, the situation of the younger boys is often described as that of "slavery." One former ruling senior boy wrote, "Slavery warps the character of both slave and master, and slavery is the only word which summed the three years of experience of a college junior. Its details, whether cruel or grotesque, were all so contrived as to stamp upon the young boy's mind his grade of servile inferiority and his dedication to the single virtue of abject and unquestioning obedience'" (Qtd in Chandos 90). For little boys, yet to be formed by the self-governance system, the trauma could be intense. Suicide and death was not infrequent. "Children torn away from mothers and sisters [at the age of six] not infrequently die," Thomas de Quincey wrote. "The complaint is not entered by the registrar as grief; but that it is. Grief of that sort, and at that age, has killed more than ever have been counted amongst its martyrs" (Suspira de Profundis 147).

Given some of the attitudes toward childhood, and the practices just described, it is not surprising that characteristics of narcissistic disorder - an unintegrated grandiosity, a tendency to irrational rage and revenge, contempt, and an underlying sense of vulnerability - are exhibited by many individuals during this period. "The rulers of empire as a group display a high degree of emotional deprivation," Ronald Hyam writes, and "it is possible to see a basic truth in the contention that 'love's loss was empire's gain'" (49). "In response to ostracism and suppression," Kohut writes, "the aspirations of the grandiose self may . . . seem to subside." However, "the suppressed but unmodified narcissistic structures . . . become intensified as their expression is blocked; they will break through the brittle controls and will suddenly bring about, not only in individuals but also in whole groups, the unrestrained pursuit of grandiose aims. . ." ("Thoughts" 620). One of empire's "gains" may have been the creation of a group of young men propelled into aggression by narcissistic rage.

Perhaps the best example of narcissistic rage in Imperial England is the reaction to the 1857 Indian uprising against the British. The uprising, insistently called the "Indian Mutiny," despite the fact that it was joined by many Indians outside the military, was triggered by the court martial and subsequent public humiliation of Indian soldiers who refused to use a new variety of greased cartridge issued by the British. The cartridges, which were coated with both pig and cow fat, and which had to be torn open, or, in the heat of battle, more likely bitten open, managed to outrage the religious sensibilities of both Hindus, for whom the cow was sacred, and the Muslim, who felt defiled by contact with the pig (Judd 68-9). The revolt, which included the imprisonment of English women and children under horrific conditions, and their ultimate murder, took eighteen months to put down, and was, Judd writes, a "deep wound upon the Victorian psyche" (66). The British response to the killings of women and children was a frenzy of retribution. Villages were burned and thousands of Indians, including old men, women and children were killed. Many were executed, including boys "accused of romping around the city beating drums and flourishing rebel flags" (Ward 256). Before they were hung, some Muslims were sewn into pigskins, "a vile and terrible fate for any follower of Islam." The mutineers who were "blown into fragments of flesh and bone from the mouths of cannon, or summarily hanged," Judd writes, "were among the lucky ones"(Judd 73).

At home, there was no will to restrain these "savage reprisals" (Kiernan 47), as the public was at the time and for years to come saturated to an astonishing degree with lurid accounts of the uprising, which became the subject of countless sermons, novels, plays and poems, and about which more than eighty novels were written, six appearing in the "peak" year of 1896 alone (Druce 197). Though there was no evidence that British women were raped - an act that would have violated the caste and religious proprieties of must Hindus and Muslims - this was the immediate and lasting assumption. Indeed, the "merest suggestion that English women were not raped" was considered by many at the time an outrage (Ward 675n). A great many of the novelizations of the event were "essentially pornographic" as they detailed the lascivious thoughts of Indians preparing to "tear and mangle" the white limbs of English women "in unspeakable tortures" (Druce 199). Such fantasies led to some demand for the "total subjugation of India" and at times for the "wholesale extermination" of Indians, with Charles Dickens offering "genocide" as a solution to the problem (Brantlinger 208). With the uprising, the term "nigger" was, after a period of disuse, brought back into common parlance (Kiernan 48), and the Times described Nana Sahib, held to be the leader of the rebellion, as "one of the greatest enemies of the human race to the end of the world" (Qtd. in Ward).

