Avondale College

A Postcolonial Reading of Around the World in

Eighty Days

ENGL31000 Post-Colonial Literature

(Dr. Jane Fernandez)

Jotham Kingston

22 Nov, 2010

I certify that this assessment is my own work and is free from plagia-rism. I understand that the assessment may be checked for plagia-rism by electronic or other means. The assessment has not previ-ously been submitted for assessment in any other subject or institu-tion.

Jotham Kingston, 22 Nov, 2010.

Around the World in Eighty Days, published in 1872 just prior to the height of the British Empire has been regarded as an influential work in the forma-tion of British attitudes to the world. This paper proposes a postcolonial reading of Around the World and sees, through the schema of circumnavi-gation, a critique of colonialism. Verne's representation of America as 'East' married with 'West' subverts Orientalism, the underlying colonial paradigm. By employing his "extra day", Verne predicts, far ahead of its emer-gence, "globalization" as a conceptual framework.

I

On at least five counts, the literary significance of Around the World (1872)

can be asserted. Firstly, Verne was published by Pierre-Jules Hetzel, “one of

the most important French publishers of the 19th century, who also published

Victor Hugo, George Sand, and Erckmann-Chatrian.”1 Secondly, Verne’s mas-

tery of the writing craft has been applauded by his peers. Leo Tolstoy, for ex-

ample, wrote: “Jules Verne’s novels are matchless... Verne is an astonishing

past master at the art of constructing a story that fascinates and impassions

the reader.”(Andreyev, quoted in Butcher, 1999, p.203) Thirdly, Verne is the

second most translated author of all time,2 and Around the World is arguably

his “tour de force” (Trianon, in Butcher, 1999, p.202). Finally and perhaps most

significantly, Verne’s work in general has been critiqued as having an “influ-

ence unequalled by any other books on the children of this and every country

in Europe;” (Blum, in Butcher, 1999, p.202) Around the World has been de-

voured as an adventure story by generations of European children.

It is thus surprising that Around the world, as a popular, yet formative text,

has managed to elude recent scholarly interest and criticism, and specifically

postcolonial criticism. This is perhaps due to the stereotyping of the work as

science-fiction and children’s literature and the poor quality of the translation

1 http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jules_Verne accessed 22 Nov, 2010.2 Unesco. "Most Translated Authors of All Time". Index Translationum. Retrieved 22 Nov 2010.

through which English readers of Around the world have accessed the story.

(Butcher, 1999, p.6)

This essay examines Around the World in Eighty Days from a postcolonial

viewpoint. It will set a case for Around the World in Eighty Days being an Orien-

tal text. Then, using the double lens of Joseph Campbell’s “the Hero’s Journey”

and Victor Turner’s “Liminality” it will examine the significance of going around

(i.e. circumnavigation) as opposed to the monomythic “there and back.”

Thirdly, it will make a case that Verne’s presentation of the New World replac-

ing the expected plot-points of Fogg’s initiation denotes an underlying hope-

lessness and violence against the romantic notion that the worlds ills can be

overcome through synthesis of the Orient and Occident. Fourthly, it will exam-

ine the significance of Verne’s punchline concerning the “extra day” and its

ramifications for portrayal of England.

II

As Around the World was published only a few years before the zenith of

the British Empire (Queen Victoria’s Golden Jubilee in 1886) (Andrews, 2000

p.56-57), it would only be natural for the story to exhibit colonial attitudes. We

might even expect the story to echo the rhetoric of Imperialism, either con-

sciously or unconsciously.

According to pioneer postcolonial scholar Edward Said, Imperialism and

colonialism were powered by Orientalist thought; i.e. people in Europe believed

there was a qualitative difference between West and East, between Occident

and Orient, between Us and Them. The West was normal, logical and ordered

while the Orient was wild, sensual and generally inscrutable.

Orientalism was ultimately a political vision of reality whose structure promoted the difference between the familiar (Europe, West, "us") and the strange (the Ori-ent, the East, "them"). (Said, 1978)

When we examine Around the World with the Orientalist viewpoint in

mind, certain details come into sharp focus.

