Mrs. Hauksbee

Mrs. Hauksbee is a fictional character in many short stories by Rudyard Kipling. In the first, "Three and - an Extra", she is introduced as:

Four stories later in the same volume, there is a story where she is shown in a good light - "The Rescue of Pluffles". In "Consequences", she does Tarrion's career great service. In "Kidnapped", she does Peythroppe equally great service, against his will.

Mrs Hauksbee exemplifies many of the characteristics of Rudyard Kipling's characteristic writing. She is partly a stereotype (in this case, of the clever woman of the ruling classes [here, the British in India; and the administrative class of them]), and yet a very clearly delineated individual member of that stereotypical group. Her motivations are not simple nor clear cut.

Physically, "She was a little, brown, thin, almost skinny, woman, with big, rolling, violet-blue eyes and the sweetest manners in the world" ('Three and - an Extra'). A characteristic gesture when she is thinking is to draw the lash of her riding whip between her lips - which may indicate her underlying cruelty. There is something feline about her.