The excesses of the response to the uprising, which never really threatened British rule (Judd 73), have frequently been remarked, and V.G. Kiernan sees the event as causing the "sudden discovery by the British of their true position in India." After so many years of assuming an easy dominance of India, and viewing the natives as children who would eventually "learn to be thankful" for the imperial presence, this event "was a shock which helped unbalance" the British (47). The uprising, thus, was treated not simply as a physical challenge to be put down, but as a terrifying assault upon British grandiosity, an attack on the necessary assumption that British dominance was evident to all as a selfless mission to benefit others. Nobody, Brantlinger writes, saw the "Mutiny" as a "response to the greater violence of imperial domination" (218). Indeed, the view was expressed that that the uprising was provoked by "the very virtue of the British rule. . . its cool justice, it's steadfast enforcement of order. . ." (Brantlinger 204). The British, thus, in insisting that it was the very lofty selflessness of their mission that has been attacked demonstrate that the real target has been their grandiose self-image and, as the hysteria of the response shows, this self-image was severely threatened. Kohut writes that the narcissist's grandiosity is so precarious that he is constantly fearful it will collapse into his own fears of shame, exposure and sadistic attack ("Thoughts" 639). Similarly, the "basic fantasy" of the countless Mutiny-inspired fictions is that of "the imperialist dominators" becoming "victims and the dominated" (Brantlinger 222).

If we can perceive a shared narcissistic rage among the British following the Indian uprising, we may also detect the creation of a shared grandiose self-image during the latter half of the century. One example of this is a mythologizing of Britain's medieval past, a revisionist view which allowed the British to read imperialism and the domination of others as part of the country's lofty destiny. By the late 19th century, John M. MacKenzie writes, a "perverted" form of medieval chivalry had become a part of the "British imperial cult" as "heroes from both the distant and recent past were assiduously promoted" (3). It was, he writes, a time of "hero-worship and sensational glory, adventure and the sporting spirit; current history falsified in coarse flaring colors" (49). So pervasive was this glorification of medieval England, that it may seem to us now to have always been a part of English life. But the creation of an inflated and grandiose national tradition was quite new; in the rationalist 18th century, Mark Girouard writes, the British had little use for the old stories of chivalric quests, finding them "barbarous and absurd," an attitude that may have had a good deal of basis in reality as "all too often medieval knights were brutal, quarrelsome and self seeking" (Girouard 16-17). This shift - the replacement of the mythology of the industrial revolution with the mythology of aristocratic and knightly virtues - may have done England actual economic harm. The new mythology, J.S. Bratton writes, was a "self-defeating cultural maneuver" leading to England's failure to maintain its lead in industrialization (77). The claim that the mythology of chivalry was not economically useful, makes it appear even more likely that the impulse was psychological, the action of a people increasingly under pressure to support an unrealistic grandiose self-image.

One who sought to glorify Britain's past, and to show that Britain's unique qualities destined it for world domination, was Sir Arthur Conan Doyle, whose ambition it was to win fame with his carefully researched historical novels. He wrote several, the best known of which, The White Company, revolves such themes as the love between a 14th century knight, Sir Nigel, and his men, and the good-hearted decency of the British in contrast to the cruel French and the lascivious Spanish. The book also depicts a fortune teller whose crystal reveals that one day the English will rule the world so that it will resound "with the clang of their hammers and the ringing of their church bells" (256). As a child, Conan Doyle had been fed a constant diet of chivalric stories by his mother, who sought to escape the reality of a home life marked by alcoholism, poverty and insanity (Booth 11); as an adult, he was dedicated to uphold imperial greatness by portraying the British in heroic terms. His historical novels, however, were so clichˇd as to be considered only adequate contributions to the genre of boys' adventure fiction, even to a public apparently hungry for images of British greatness. Ironically - for he always hated the detective upon whom his fame was built - it was the stories Conan Doyle had casually dashed off featuring the detective Sherlock Holmes which struck an astonishingly resounding chord with the public. Works like The White Company are an obvious expression of Britain's grandiose fantasies; but the Sherlock Holmes stories reveal, I believe, something more interesting, playing out, to use Kohut's word, the sense of an ongoing and urgent "vacillation" between a grandiose image of Britain - here embodied by the omniscient detective Sherlock Holmes- - and its vulnerability to the shame and guilt that are washing into the country as a result of British activities abroad.