First, we notice the ellipsis of Fogg and Passepartout’s journey through Eu-

rope. The reader knows that Fogg is travelling through Paris, yet the story is re-

sumed in earnest at the far side of the Suez canal. This location is significant.

The Suez canal, opened in 1869, was considered to be the gateway to the Ori-

ent. Said (1978 p.88-91) includes it as one of his Orientalist ‘Projects’. Thus we

can see that the title of Around the World is, in fact, a little misleading. The

Continent has been leap-frogged altogether, and this is a story specifically con-

cerned with the “world that is not Europe”. Verne, is writing from inside an Ori-

entalist frame.

Looking through this Orientalist frame, we see in Verne’s description of the

world-that-is-not-Europe a preoccupation with measurement and naming. Take

his introduction to India, for example:

Everybody knows that the great reversed triangle of land, with its base in the north and its apex in the south, which is called India, embraces fourteen hundred thousand square miles... The British Crown exercises a real and despotic domin-ion over the larger portion of this vast country, and has a governor-general sta-tioned at Calcutta, governors at Madras, Bombay, and in Bengal, and a lieu-tenant-governor at Agra. But British India, properly so called, only embraces seven hundred thousand square miles, and a population of from one hundred to one hundred and ten millions of inhabitants. A considerable portion of India is still free from British authority; and there are certain ferocious rajahs in the interior who are absolutely independent.

Verne, in this passage, is making clear link between measurement, nomi-

nalization and British domination. It is the process of naming and measuring

that divides the Orient in two: The Orient which is domesticated - dominated by

British rule, orderly and civilized, and the Orient which is wild - ferocious and in-

subordinate. But is this link incidental? Verne’s employment of Imperial miles

instead of his native French metric system, and his assumption of an authorita-

tive and final narrative voice unfiltered through his characters to describe the

world, is evidence that Verne is writing on purpose. His “writing of the world”,

i.e. his geography, is a British one. The world that is named and measured is

thus comprehended, and once comprehended, it is apprehended. Thus as

Verne’s audience we are not just ‘going along for the ride’ with Fogg. We are

not just ‘measuring the world’, we are ‘taking its measure’. We are participat-

ing in British domination simply by reading.

This is not to say, however, that Verne is in agreement with the tenets and

aims of British domination or of the Orientalist frame he is writing in. We will

come to this point in due course.

Verne’s descriptions of the Orient is stylized and thematic. There is a repe-

tition and development in Passepartout’s excursions in the cities of Bombay, Al-

lahbad, Hong Kong and Yokohama. To Passepartout, the central quarters of

these cities are consistently interchangeable with Europe or England. Yet the

world beyond the domesticated metropoles is carnivalesque, characterized by

a bombardment of colour and texture and masses of people in religious proces-

sion. This general schema is repeated for each of Passepartout’s side-trips, yet

as Passepartout goes deeper into the Orient, his adventures become more

strange, and the wild Orient becomes more alien. In Bombay, the carnival is

“dignified and modest.” In Yokohama, the “japanese quarter” is thus:

The streets were crowded with people. Priests were passing in processions, beat-ing their dreary tambourines; police and custom-house officers with pointed hats encrusted with lac and carrying two sabres hung to their waists... Passepartout saw, too, begging friars, long-robed pilgrims, and simple civilians, with their warped and jet-black hair, big heads, long busts, slender legs, short stature, and complexions varying from copper-colour to a dead white, but never yellow, like the Chinese, from whom the Japanese widely differ.

The purpose of this repetition and development comes to a climax - or

more specifically, to an anti-climax, in the New World. Verne subverts his

theme. Yet to see this subversion properly, we will turn our attention to another

line of thought: understanding the significance of around.

III

The title “To Hong-Kong and Back by a different route in Eighty Days,”

could also have been used for this novel, for it practically describes Fogg’s jour-

ney. However, this title would neither encapsulate the essence of Fogg’s

project nor Verne’s intent. The concept of “around” - of circumnavigation - is

what makes this story what it is.

