In the Round Tower at Jhansi (Indian Mutiny)

What happens?

• Couple contemplates whether should take own lives or leave with “the swarming howling wretches below”

• Narrator asks for “God to forgive them this”. They did not want to displease or disobey God

• Pair attempt to console each other as they question if it will “hurt much”

• Attempt to create long-lasting intimate moments by comforting each other

Publication

The third stanza was omitted in first publication

Context

• Critique of war/real mutiny

• Colonising by the British (India and Caribbean)

• East Indian Trade Company

• Based on Captain Skeen and wife

• Indian Mutiny was uprising against treatment of Indians from EITC (unsuccessful)

Meanings

Consideration of suicide and whether it is acceptable in God’s eye

Exploration of couple’s love for each other

Critique of war

Saving of soul

Saving

• Fast paced creates a sense of terror, panic and danger “gained and gained and gained” “A hundred, a thousand to one; even so” → Sense of urgency, caesura, rhyme

• Husband’s wish to kill wife because he’s trying to save her from brutality, spare her from further suffering → rape, murder, pain

• God needs to save them → suicide = sin

• First stanza → full of danger, pain, fear

• “pale, young wife” → fragile and vulnerable. Everyone was affected

Critique of war

• Outnumbered and Indians getting closer

• “Gained and gained and gained” → How the British Empire acted during colonisation so ironic as roles reverse

• Overwhelming sense of panic and fear. Tower is supposed to be a place of safety

Love and God

• Close body, intimate language → “close her cheek to his” “close his arm”

• Repitition of “kiss”

• Love = all consuming and needed

• “Kiss and die” → wasteful. Pleasant vs pain

Marxist Interpretation

• Skeen and his wife = bourgeoises

• Kept people in their place so they rebelled

“Round tower”

Coming from all direction and surrounded

“Young, strong, and so full of life”

Waste of life from war. Inescapable