The Sherlock Holmes stories seem especially indicative of public attitudes as they were, in a sense, created as much by the British public as by Conan Doyle himself. The demand for the detective seemed insatiable; lines formed at newstands to await the Strand Magazine, in which the stories were published, and not only was "Arthur Conan Doyle soon a household name," but "in a matter of months, Sherlock Holmes was as well known as Queen Victoria and better known than many of the leading political figures of the time" (Booth145). Readers loved Holmes as a character, but it was also apparent that many people had come to believe that the detective was a real person, and both Conan Doyle and Scotland Yard began to receive letters asking for autographs, and offering advice; even a press clipping agency wrote inviting Holmes to subscribe (179).

Conan Doyle, who had never intended to write more than the six stories originally contracted for by Strand Magazine, could not turn down the exceptionally high fees that were offered for another batch, but by 1892 he had had enough and killed Holmes off, causing him to plunge over a waterfall, locked in the arms of his arch foe, Moriarty. The result was a public uproar as more than 20,000 people canceled their subscriptions to the Strand Magazine and "abusive mail arrived at the editorial offices by the sackload whilst hundreds more letters were sent directly to Conan Doyle beseeching him to reverse Holmes's death." There were dozens of news stories and obituaries, and "people wore black armbands in public mourning" (Booth 190). Eventually Conan Doyle acquiesced in bringing Holmes back with a play in 1897, and then accepted an offer to bring out six more stories for fees that "were the highest ever paid to an author up to that time." Conan Doyle's attitude toward the new stories was one of "cynicism," Booth writes; stories were hastily composed and full of errors. Still, lines again formed at news stands, the Strand sold over half a million copies of each edition, and libraries stayed open late to accommodate those who could not manage to buy the magazine (Booth 248).

The immense popularity of Sherlock Holmes, along with the wishful sense that he is both a real person and immortal, hints of the concerns of imperial Britain when its guard is down that is, in works that are not designed explicitly as imperial propaganda. For, despite the cozy scenes of Holmes in dressing gown and slippers before the fire, the excitement of clattering cabs, and the railway jaunts to fine old country houses, we see, throughout the Sherlock Holmes stories, a country beset by a variety of threats not just to property and life but also to established social order. An examination of the first thirty eight stories, published from 1888 to 1902, along with the novella, The Hound of the Baskervilles, reveals that these threats are, in approximately two thirds of the cases, the result of some foreign pollution which, like a mysterious foreign disease, has been carried into the country, usually by returning Britons who have been corrupted during their years abroad. The stories incessantly if indirectly revolve the fear of a challenge to imperial grandiosity, through the constant and shameful threat that under the controlled surface of life, there lies confusion, corruption, secret guilt, and panic that represents the collapse of the imperial self-image and a revelation of shameful imperial deeds.

That the true horror in these stories is fear of destruction of the grandiose self can be seen in the attitude the stories express toward the dubious activities of the British abroad. We notice that it is not usually the actual crimes of the returning English which are problematic; rather, it is the threatened revelation of these crimes. As long as these deeds remain secret, the perpetrators may prosper, even use the resultant gain to set themselves up as admired members of the establishment. But the moment the crime is made known, this image is destroyed, and often these characters who, I believe, embody the struggle of the grandiose self to suppress the inner bad self, simply drop dead. In "The Gloria Scott," a man's dubious activities in Australia allow him to return to buy a country estate in England. When he is found by those who knew of his shady past, he dies of no other cause than the horrible prospect that he is soon to be unmasked. Similarly, in "The Crooked Man," an English officer in India during the "Mutiny" is shown to have betrayed another officer to rebels who torture him until he is deformed and "crooked." After many years the crippled officer returns to England; when his betrayer is confronted with the evidence of his deed, he dies of fright and guilt.

Sometimes, however, those who return have a more virulent infection of secret criminality. Rather than quietly - and I suppose one might say decently - dropping dead when their guilt is revealed, their shameful foreign deeds and the corruption thus bred threaten to disrupt life at home. In "The Sign of Four," a complex plot shows Englishmen corrupted and thrown off their moral balance by the carnage of the "Mutiny," and drawn into crime by Indian associates. In this story an enlisted man, Jonathan Small, is crippled both physically and morally by his experiences in India. After rehearsing a bit of "Mutiny" horror of burning bungalows and murdered white women, he expresses that in the chaos of the time, human life had come to seem expendable and so he went along with a murder plot hatched by Indians to kill the servant of a rajah and take the treasure the servant is carrying. As the plot plays out Small is imprisoned, then double crossed by English prison guards who steal the treasure, and take it away to England. Eventually Small returns to murderously retrieve the loot, symbolically demonstrating the way in which evil done abroad may return to disturb the apparent safety and peace and rectitude of life at home.

