Mimicry, masculinity and modernity: Representations of effeminacy and hypermasculinity in imperial and native narratives

This dissertation examines the representations of the cross-cultural mimicry of imperial subjects such as T. E. Lawrence, E. M Forster, and J. R. Ackerley on the one hand and native subjects like Gandhi, Indian Maharajas, and the Rana rulers of Nepal on the other. I argue that while the representations of the cross-cultural mimicry of these social subjects---who were seen as lacking the true virtues of masculinity due to their sexual orientation or their racial/ethnic identities---describe them as performing alternative models of masculinity, a simultaneous rejection of the concepts of effeminacy and hyper-masculinity shows them as reconfirming the dominant, hegemonic model of imperial manhood. While the theorists working in the field of feminist, and queer theory have argued that cultural identities are performative rather than essential, postcolonial scholars have used the terms such as "mimicry" and "mimeticism" to assert that both colonial and postcolonial identities are historically rooted cultural performances. By bringing together these diverse theoretical approaches, I have tried to examine in this dissertation how the performances of gender are indissolubly tied to the performances of ethnicity and race.