Sexuality in Forsters Passage to India - Book Report/Review Example

Sexuality in Forster's "Passage to India" 2008 Thesis ment Sexuality has been the most hidden aspect in depicting the cultural clashes between the colonizer and the colonized in E.M. Forster's novel A Passage to India, especially in the friendship between Fielding and Aziz or the closeness between Adela Quested and Aziz. Outline Forster's most famous novel A Passage to India (first published in 1924) has been critically discussed in the light of colonialism, freethinking, modernism, traditions, sexuality and the connection between the personal and political. The passing yet cautiously hidden homoerotic feeling between Aziz and Fielding, that Arthur Martland showed in Passion and Prose (1997) or the failed relationship between Adela Quested and Aziz point out to the gulf that separates the colonized Indians from their British colonizer, sexuality here acting as the most traumatic effect of colonization on both the colonizer and the colonized or, showing , as Clare Brandabur says(1993), the "destructive impact on personal relation by the racist assumptions and psycho-pathology inherent on colonial imperialism." From the Political to the Personal Although Forster has maintained that "Passage" has nothing to do with politics and is less related to the incompatible interface of East and West than it is with the problem of living in the world, the novel does tackle issues such as colonialism, racism, nationalism, and rape. Therefore, much of the novel's critical analysis centers on political and social themes. A major concern of A Passage to India is the cultural conflict between imperial British and native Indians associating with the public and personal disorder caused by the unscrambling practice of occupation and control. Where a pre-Conrad novel might support men eager to renounce the comforts of home to change pagans or to build new ways toward riches and colonization, Forster, instead, mocks the distressing haughtiness of such an idea showing how such stupidity cannot be continued. Even Adela, who comes to India with clean intentions, falls slowly from her higher principle to look for the "real India" into the flock attitude of people like her fianc Ronny and the other British colonialists, the members of the whites-only Club. In the novel's opening pages, we thus hear the native Indians talk about the habitual "disillusionment," by stating, "They all become exactly the same, not worse, not betterAnd I give any Englishwoman six months" ( page7). Indeed, it takes only a a few months for Adela to fall into a wobbly fog between truth and delusion, her ears weighed down by a persistent echo that she hardly notices the flattering concern of the other whites when she returns from the Marabar Caves with an unfounded charge against Aziz. In the second chapter, Dr. Aziz, Mahmoud Ali and Hamidullah discuss "whether or not it is possible to be friends with an Englishman,"(page 33) soon after which, Dr. Aziz make friends with two Englishwomen and the Anglo-Indian Principal at the College, Mr. Fielding. But most critics tend to overlook the individual relationships and talk about the novel with respect to its portrayal of Anglo-Indian colonial society. Debate still continues whether A Passage to India is critical of colonialism, many critics agreeing that the novel does condemn the fixed excuses for British dominance, but considerable points can also be made that Forster's effort to symbolize India connect him in the "muddle" (which for Fielding, Forster's main representative in the novel, represents India) of imperial power(Lilburn, 1998.). Of course, Forster makes cautious difference in his use of the word "muddle" as against "mystery" in A Passage to India, "Muddle" having the undertone of risky chaos, whereas "mystery" insinuating a magical, methodical plan by a supernatural force, characters like Mrs. Moore and Godbole viewing India as a mystery. The muddle that India stands for seems to work from the very indistinct landscape of the country and its plants and animals that flout naming-a trait that Forster finds to be reflecting in India's local population, blended into a mess of diverse religious, ethnic, linguistic, and regional groups (Sarkar, 2007). Sexuality remains as a major and persistent hurdle to the relationship between Aziz and Fielding acting either as something mysterious or muddling in the personal relationship between Aziz, Fielding and Adela Quested causing overactive imagination and mistrust in friendship in Aziz with Fielding after the Marabar Caves episode, sex being a source of conflict for the two men as Fielding hates Aziz's tactless position toward female prettiness and sexuality. For example , Aziz's remark that Adela practically has no breasts disgusts Fielding as, " this derived sensualitywas alien to his own emotions, and he felt a barrier between himself and Aziz whenever