Small is decidedly lower class and the officers of "The Crooked Man" are of low rank, but in "The Adventure of the Speckled Band," Conan Doyle shows that the upper classes, who, for Conan Doyle, are especially representative of Britain's grandiose self-image, are equally likely to be repositories of secret shame. In this story, the son of one of the "oldest Saxon families" goes to India as a doctor rather than live in "aristocratic" poverty. There, he beats a native butler to death. For this he is imprisoned, and "returned to England a morose and disappointed man," though he has, while in India, managed to marry a rich widow who bequeathed him her fortune before dying. Back at his family estate, Dr. Roylott becomes a feared recluse and sends a poison snake to kill his wife's daughter, who is about to marry and take a portion of her mother's money with her. Another story, "The Adventure of the Empty House," features a similar character, though one whose time in India has produced an even more serious proclivity to criminality. Here Colonel Sebastian Moran, has, through service with the Indian army become a "man of iron nerve," who is "tremendously virile yet sinister" and returns to England to join a criminal gang (Vol 1 676). In these stories, Conan Doyle expands even further the vision of Britain vacillating between a cherished self-image - the fine old Saxon family; the noble British officer - and fears of underlying guilt and shame.

Finally, it is in the best known and longest of the Sherlock Holmes stories, "The Hound of the Baskervilles," in which Conan Doyle comes closest to expressing directly the sense of an England beset by a "curse" of empire, a secret guilt that undermines Britain's grandiose self-image. The Baskervilles are a fine old family, still imbued with a sense of noblesse oblige, and they represent, in Conan Doyle's view, the necessary core of the British self-image. Repeatedly in the Sherlock Holmes stories there is the sense that the backbone of the country and of English tradition is found among the old country families, not in metropolitan London. Though urbane, Sherlock Holmes himself is descended from country squires and London is shown in the first Holmes story to be hopelessly polluted from abroad, "a great cesspool into which all loungers and idlers of Empire" are drained" (Vol. 1 4). If the old country families thus represent a last bastion of traditional values against a London full of imperial waste, and against the world beyond, we may consider the plight of the Baskervilles as the plight of traditional England itself.

But this family, like that of Dr. Roylott, is impoverished, unable to replenish itself at home, and reduced to obtaining wealth abroad, an endeavor that always, in these stories, results in degradation and guilt, wrecked lives, and an inevitable weakening of the social order that those acquiring the wealth seek to rejoin. The story is a striking example of both the intense fear that the aristocratic and imperial self is shot through with decay, and also the way in which these fears must finally be projected onto a foreign environment so that the "curse" may be lifted. The story, thus, is a classic of narcissistic ambivalence as the Baskervilles are simultaneously essentially superior to both foreigners and the lower classes, and at the same time themselves guilty of dark secret evil.

In the story, the Baskervilles, a "good" and "old" family, are said to be cursed, the result of an ancestor, Hugo, who died in drunken pursuit of a farmer's daughter who was also killed. Since then family members have met unusual deaths, and it is said that a giant ghostly hound roams the moors, waiting to take revenge upon new generations. The Baskervilles are shown to be in serious decay; two brothers, Charles and Rodger have been forced to go abroad, to South Africa and South America, and the son of a third, deceased brother, has gone to Canada. As the story opens Sir Charles has returned from South Africa with enough money to restore the family seat, but as is common to those returning with wealth from abroad, he lives alone, a sad and troubled man (Vol. 2 16). Despite his mysterious personal gloom, Sir Charles is still able to assume a paternalistic role, and his restoration of the family estate is shown to be a relief and a boon to those who live in the surrounding area (14), demonstrating the importance of a family like the Baskervilles to the survival of traditional England.