Joseph Campbell’s canonical work Hero With a Thousand Faces shows how

narrative generally follows a common plot. Campbell’s plot, known as the

“hero’s journey” or the “monomyth”, is characterised by three stages: separa-

tion, initiation, and return. In short,

A hero ventures forth from the world of common day into a region of supernatu-ral wonder: fabulous forces are there encountered and a decisive victory is won: the hero comes back from this mysterious adventure to bestow boons on his fel-low man. (Campbell, 2004, p.28)

This structure of ‘venturing and coming back’ underlies classical myth and

folk-tale, and is even evident in such popular recent works as Spider Man (Koh,

2009) and The Matrix (Stroud, 2001). Tolkien’s fantasy novel The Hobbit is

subtitled “There and Back Again”.

The significance of Vernes’ use of circumnavigation jumps into focus when

we overlay it with Campbell’s monomyth. Indeed, Fogg ‘ventures forth’, yet on

his journey around the world there is no physical turning-point. Fogg forges

ahead until space itself bends to his will and turns back on itself:

Jules Verne's work is nothing but a long meditation, a reverie on the straight line. (Macherey, 1966 cited in Butcher, 1999, p.203 )

Inasmuch as this is a story framed by Orientalism, Verne writes the cir-

cumnavigation in such a way to shatter and confound the monomyth.

This shattering is further grasped if we consider Fogg as hero. According to

the monomyth, the hero is transformed during initiation. He experiences an

‘expansion of consciousness’ (Campbell, p.228) and is given an ‘ultimate boon’

(p.159-60) -- a gift to take home, a ‘life-transmuting trophy’ that will renew the

world. (p.179). In contrast, Fogg’s nature throughout his adventure is unchang-

ing. This would indicate that he is not transformed, and therefore not initiated.

An application of Victor Turner’s work on rites of passage yields similar re-

sults. Turner’s saw the initiate as disoriented, who displays a “protean, am-

biguous and sometimes diametrically opposed attributes such as alienation,

amorphousness, ambiguity...” (Fetson, 2009, p24). Fogg, on the other hand, is

single-minded, developed and considered.

The smashing and confounding of the monomythic scheme is clear. Yet

what does Verne gain, or add to the story, by doing this?

Whereas the monomythic scheme is about mystery (c.f. Gr. mystikos liter-

ally means ‘ initiate’), circumnavigation is about mastery.

Circumnavigation is the encyclopedic manoeuvre par excellence, and the dia-grammatic incarnation of the Vernian quest for a totalization of knowledge... (An-drew Martin, The Knowledge of Ignorance, Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1985, cited in Butcher, 1999)

The man who circumnavigates the world surrounds it, delimits it and con-

tains it in his will. He knows everything important there is to know about it. He

has completed the project. Fogg, like other characters of Verne’s is “obsessed

with completion”, with the telos (end/goal) of his project. (Martin, 1988. p.329).

In Around the World, by circumnavigation, the world is shrunk so that the hero

becomes bigger than the world:

"Oh, I don't know that. The world is big enough." "It was once," said Phileas Fogg, in a low tone.

This idea of mastery has much in common with our previous discussion of

‘measuring and naming’. Let us add our ‘final straw’, and then make a conclu-

sion. Fogg’s project is more than just circumnavigation. We hear in the Reform

Club that circumnavigation has been possible for some time. His project is to

circumnavigate within the specified time-frame of eighty days. Success is

therefore dependent on recent technological advances which are Orientalist

projects (e.g. Linking of the Indian railways, the opium trade, Suez Canal), but

more than that, on colonial domination over the wild Orient:

"But suppose the Hindoos or Indians pull up the rails," replied Stuart; "suppose they stop the trains, pillage the luggage-vans, and scalp the passengers!”“All included,” calmly retorted Fogg.

Thus by circumnavigating the globe, Fogg (and Verne, behind him with the

ink-pot) is, in effect, evaluating the efficacy of British Imperialism, and the Ori-

entalist conceptions beneath it. What is his evaluation?

IV

We can see, in a number of ways, that Verne sees a negative outcome of

the future of Imperialism. First, by showing that the world is round - the mod-

ern world, which can be circumnavigated in eighty days - Verne is showing his

readers that the modern two-dimensional idea of “Us and Them”, of “East and

West” are absurd. The modern world is a sphere, not a plane, so traveling East

into the deep Orient will eventually bring you out the other side, back to ‘here’.