it arose"(page 242). Forster ascribes the worrying disagreements between the two men (even after Adela leaves India with the agonizing thoughts about sexuality and her approaching marriage to Ronny) to the strain that takes place when two people do not interpret sex in the same way. Sexuality in A Passage to India is never a relating force between characters, but rather a disruptive one that makes the characters separated from each other with a latent tension, like the incompatible relation between the white colonizer and subjugated Indian other. The scene at the boat in the last part of the novel creates the Christian myth of Paradise, the boat colliding and upturning (concurring with the festival of Shri Krishna, the Hindu God of salvager of pain and sorrow) in water which according to Jungian philosophy symbolizes birth-death renewal, the fall of the characters in water becoming a resurrection-they die to be born again, saved or "baptized" by Lord Shri Krishna. "After the Funny shipwreck there had been no more nonsense or bitterness, and they went back laughingly to their old relationship as if nothing had happened." Aziz also forgive and forgets Adela. The land appears gorgeous: 'Presently the ground opened into full sunlight and they saw a grassy slope brought with butterflies, also a cobra, which crawled across doing nothing in particular, and disappeared among some custard-apple trees.".There were round white clouds in the sky, and white pools on the earth; the hills in the distance were purple. The scene was as park-like as England, but it did not cease being queer" (page 311). The words "cobra", "apple", "pools", "purple" and "queers" generating sexual images to insinuate that they are once again allured, the images of the cobra and the apple tree calling to mind about the descent of Adam and Eve from heaven, the pool implying the female womb and therefore sexuality and so is also the color purple. The risk of getting expelled from such a paradise is clearly predicted by the word "queer", the hidden pull between Aziz and Fielding that might ruin their friendship who ultimately realize that no friendship is possible given that the as the colonizer/colonized relation continues (Baker,2006). All the rapports and friendships established in the first part of the novel between Mrs Moore, Miss Quested and Dr.Aziz lead to the trip to Marabar Caves, the central episode of the novel, the mystery of what really happened there remaining still unanswered. One might interpret Mrs. Moore's and Miss Quested's experiences in the caves as a collapse of conventional values by being contacted to "other" notions of culture and being, particularly Adela's experience there which is often read as a delusion or frenzied reaction caused by sexual suppression. But the mystery stays a mystery as the crucial scene relating Adela and Aziz is never told. Mrs. Moore has a "horrifying" experience inside one of the caves and falls into a state of indifference and distrust. Adela's mishap is that she goes through an either real or imaginary sexual attack and that Aziz is accused of the crime that whether or not even was committed, either by Aziz or by somebody else, is never divulged . After observing the unsuccessful Bridge Party supposed to improve the cultural understanding between the Indians and the local British officials, Adela swears that she will never give way to Anglo-Indian ideology. Yet, as Jenny Sharpe has noted in her article, The Unspeakable Limits of Rape: Colonial Violence and Counter-Insurgency in Genders, the charges Adela makes against Dr. Aziz apparently corroborate the fears and bigoted conjectures defending imperialism asserting that the "native" world is muddled, unruly and malicious and hence unable to get by without English control. Following Aziz's arrest, many of these vile and baseless fears are explicitly revealed. The District Superintendent of Police, Mr. McBryde, is not amazed by Aziz's disgrace as he considers that "all unfortunate natives are criminals at heart, for the simple reason that they live south of latitude 30" (as cited in Lilburn, 1998) At the Club, people start worrying for the wellbeing of the "women and children" and one young woman even says no to "return to her bungalow in case the 'niggers attacked.'" The existing feelings is best shown by McBryde's (this superintendent of police in Chandrapore has an detailed theory asserting the lowliness of dark-skinned races to light-skinned ones.) words at Aziz's hearing where he begins his speech almost unsympathetically since he thinks that Aziz's guilt is already acknowledged as fact. The option that Aziz may actually be not guilty is never even thought-out as McBryde tells the court, it is a "general truth" that the "darker races are physically attracted by the fairer, but not vice versa." But such arguments do not validate Adela's accusations against Dr. Aziz. Quite the opposite, the