Illustrating the Indian Penal Code: Bigamy, the Victorian Novel, and the Formation of National Identity

Abstract This essay argues that the Indian Penal Code (1862) served as a surrogate constitution under colonial law. Lacking a framework for civil rights, the Law Commissioners sought to bring clarity to the law by supplementing the criminal code with extensive notes and illustrations. While the IPC aspired to universality in substantive law, the notes and illustrations worked in opposition to this goal by perpetuating racial hierarchies. Using hypothetical narratives, the notes and illustrations painted a portrait of Indians as habitually criminal and unruly in their appetites and affections. The tension between the IPC’s universalist rhetoric and its persistent recourse to racial difference is exemplified in the laws dealing with marriage. Focusing especially on bigamy, the essay examines how the threat of colonial contamination both worked to discipline the Indian population and to reinforce marital normativity in England. In legal trials as well as novels, the bigamy plot captured the Victorian imagination. The fascination with bigamy, however, was also routed toward more cautionary ends. Turning to Charlotte Brontë’s Jane Eyre , which is typically read as a story of Jane’s development into a proper English woman, this essay shows how Rochester’s own development from colonial bigamist into faithful English husband epitomizes the Victorian legal and literary ideal.