When Charles Baskeville dies at the end of his own lane, his face distorted with fear, supposedly after a visitation from a giant, spectral hound, we are invited to consider what it is that roams out on the dark moors - and, it appears, in the darkness of the subconscious - which has frightened him to death. Is it a force bent upon punishing the guilt of Hugo Baskerville, whose pursuit of the farm girl represented a serious lapse of the chivalric code of honorable treatment of women? Or is Conan Doyle constructing a cover for a more immediate situation, the activities of Sir Charles in South Africa? One clue that the latter may be the case is that Sir Charles' death of fear is very similar to other such deaths by fear in the Sherlock Holmes stories, deaths which are always the result of horror that one's secret deeds abroad are about to be revealed. The "hound" of the Baskervilles appears to be the terrifying truth of one's inner evil which, when revealed, results in the death of one's grandiose self-image, rendered here as the physical death of the character.

While Sir Charles' death of terror is similar to other "guilt deaths" in the Sherlock Holmes stories experienced by those who have gained wealth by theft and treachery, Conan Doyle, in a rather complex maneuver, draws back from revealing the dubious doings of such a respectable and necessary figure. Rather he brings in a substitute, Sir Charles' brother Rodger. Rodger has long been in South America where he stole a large sum of public money. Upon returning to England he does not signal an intention to live respectably and to hid his guilty deeds. Rather than understanding how necessary it is for the British self-image that secret evil be hidden and denied, he continues his transgressions at home, committing burglaries in - of all places - the English country side. Worse, Rodger has plotted to take possession of the family estate. Knowing his brother's susceptibility to guilty fright, he has brought about Sir Charles' death by unleashing upon him a huge dog whose mouth has been made to glow fiendishly with phosphorous. Thus the deeds behind Sir Charles's guilty terror, along with Sir Charles himself, are allowed to vanish back into the darkness, as his brother Rodger, who has not accepted his role in upholding British grandiosity, is brought forward for punishment. The same fate is planned for the young Sir Henry, son of the third, deceased brother, who has just arrived to take title. Tellingly, Rodger does not succeed in frightening Sir Henry to death. This suggests that it is not really the ancient family curse that kills - Sir Henry would be as guilty as anyone else in the family - but deeds of empire. For Henry is innocent of these. He has been a "farmer" all these years, stored safely away in a wholesome Canadian icebox, where there are presumably no riches to corrupt a man. He has thus remained true to the Anglo Saxon virtues of the landed class. With the character of Sir Henry, Conan Doyle seems to suggest that only one who has not been exposed to the guilty deeds of empire can hope to rejuvenate crumbling old England.

Finally, if the repeated portrayal of the curse of foreign wealth, and the guilt of foreign deeds represents a sense of loss and vulnerability to destruction, the near omniscience with which the detective Sherlock Holmes can solve seemingly insoluble problems, his knowledge on all subjects, his cool superiority to all he encounters, represents a grandiose wish for omnipotence. At the same time the near-magical nature of Holmes' abilities betrays the narcissist fear that such power is not real, but only a fantasy.

I have suggested that England in the 19th century worked to re-envision itself in terms of medieval chivalry, and to portray empire as a noble quest; occupying British forces were described as seeking no gain other than honor and the satisfaction of vanquishing evil foes and protecting the helpless. Arthur Conan Doyle, as we have seen, sought to be a part of this project in historical romances like The White Company. But it was not the 14th century knight Sir Nigel who riveted the attention of the British reading public; it was rather the modern day knight, Sherlock Holmes, who appears to have spoken directly to the needs of contemporary England for an infallible champion, one who coolly fought for glory and right, disdaining sordid gain. That Conan Doyle himself saw Holmes as a 19th century version of a medieval knight is clear from these lines found in one of the earliest stories, "The Sign of Four": Holmes and Watson, declare an admiring lady, "take the place of the conventional dragon or wicked earl" and are "two knight-errants to the rescue" (Vol 1 164).

The qualities which mark Holmes as a modern day, gentleman-knight are numerous. Like the knight in search of a quest, Holmes craves excitement and action, and can't abide the "dull routine of existence" which suffices for ordinary people. As a fantasy of narcissistic grandiosity, Holmes isn't just everyknight, but unique in his desire for daring deeds: "I crave mental exaltation," he explains in "The Sign of Four." "That is why I have chosen my own particular profession or rather created it, for I am the only one in the world" (Vol 1 108). Unlike the modern professional man, who is limited to a narrow range of concerns, Holmes is interested in all that which is "bizarre and outside the conventions and humdrum routine of everyday life" (Vol 1 230). Indeed, his life is "one long effort to escape from the commonplaces of existence" (Vol 1 251). When he is not thrilling to battle, Holmes is arranged in postures of aristocratic lassitude. We see him variously "lounging in his sitting room in his dressing gown" where he sits after breakfast with a glass of brandy and water, gazing into his fire, and reaching for his violin, noting that the only real problem is not the mystery at hand but "how to while away these bleak autumnal evenings" (Vol 1 407). As a gentleman-knight, Holmes is repeatedly at pains to distinguish himself from his professional counterparts, as there is "nothing is more unaesthetic as a policeman." When Dr. Roylott, the son of the old Saxon family visits Holmes and hurls at him a number of insults, Holmes takes offense at only one remark: "Imagine," Holmes complains, "he had the insolence to confound me with the official detective force" (Vol 1 357).