oratory used to defend imperialism is sternly lampooned, painting a hideous picture of the English officers sent to India to "do justice and keep the peace". They become almost ludicrous considering that such an event may not at all have happened. McBryde's "general truth" is rooted not in facts or, as he maintains, but on the postulations and grounds required to shore up Western superiority. In the same way, the mystery around the caves and the events that take place there remain uncertain in the novel. Adela herself becomes uncertain about what really happened in the caves and is troubled by the rumbling doubt that her charges may have been made-up. Sharpe has contended that this element of doubt, brought into a crime purportedly corroborating the "native's" immorality, exposes the fantasy of what she calls "colonial truth-claims." Sharpe shows how the announcement of Aziz's innocence challenges the racist supposition that "represents anticolonial insurgency as the savage attack of barbarians on innocent women and children." The novel's display of such politically structured "truths" thus challenges the usual rationalization for British control (Lilburn, 1998). Homoerotic Theme Parminder Bakshi, in A Passage to India: Theory and Practice Series, contends that the novel, like all of Forster's fiction, has homo-erotic themes and is motivated not by colonial problems but by the impediments to male friendship. She argues that Forster goes all-out to detach friendship from politics showing how the novel moves towards making close ties between Fielding and Aziz. The most vital part of her argument is the theme of friendship that Bakshi thinks to defy the empty and fake custom of marriage. Perhaps Bakshi's interpretation of the novel becomes most credible when she deals with the final scene where Aziz realize that their friendship is not feasible under the present condition. Bakshi contends that politics are in fact redundant here. Aziz's final words of course recognize that the colonial situation makes friendship between the English and Indians unworkable. But Bakshi shows that it is only what Fielding implies ("Why can't we be friends now It's what I want. It's what you want.") that we understand that the whole world protests at such a friendship throwing innumerable hurdles between them: "the horses didn't want it - they swerved apart; the earth didn't want it, sending up rocks through which riders must pass single-file; the temples, the tank they didn't want it, they said in their hundred voices, 'No, not yet,' and the sky said, 'No, not there.'" (as cited in Bakshi, 1996). Through Bakshi's reading, the novel rises above modern politics becoming a condemnation against the repression of male love (Lilburn, 1996). With the growth of cultural, subaltern, and queer studies and with the insights presented by the analyses of orientalism and colonialism, modern readers have realized that A Passage to India is a novel about an Indian whose life is intensely influenced by his contact with English colonizers. Traditional Forster studies, though, interpret the novel as rather the opposite: it is the story of two English women who facing the "real" India are very much changed. Forster wanted to build a work that was "publishable," meaning that it had no intended homosexuality in any open way. Thus, there is little sexually doubtful in the relationship between Aziz and Fielding. If by any means, the author's deeper intentions are revealed by his narrator's affectionate dealing of the main character Aziz, that was because of his love for the "Orientals". After the original publication of the novel, Forster had written to his mentor and confidante, Goldsworthy L. Dickinson: I fall in love with Orientals, with Anglo Indians-no: that is roughly my internal condition, and all the time I had to repress the consequences, or fail to hold the scales. Where is truth It makes me so sad that I could not give the beloved a better show. One's deepest emotions count for so little as soon as one tries to describe external life honestly, or even readably. Scarcely anyone has seen that I hoped Aziz would be charming...." (26 June 1924, Forster, "Goldsworthy Lowes Dickinson", 1934) A Passage to India is Forster's most symbolic novel, the one where he shows with greatest control, of his thoughts and feelings keeping himself quite distant and removed from the characters, at times appearing so disconnected, that he appears almost unconcerned to what he is writing. In 1922, Forster wrote to a friend that he was developing A Passage to India again; 'but without enthusiasm'. He felt that; 'The characters are not sufficiently interesting for the atmosphere. This tempts me to emphasize the atmosphere and so to produce a meditation rather than a drama' (Forster, Selected Letters, 1985). The ambiance in this novel is definitely very compelling, the landscape making its presence felt although almost like