Plot structure Critical analysis
A Passage to India
(1924) is considered as E.M.Forster’s major work. Forster, major English
author of the twentieth century is a writer of great technical and intellectual
significance whose work deserves close study and analysis. Some of his major
works are The Longest Journey, A Room with a View and Howards
End. The present novel can be read as a valuable critique of British
rule in India, a profound statement about personal relationships and a comment
upon political, racial, ethical and metaphysical issues. A historical reading
of the novel involves an understanding of how socio-economic factors of race and
gender shape characters and episode.
Race :
Aziz, the very first
character is entrapped within the colonial context as much as anyone else.
Throughout, his warmest responses are evoked on the level of personal emotion.
His meeting with Mrs. Moore at the mosque is important to him because of the
bond of sympathy that is instinctively established between them. His
sensitivity leads him to be unnecessarily irritable with Fielding. What makes
Aziz happiest is the fact that he can show his country off to those (Mrs. Moore
and Adela) who wish to see it for personal reasons rather than official. However,
I am puzzled by some aspects of the impact of colonialism on Aziz. He is
introduced as a very competent doctor, better than his boss, Major Callendar
but retires to backwater of Mau after the Marabar crises. This is only to show
the degradation of soul of the colonised under the impact of colonisation. Next,
I find, Aziz’s enthusiasm for poetry is genuine and contagious. He relies on
cultural stereotypes. However, at the end he is shown to have changed the
subject of his poetic interest to social questions such as nationalism and the
position of women. Forster’s treatment of the way in which race influences
Aziz’s nature is challenging. He explains about Aziz-Fielding relationship as,
When they
argued…something racial inevitably intruded…not bitterly but inevitably, like
the colour of the skins.
Therefore, within the
colonial framework the colonised cannot have a greater dignity or credibility
than that exhibited by Aziz.
Godbole, a
professor at the Government College in Chandrapore is very much a figure of slapstick.
His clothes are a laughable combination of two cultures, he is greedy, he
misses the Marabar picnic because he has miscalculated the length of a prayer
and he dances in foolish abandon on the occasion of Janmashtami. Also, he is
shown to be in touch with a level of mystical experience to which no one else
in the novel has access. In other words, Godbole’s entire complex identity as a
human being is defined only by one term, his religion. He is described as a
devotee who uses intense devotion as a means to reach the divine but fails
because it was conscious and deliberate rather than spontaneous.
Fielding is introduced as
a character that is suspected of being unsound by his compatriots in India because
he associates socially with Indians. He believed people are important in
terms of their individualism and personal relationships they form. Though, he
is disappointed that his Indian friends lack dignity. The continual setting
aside of the race question leads Fielding to be unimaginative and unsympathetic
with regard to India’s nationalistic aspirations as expressed by Aziz at the
end of the novel. He believes in Western European cultural values and is unable
to translate the delight he takes in European art to Indian friends because of
the way he appreciates use of colour and form. As such, when at the end it is
clear that Fielding and the way of life he represents have nothing else to
offer India of the future, Aziz suggests him to leave. It can be said, there is
no space in the colonial framework for personal relationships if they pretend
the race divide does not exist.
Thus, Aziz, Godbole and
Fielding are influenced by the colonial context in their responses to each
other and to common contemporary issues like nationalism, internationalism and liberalism.
GENDER:
Mrs.
Moore and Adela provide an example of how people who
belong in one sense to the elite (ruling class) belong in another sense among
the subalterns. This puts them in an unusual position. On one hand, they are
able to frame a critique of British rule from within since their viewpoints are
by definition personal rather than official. On the other, precisely because
they are women they are not thought to have a viewpoint. According to Ronny’s
words she can do no good to the trial as she has no evidence. But Mrs. Moore’s
presence itself is an obvious reminder that there is a way of looking at Aziz
and Marabar incident as personal and not official. On returning back to
her country she dies at the sea. To the British she becomes a tiresome ghost
who never gives up haunting them with the sense that she must be taken into
account. To Indians she becomes ‘Esmiss Esmoore’ a goddess whose name is
chanted like a mantra. Therefore, neither as a ghost nor as a deity Mrs. Moore
can speak. She is silenced on account of her gender.
Adela
wanted to see real India. But her dry rationalism does not win her any support
either from the British or from the Indians. At first Aziz also gets suspicious
of her attitude as he sees it only as a restatement of British ambition to rule
India. Also she forfeits the sympathy because she was ugly. At the trial also
she gets the same kind of remark that hurts her most,
The lady is so
uglier than the gentleman.
Thus, the text does not
award her gender-justice; rather she gets a racist taunt. Just like Mrs. Moore
she is also silenced. No one tried to know what actually happened in the caves.
The position of Indian
woman in Purdah is sympathetically examined. At
the Bridge Party, Aziz’s poem speak of the fact that even if India wins
political freedom she will never win cultural freedom until her women are free
and equal. Here, Fielding points out Aziz’s hypocrisy giving it an
anti-national twist. He says that as long as Aziz treats his mistress
essentially as a nanny, gender- justice can never be given, thereby; Indian
freedom is only a distant dream. Thus, one comes to the conclusion that
gender-justice is not demonstrated by the novel rather, race and gender shaper
the characters and episodes.
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