Not only is Holmes superior to everybody, but he knows everything. Some of his interests, upon which he can speak knowledgeably "as if he has made a special study of the subject" (Vol 1 172), include miracle plays, medieval pottery, Stradivarius violins, Buddhism of Ceylon, and warships of the future. He is a violinist, and "a composer of no ordinary merit," reads medieval texts, is quick with quotes from Goethe, Flaubert, Georges Sand, and knows how to order a "quiet Epicurean little cold supper" when entertaining a lord.

Both the aristocrat and the knight sometimes go masked so as not to be bound by the conventions of identify which restrict ordinary people, and Holmes is a genius of disguise, often appearing to become the character he seeks to portray: "It is not merely that Holmes changed his costume," Watson remarks. "His expression, his manner, his very soul seemed to vary with every fresh part that he assumed. The stage lost a fine actor. . . when he became a specialist in crime" (Vol 1 223). Not only can Holmes assume any disguise, but in a way reminiscent of Rudyard Kipling's Kim, published a few years earlier, he is quick to take charge in any foreign land he may visit. This is shown when Holmes, after his purported death, spends several years traveling. He went to Tibet, he reports, "and amused myself by visiting Lhassa, and spending some days with the head lama. . . I then passed through Persia, looking in at Khartoum, the results of which I have communicated to the Foreign office. Returning to France, I spent some months in a research into the coal tar derivatives, which I conducted in a laboratory at Montpellier" (Vol 1 676).

These interests and abilities are meant to mark Holmes as both an aristocrat, attuned to life's finer things, and a modern day knight, hungry for romantic adventure, quick to take charge wherever he is. As such, he seems to speak to a fear that the mundane minds of professionals are unequipped to protect England against the new and nearly fantastical menace washing in every day as a result of imperial actions abroad. For this England needs a new kind of knight, one with wide ranging interests, whose desire for adventure propels him into imaginative solutions which can undo these threats, and one whose fantastic abilities and unfailing superiority guarantee eventual triumph over all challenges, an unquestionable superiority that may be so attractive precisely because it is an attitude the British fear they are losing.

After the attacks on the World Trade Center and the Pentagon, as people asked, "Why do they hate us?" I began to consider how I might use these thoughts about imperial Britain after the Indian "Mutiny" to think about post-September 11 Superpower America. Are we exhibiting the sort of narcissistic rage against those responsible for the attacks - or against those who are like those responsible - that we detect after the 1857 "Mutiny"? Have we sought to restore our grandiose self-image by obsessive self-mythologizing and to invent for ourselves and our heroes magical powers and immaculate aims?

In his discussion of narcissistic rage, Kohut writes that the narcissist does not "recognize [the] opponent as a center of independent initiative with whom [one] happens to be at cross-purposes" but rather as "a recalcitrant part of an expanded self over which the narcissistically vulnerable person had expected to exercise full control. The mere fact. . . that the other person is independent or different is experienced as offensive by those with intense narcissistic needs" ("Thoughts" 644). For most of Britain, it seems, the "Mutiny" did not provide a wake-up call to the rather unsurprising fact that people don't like to be dominated by others, however well these others might think of themselves. Rather, as the insistent use of the term "mutiny" implies, the uprising was seen as a "betrayal." The Indians could not be recognized as having their own independent aims. The were not, to borrow a phrase heard after September 11, "lawful combatants," but rather engaged in acts of treachery. As they could not be granted rational reasons for rebelling against British rule, the explanation for their actions had to be found in the inherent "evil" of their sexual appetites, and thus the literature of the "Mutiny" obsessively suggests that the rape of English women was the central aim of the uprising.

