Having been pontificating as to how Kipling is not a Premier League writer, despite his many gifts, I happened to read his short story Mary Postgate today which went a small way to blowing my theory apart.
Put simply: it's brilliant. Surely one of the finest short stories in English. I thought Kipling couldn't 'do' women, but the psychological depth in these few pages belies that judgment. And the ending is so daring, yet so true.
We are confronted with the intensely gratifying pleasure of hating the Other in the most extreme form, and we must helplessly empathise in a way that is deeply upsetting.
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