Failure in Kipling's The Light That Failed

Barbara T. Gates, Alumni Distinguished Professor of English, University of Delaware

Footnote 28, Chapter 8, of the author's Victorian Suicide: Mad Crimes and Sad Histories, which Princeton University Press published in 1988. It has been included in the Victorian Web with the kind permission of the author, who of course retains copyright.

My insights into the question of failure in Kipling's novel have been strengthened by conversations with Robert Caserio whose work on the subject recently appeared as an essay entitled "Kipling in the Light of Failure" in Grand Street 5 (Summer 1986): 129-212.

Last modified 10 July 2001