After September 11 how has America responded? Have we engaged in what Kohut calls the appropriate "mature aggression" of those fighting an external foe, or are we plunged into an irrational rage at "a flaw in a narcissistically perceived reality" (644). To consider this question, I look for signs that America is able to at least contemplate the reasons why it could be hated, that we are able to view others as separate from ourselves and possessed of their own purposes, though perhaps at "cross-purposes" from our own. I seize, for example, upon Secretary of State Colin Powell's remark about the "humiliation" caused by the "unresolved Palestinian homeland issue" and the way in which that humiliation creates a "spawning ground for terrorism" (Tyler). Whatever one's view of the Israeli-Palestinian conflict, we do here see the American Secretary of State indicating that our enemies may have understandable grievances. I am not sure, however, how representative Powell's views are of American attitudes. Similarly, it is possible to read and hear discussions of an American double standard as a root cause of Middle Eastern anger, the Cold War willingness to support oppressive regimes who were on our side. But I don't know how whether this translates into any real willingness to allow other people to control their own destinies. And we have heard another explanation, offered by the president and others: those who attacked America were simply "evil." I note press reports of harm done by American bombings to Afghan civilians, which make it seem that we do not feel they deserve to die for being different from us and somehow part of our own loss; I note too, that the abduction of an American journalist gets immensely more press play than the deaths of Afghan children. I see news stories showing communities expressing support for their Muslim neighbors, but also accounts of Middle Easterners (and Hispanics and probably others) being assaulted because of they look like terrorists. I note concern about racial profiling of Middle Easterners, and also that there have been thousands detained that we have known little about. I have seen that there has been, from the White House down, the admonition that we should not direct our anger at all Muslims, but specifically at those who are dedicated to attacking and killing Americans. This sounds like Kohut's "mature aggression" rather than narcissistic rage at those who would deflate our grandiosity. But I am not sure how clear we are about drawing that distinction, or whether it may be window-dressing artfully applied by a society which has learned techniques for avoiding the appearance of "profiling" racial others while continuing to do just that.

It is certain that we have done a lot of flag-draped self-mythologizing, reminding ourselves of our freedom, our goodness, our unity. But Kohut tells us that we need not be ashamed to hold a positive view of ourselves, to experience real self-love, to admire our heroes. We need not deny our ambitions, he writes, "our will to dominate. . . to shine, and our yearning to merge into omnipotent figures." But to live rationally in a world that is not viewed as simply an extension of ourselves, we must learn to transform these yearnings into "realistic self-esteem" and our yearning to join omnipotent figures into the desire to realistically model ourselves on those we admire. Have we, in the face of attacks on both the physical and the theoretical America, healthily reasserted a rational sense of ourselves, and our own goodness, or have we plunged into an orgy of grandiosity? Do the patriotic displays represent an appropriate and steadying self-esteem or are they frantic assertions of near magical superiority and entitlement? Are we obsessed with hero firefighters and stories of hard-working, family-loving victims because they magically represent our inflated self-image, or because we have realistic yearnings to be brave and good and loving ourselves?

As I think about these questions, I realize how immersed I am in my culture's world view, despite my attempts to question it. I don't know the answers to the questions I have posed. But I allow myself this hope. I hope that Americans, perhaps unlike residents of imperial England, have as a group, experienced the constant tempering of grandiose aims through the requirements of a vast and diverse society. Again and again we have had to come up against the fact that we have denied to others the principles of freedom, equality and self-determination that we cherish for ourselves. Kicking and screaming, we have been dragged into the understanding that slavery was wrong, the extermination of Natives Americans was wrong, the internment of the Japanese was wrong, McCarthyism was wrong, Jim Crow was wrong, and we were wrong in Vietnam. In many ways we continue to profited by some of these crimes; maybe we would do some of them again. But at least, it seems to me, we are in the habit of seeing our favored self-image challenged, and of messily but eventually surviving that challenge with our beliefs more or less intact. I allow myself to hope that our sense of our own fundamental strength and goodness, tempered by awareness of our failings, is real, not a "brittle" construct which will involve us in a terrifying and "unrestrained pursuit of grandiose aims" ("Thoughts" 620).

Note: This article is part of a soon-to-completed book length study which uses the work of Kohut and others to analyze imperial fantasies found in the works of Conan Doyle, Thomas De Quincy, Rudyard Kipling, Isak Dinesen and Robert Louis Stevenson. [Return to text]