Widely regarded as an artistic failure, The Light That Failed first made its debut in Lovell’s Westminster Series in 1890 and reappeared in Lippincott’s Monthly Magazine in the next year. The standard version is also dated 1891 containing fifteen chapters. As this is a less familiar novel of Kipling it would not be very impertinent to give a sketch of the happenings before concentrating on the hidden motif of the failure of imperial enterprise. The novel revolves around Dick Heldar and his childhood playmate Maisie― both being English children living under the care of Mrs. Jennett, a stern, puritanical and frustrated woman. The autobiographical note is unmistakable as in his childhood Kipling himself was under the supervision of Mrs. Holloway…show more content… The company of Torpenhow which Dick valued next only to Maisie was to terminate as the former was shortly rejoining the army. Just when Dick was considering Bessie as a future mistress from whom any gratification is purchasable the latter confessed her terrible retribution leaving Dick virtually alone in the hand of Providence. Bessie is unforgivable because according to Kipling’s ethical code, “a man may forgive those who ruin the love of his life, but he will never forgive the destruction of his work (Kipling 200). Along with this human complicity in dispossessing Dick of all that he craves for, the impenetrable gloom and inertia of London life is a fitting background for shattering his dream— to be lionized in the field of painting with Maisie as lifelong companion. A newly arrived from Sudan and beaming with boyish enthusiasm, Dick takes London as won over, casts glimpses upon a row of semi-detached residential quarters triumphantly: “Oh, you rabbit-hutches!...’Do you know what you’ve got to do later on? You have to supply me with men-servants and maid-servants’— here he smacked his lips—‘and the peculiar treasure of kings’”(27). Even the first reunion with Maisie is not without its accompanying unreality and transitory