an important character. In her article, The Geography of A Passage to India, Sara Suleri asserts that Forster makes a metaphor of India as a 'hollow or a cave' (Walder, 1990). This image is not only feminine, but in Freudian terms, is representative of the womb. Indeed the Marabar Caves are present all through the novel and it is in this symbolic womb where not only does Adela's fictitious rape happen, but she also becomes conscious that she does not love Ronny, Mrs. Moore's son, the magistrate at Chandrapore. The Cave The cave picnic gives Aziz a chance to build a true relation with his visitors, Mrs. Moore and Adela Quested. It is also a chance for Adela to see things more closely that she has so far dome from distance. Yet the entire outing is doomed before it starts. Aziz really does not know much about the caves and that makes the women to have the delusion that they will be seeing something "real." Then, as they tour toward the caves, the narrator explains, "a new quality occurred, a spiritual silence which invaded more senses than the ear. Life went on as usual but had no consequencessounds did not echo or thoughts developinfected with illusion" ( page 155). When Adela confuses between a snake and a thin toddy-palm, Aziz invents a story to back her mistake. All of them, on this hot day, appear to be "infected with illusion," happy to feign that Aziz is an expert resting contentedly in the delusion of false impression, something that, however cannot be continued. One of the main uses of the caves as a literary device is to provide the mystery of sexuality that "real India" provokes-at once by scaring and by luring. The description of the caves immediately makes one have that eerie sensation: Chambers never unsealed since the arrival of the godsOne of them is rumored within the boulder that swings on the summit of the highest of the hills; a bubble shaped cave that has neither ceiling nor floor, and mirrors its own darkness in every direction infinitely. If the boulder falls and smashes, the cave will smash too - empty as an Easter egg (137-38). The empty and completely delicate cave gives the impression of a woman's vagina that is still chaste has not ever yielded to male sexuality, even its walls have been so "marvelously polished" by all those human hands that touch the walls of the cave to start the sound of the echo. This is the surroundings for the twin spiritual crises' of Mrs. Moore and Adela. Inside one such cave, Mrs. Moore experiences a psychological change and the same thing happens to Adela in another cave where she psychologically senses an "assault". For both, the cave is subconsciously womb-like, a place in which they can change themselves, to be reborn, something that could be read as a sexual metaphor, a loss of virginity, possibly, or the fear of sexual acquaintance in case of Adela. Perhaps it is the anguish of a loss of sexuality for the aging, weak Mrs. Moore. More possibly, it is the need for each woman to hand down her own social taboos. For Mrs. Moore, this heavy veil is Christianity. When she goes into a cave, the echo and the squeeze of bodies as they huddle "began in some indescribable way to undermine her hold on lifeit managed to murmur, 'Pathos, piety, courage - they exist, but are identical, and so is filth. Everything exists, nothing has value'" (165). Moments later, as she sends away Aziz and Adela to see another cave, "She lost all interest, even in Aziz, and the affectionate and sincere words that she had spoken to him seemed no longer hers but the air's (166). She gives up all that had kept her going, and yet her decline into that hypothetical unhappiness remains a mystery. According to Andrew Rutherford (1970), Mrs.Moore's crisis "is not presented as insight but as spiritual failure on Mrs. Moore's part, and accounts for her rapid decline in moral stature as she becomes selfish, self-regarding, and cynical" (page 11). Rutherford carries on rejecting Mrs. Moore's thorough power on Adela, mourning "but she never regains the status which she had for us earlier in the story." Rutherford sees the caves set up in the novel not as symbol of female sexuality but as "a spiritual vacuum," "an evil place," "and absence of god, morally as an absence of love" (page12). What Rutherford finds in the cave is lesson in sexual morality for the reader. Forster has cautiously confirmed that nature is caring and does not think in a unidirectional way. Mrs. Moore enters the cave thinking that she is getting closer to God. As that need fades away and she pulls out from society, she becomes sensible enough to see the charade in the hounding of Aziz. Mrs Moore has many parallels with Forster's own mother. Forster idealized his mother (as is apparent in his letters), who is perhaps instinctively represented in the book as Mrs Moore. Forster never publicly declared himself as a homosexual before his mother died, probably to save her from the