“The Curse of the Stillborn”: Margery Lawrence's Egyptian troubling of imperial eugenics

Despite the broad popularity of Britain's imperial project in the 1920s (among Britons), fears of native fecundity coupled with burgeoning support for the “science” of eugenics fomented a cultural discourse keen to bolster British claims to inherent superiority, and thus, to a legitimacy of their colonial aims. Egypt was a prime literary setting for teasing at various aspects of the concept of the colony: the early heights to which their civilization grew, the wave of Egyptmania sweeping Europe in the nneteenth and twentieth centuries, the contemporaneous political situation, and the local birthrate all contributed to Egypt as an apt setting from which to critique colonialism. Meanwhile, Egypt's enigmatic aura meant it lent itself well to the genre of the supernatural, prone to probing at the horrors of the colonizing project. Within this framework, Margery Lawrence's 1925/6 short story “The Curse of the Stillborn” offers a unique perspective on eugenic discourse and the imperial project. While maintaining certain elements of a eugenic discourse “The Curse of the Stillborn” warns of the scars awaiting those who would dare interfere in the instinctive, ancient burial rites of the colonized subjects.