Secondly, Verne shows us that that mystery and mastery are mutually ex-

clusive. After one has circumnavigated the world and thus contained it, the

world ceases to be a place of wonder. Butcher sees in Around the World an un-

derlying note of sadness. Something grand has been lost by this delimiting of

the world.

Under its gay abandon, then, Around the World is streaked with the melancholy of transitoriness. Henceforth, there can be no virgin territory and no deflowering heroes - just glorified tourists. (Butcher, 1999, p.6)

This theme of sadness surfaces in the New World and has an almost physi-

cal manifestation. We said earlier that Verne’s description of the Orient comes

to a climax, or to an anti-climax, in the New World, and we have foreshadowed

this anti-climax by a discussion of the significance of around. It seems, that in

his description of the New World, Verne is showing what happens when idealis-

tic Orientalist thought is taken to its extreme.

If we again overlay the monomythic structure over Fogg’s journey, we see

that in the New World Fogg, by rights, should be transformed and find his gift.

What he finds, however, is an anticlimax.

The anticlimax is foreshadowed by Passepartout’s failed ‘first step’ into

the New World.3 It is developed in San Francisco. The description of the city is

similar in many respects to the Orient. Passepartout notes again that parts of

San Francisco are like England, and when he makes an excursion he finds him-

self again in a mob. The descriptions are carnivalesque and sensual. In this

way, Verne is drawing parallels between the New World and the Orient. How-

ever, there are differences. This carnival is political rather than religious. It is

violent rather than peaceful, and unlike the orientals, these people have

names.

This parallel with the Orient is seen again in Utah, where Verne references

the Dead Sea and the Jordan River in the Holy Land to explain regional geogra-

phy. Thus Salt Lake City is presented as a New Jerusalem. (The utopic over-

tones are strikingly obvious.) He relates at length of the polygamy and strange

religious practices of the Mormons. In the description of the City itself, we can

see further parallels with the cities Passepartout has previously visited. Salt

Lake City has a temple and palisades, yet it has an almost unnameable quality

that is false, sad, and constructed.

They spent two hours in this strikingly American town, built on the pattern of other cities of the Union, like a checker-board, "with the sombre sadness of right-angles," as Victor Hugo expresses it. The founder of the City of the Saints could not escape from the taste for symmetry which distinguishes the Anglo-Saxons. In this strange country, where the people are certainly not up to the level of their institutions, everything is done "squarely"— cities, houses, and follies…

3 He trips and falls flat on his face.

Unlike other cities, Salt Lake City is empty.

The travellers, then, were promenading, at three o'clock, about the streets of the town. The place did not seem thickly populated. The streets were almost de-serted...

Salt Lake City, in particular, seems to be Verne’s attempt to describe what

happens when the Orient and the Occident are brought together in a synthesis.

The policy of white people in the New World is different from the English.

Verne’s description of the Americans as “Anglo-Saxon”, at once identifies them

as being of the same race as the English, yet they are very different. They have

embraced an oriental tribalism and live in a bizarre mix of polygamy, violence,

money-hunger and untrustworthy steam-engines.

The emptiness of Salt Lake City and the vignette of the Mormon boarding

the train to escape his wives indicates what Verne thinks of the so-called utopic

New World he has described: This new space, where politics is the new religion,

and religion is the new myth, is characterized by hopelessness, sadness and

loneliness. Orientalism does not work.

Verne, writing at the height of British Empire, is, in his stylistic description

of Salt Lake City and through his use of circumnavigation is thus predicting the

ultimate demise of colonialism and the Orientalist conceptions behind it. Verne

foreshadows America as the culmination of Orientalist thought - and rejects it

as hope-less.

V

We have, however, still not grappled with Verne’s genius denouement and

if we finished without doing so, would do injustice to Verne’s intent.

The fact that Verne’s punchline actually works (i.e. readers experience

sheer astonishment in the last few chapters) indicates that it was only a clever

illusion by which the monomyth doesn’t seem to fit. This illusion, uncovered by

the discovery of the ‘extra day’ in the penultimate chapter, reframes the entire

story. Considering we made a strong case for Around the World being written

within an Orientalist frame, understanding this surprise reframing is crucial for

a postcolonial reading of the text.

