ABSTRACT
Soul murder can be overwhelmingly or minimally effective; it can be partial, or attenuated, or chronic, or subtle. Rudyard Kipling's case involves his desertion by good parents in childhood and their replacement by bad, persecutory guardians. Alice Kipling shared the lack of empathy for children customarily raised chiefly by servants-that was frequently passed down from one generation to another in Victorian upper-class households-sowing misery even in the homes of the wealthy and aristocratic. There was a short-lived repetition of the desertion and desolation at Lorne Lodge when the twelve-year-old Kipling was sent to an English public school nine months after his removal from Aunty. The struggle to fight off the soul murder and its consequences may in some ways have strengthened him and even have enhanced aspects of his creativity-it gave him motive and subject matter for his writing. During the time in the House of Desolation, Rudyard had to face major situations of psychological danger and their concomitant anxieties.
