The hierarchy of A Passage to India

Hello :)

The hierarchy between British and Indians—thus the coloniser and colonised, which can be read symbolically as the male and female—mirrors the gender dynamics in the British community. The British community features various characters that make it seem fuller and more complete compared to the representation of India which is ‘muddled’ and symbolically represented by one single, and somewhat flat character, Dr Aziz. This elevates the political condition of Britain ruling over India because it adds the social and intellectual dimension to Britain’s superiority.

Let’s start with Fielding the teacher. As the teacher Fielding represents a father figure in India. There is a parallel between the father-like colonial Britain, and the English father, Fielding who teaches Indians. Juxtaposed to the logical and knowledgeable father Fielding is Dr. Aziz, who admires Fielding and in a way infantilises himself to be a child-like figure to Fielding. Socially, Aziz is the symbol of the ‘muddled’ and infantile India. He represents the disorder and dishonesty of Indians (‘There is no harm in deceiving society as long as she does not find you out’ 94). The way he does not seem to analyse facts, but follows his intuition also makes him intellectually inferior to the British father figure. Amongst the major characters in the novel, only Aziz is Indian. So, the novel indirectly critiques the fact that India is not given enough symbolic space for representation in English literature and that the British tend to stereotype Indians as an easily categorised or identified nation. I say that the novel is a critique because Forster does acknowledge the impossibility to contain or represent ‘India’ (‘no one is India’ 65).

The dichotomised sense of womanhood is a metaphor for the subordinate position of the female characters, which then mirrors the symbolic relation between the coloniser and the colonised. Mrs Moore and Adela represent dichotomised womanhood in the text. Moore represents the woman with the heart while Adela the woman with the mind. Despite the fact that they both want to see the ‘real India’, they are not complete and full characters because they are fragmented into either having the heart or the brain. This treatment of females draws an interesting parallel to the treatment of the colonised. Aziz, who is the most prominent Indian character in the novel, does not seem to be ‘full’ or with both the heart and mind. He seems affectionate (he is described as ‘tender’ 64) but he seems more emotional than logical. And if he is the symbol of India, then India is somewhat feminised and portrayed as emotional and bordering illogical.

Ronny Heaslop, to me, is the instrument for Forster’s critique of British officers/sahibs in India. He is ‘dictatorial’ (27) and extremely suspicious of India and Indians (‘[Aziz] had some motive in what he said’ 29). It is as if all that he learnt in England is inadequate compared to the ‘wisdom’ he has gained in India through the years. This leads to how the coloniser is schizophrenic in its beliefs. On one hand, there is the Western thought of justice and equality taught in England (also, ‘where [Ronny’s] compatriots were concerned he had a generous mind’ 77), while the sahibs ‘hold this wretched country by force’ (45) and are proud of it because ‘the British were necessary for India’ (88). The way he expects his wife to give in to him (‘now that Adela had promised to be his wife she was sure to understand’ 88) is also similar to his complacent attitude towards India’s obedience to Britain.

Sorry for being lengthy :)

looking at the brown stocking

Hello :)

I only have like two things to say about the essay by Auerbach: its idea of ‘multiple consciousness’ and its conclusion.

I guess Auerbach, in raising the question of ‘multiple consciousness’ (549) and how ‘(t)he tremendous tempo of the changes proved the more confusing because they could not be surveyed as a whole’ (549), indirectly provokes the reader to establish a connection between the Empire and impressionism in Woolf’s or general modernist writing. To me when I read this part of the essay I think of how the narrator’s omniscient knowledge before modernism is symbolic of the monarch/central governor figure which used to represent absolute authority, and as colonialism takes place, this absolute authority figure is confronted with different cultures and other authority figures in the colonies belonging to both Great Britain and other colonial powers. Take the example of Africa, the continent gets ‘crowded’ when various European powers become neighbours (think the continent being fully occupied on the map, as ‘marked with all the colours of a rainbow’, to quote Marlow in Heart of Darkness). This forces change in the form of governance in colonies because the colonial powers are now aware of and thus influenced by each other. Due to this ‘crowdedness’, one is forced to recognise and acknowledge his own view as subjective. This also relates to the structuralist idea of only seeing the world in fragments and not in entirety. This is when the empire ties in nicely with modernism—the recognition of an authentic response to a much-changed world is subjective. To the Lighthouse, according to the Britannica Concise Encyclopedia (:P), is Woolf’s attempt to examine the human experience of time, the indefinability of character, and external circumstances as they impinge on consciousness. The idea of consciousness being influenced by the experience and thus relative to time and space is to me intriguing because this unique experience in a particular point in time also lapses into another experience. It gives me the idea of experience as a spiral event motivated by random occurrences and association.

What the conclusion presents, as I see it, is a utopian vision of neo-colonialism which makes integration of differences, negotiation of exoticism and localising the exotic possible. This utopian idea of post-colonial unification alludes to a middle way in which everyone can identify because it is founded and sustained by the random occurrences in life. Cultural differences are made to seem insignificant in this middle way because it is the universality of humanity that sponsors this neo-colonialism. However, I find this vision limiting because the idea of ‘there are no longer even exotic peoples’ suggests unification of cultures, which then suggests homogeneous experience… which seems problematic because of, to put it simplistically, the asymmetrical economic development of the world and how the Third World is unlikely to catch up with the First world as demonstrated by the dependency theory.

Okay since this is a blog/forum, I should take it as an ideal environment for learning…and so it’s alright if I don’t make sense right? Heh, feel free to respond :)