The original Orientalist frame is set up in the Reform Club scene we have

alluded to earlier, where Fogg asserts that all interruptions are included in his

eighty day time-frame. “The unforeseen does not exist.” What he means is sim-

ply, “I have foreseen, and planned for all possible outcomes.” In hindsight, we

can see that Fogg’s statement betrays his erroneous view of the world, and

that he believes that only things that he can see, are. (Perhaps Verne employs

this idea when he writes his geography, so that his audience, through reading,

are reading the world into existence.)

Yet, as sure of himself as Fogg is, he is, in fact, wrong. Verne’s punchline is

dependent on it. Fogg has a blind-spot. Two, in fact.

His first blind-spot is that he forgets to ‘include’ the factor of English law

against his project. Thus, although Fogg manages to outwit the wild ‘Hindoos’

of the Orient and the chaotic elements, it is Fix, the bright-eyed yet short-

sighted English detective who collars him when he sets foot on English soil. If,

as we said earlier, Fogg’s circumnavigation can be read as a critique of the

power of British Imperialism and Orientalist thought, then Verne is bringing his

readers face to face with the conclusion that the problem is not “out there”, it

is with “us”4, and our inability to shed English law and regulation when it

clearly conflicts with reality and natural justice. Fix, as English detective, repre-

sents (re-presents) English law and policy. In the moments following Fogg’s ar-

4 Remember that the reader, through reading, has been participating in British domination.

rest, Verne’s audience experiences firsthand the absolute frustration of being

trapped inside an unsound, yet very English ideology. In other words, Verne

has set up his readers to become aware of their own blindspot. They want to

participate in a new ideology.

Fogg’s second blind-spot is not his alone. The audience share it also.

Whereas the audience has considered the possibility of Fogg’s arrest, Verne

has crafted his work in such a way that the audience is as equally ‘in the dark’

as Fogg and Passepartout when it comes to the ‘extra day’.

Verne has misdirected his audience from this ‘extra day’ by presenting the

story inside an Orientalist frame. First, by presenting Fogg as considered and

errorless, Verne does not give the audience reason to suspect Fogg can be

wrong. Second, by causing the audience to identify with Passepartout in his

voyeuristic excursions of the Orient, and by encouraging participation in a

British writing of the world, Verne leads the audience to think that Orientalism,

however flawed, is the only way of viewing the world.

The fact that Fogg, Passepartout, and we as the audience are surprised by

the ‘extra day’ shows the fact that all three parties initially hold views that are

Anglocentric, or at the very least egocentric.

Verne has hidden his ‘extra day’ in plain sight. Allusions to the sun are

peppered throughout the novel, notwithstanding this one:

"The rogue told me a lot of stories," repeated Passepartout, "about the meridi-ans, the sun, and the moon! Moon, indeed! moonshine more likely! If one lis-tened to that sort of people, a pretty sort of time one would keep! I was sure that the sun would some day regulate itself by my watch!"

Now that we can see the Orientalist presentation is a ruse, by overlaying

the monomyth, we can see that the ‘ultimate boon’ Fogg is given is the extra

day, and that the ‘life transmuting trophy’ he brings back with him is a new

way of looking at the world. Verne, though his re-framing trick, is encouraging

his audience to step away from the paradigm of Orientalism to something new,

characterized by a limited, global world, where mankind, through techonologi-

cal and social change are unconstrained by the tyranny of distance. In light of

recent history, Verne is essentially describing “globalization”. (see Steger,

2005, p.13)

Writing in 1872, it does not seem that Verne can predict exactly what a

‘globalized’ world will look like. Yet he can see that it is something distinctly

different from the Orientalist assumptions about the world. (It must also be

noted that in our time, the definition and shape of globalism is still contested,

and that globalisation and ‘globality’ signify a “future… condition.” (Steger,

2005, p.13))

We have said that Fix represents English law and that Passepartout repre-

sents an Orientalist outlook. Yet who is Fogg? When quizzed on the meaning of

his hero’s name, Verne stated that Fogg simply meant brouillard (fog, mist).

Verne tells us very little about Fogg apart from the fact that he is a member of

the Reform. He is the progressive.

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