What Does Kipling Mean By 'A Female Of The Species'?
Rudyard Kipling’s poem The Female of the Species has had a great cultural impact, with the title and refrain “The female of the species is more deadly than the male” being seen widely throughout popular culture since its first publication in the Morning Post in 1911. Whilst the poem has been lauded for the presentation of women having “A greater adventurous spirit and more courage than the man,” [1] when one looks deeper Kipling’s distinctly Victorian views of the female of the species are brought to light.
The Female of the Species portrays a world where women remain the property of men. Throughout the poem, the phrase “The Woman that God gave him” is repeated; the use of male possessive pronouns in reference to the female establishes a continuation
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The message even appears conflicting in some lines, where men know that “The woman that God gave him isn’t his to give away” – in contrast to the possessive pronouns, the female autonomy to choose to whom she is given, rather than her father’s or brothers’ is noted, but it is questionable whether Kipling truly believed in female autonomy or whether he meant that it is God’s right to give away a woman, and not mans’. Keating notes that Kipling “Seems never to have believed that universal suffrage was …show more content…
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