expected humiliation and disgrace she would have been exposed to, considering the time she was living in (Martin and Piggford, 1997). In the novel, we see Adela is held guilty for what happens to Aziz, albeit it was Mrs Moore's meeting with Aziz in the temple that really start out the whole series of events . Forster shields Mrs Moore from having any liability for the tragedy that takes place to Aziz, as the all good, pure figure, as if she was his mother. Mrs Moore is subsequently removed before the court case, so that her 'goodness' can not be put to test. Despite Rutherford's opinion, Mrs. Moore's ruthless honesty does nor let go of her spiritually. It is true that she does not find console in Christianity, but she starts mumbling truths disturbing Ronny who packs her back to England, for he realizes that the future of his job depends upon his unbeaten trial of Aziz. Mrs. Moore dies on the way because she says no to partake in the British fury to "put the Indians in their place," succeeding, possibly by her power to make ideas or perhaps by mysticism, in manipulating Adela's statement at Aziz's trial. Mrs Moore's status is raised from woman to goddess, a very common notion in Indian male sexuality, to adore a woman having mystic power as a Goddess thus fulfilling the latent desire of sexual gratification from such an alluring person. The Hindu Professor Godbole, the novel's most religious character, has a moment of spiritual revelation about her, "'One old Englishwoman and one little, little wasp,' he thought "It does not seem much, still it is more than I am myself" (page 326). Adela's experience echoes Mrs. Moore's, but Adela is never respected or loved; she does not stir religious passion or becomes a myth like Mrs. Moore. Her ordinary looks fixes her as squeamish and "a hag" and as someone who most probably asked for the attack as her only hope for sexual contact, though these are never said candidly to her. Adela certainly senses this sort of against her public on some level, and this might be part of her wavering about marriage knowing all through that her marriage to Ronny will be miserable. Yet, she also knows that as an unattractive woman, she has to clutch that which is given to her without much option. As she tours around the cave with Aziz, Adela is abruptly besieged by her anxiety on marriage, starting with the thought of "tiresome wedding bells" and developing to "What about love" (page 167-68). There is disquiet and hostility between Adela and Aziz, foretelling something terrible, but Forster only permits the reader to go through Adela's hazy recollections of what took place, not the details. Analysiing the novel, A Passage to India: Nation and Narration, Judith Scherer Herz (1993) discussing this lack (because in an earlier draft Forster had in fact written an attack scene), Herz questions its absence in the final text contending, "If Forster had originally used the rape motif in its most culturally determined way - that is, imagining the dark colonial sexually attacking the English woman - does revision eliminate that dimension or merely suppress it" (page100). But since the general readers are left with the finally published version and trying to dig up the reality through Forster's personal beliefs about race, beauty, and sexuality, the mystery of Adela's cave experience and the ensuing echo that troubles her speaks to her own want to flee from marrying Ronny and the loveless, indifferent future including her surrender to the insipid society of the Club. Had Forster clarified the mystery of the cave episode, the reader would not bother to indirectly experience Adela's perplexity. Works Cited Forster, E.M. A Passage to India, Cambridge: Penguin Classics,1985 Martland, Arthur, E.M. Forster:Passion and Prose, Gay Men's Press, 1997 Brandabur, Claire, "Images of women in five post-colonial novels", Aegean Journal of Language and Literature, proceedings of 13th All-Turkey English Literature Conference,1992 (special issue), Izmir, 1993 Lilburn, Jeffrey M., Novels for Students, Gale, 1998. Sarker, Sunil Kumar E.M. Forster's A Passage to India, New Delhi, Atlantic, 2007, Baker,Ahmed, M.S. Abu, Rethinking Identity: The Colonizer in E.M. Forster's A Passage to India, Nebula. September, 2006 Sharpe, Jenny, "The Unspeakable Limits of Rape: Colonial Violence and Counter Insurgency" Genders 10, Spring 1991 Bakshi, Parminder Kaur, Distant Desire: Homoerotic Codes and the Subversion of the English Novel in E.M. Forster's Fiction , Sexuality and Literature, Vol 5, Peter Lang Publishing, 1996. Forster, E.M., Selected Letters, Volume Two ,Collins, 1985, p. 42 Forster , E. M., "Goldsworthy Lowes Dickinson", edited by L. G. Wickham Legg, London: Edward Arnold, 1934 Walder, Dennis (ed) Literature in the Modern World, Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1990, p.p.246 Martin, Robert K., Piggford, George, ed Queer Forster, 1997 Rutherford, Andrew, eds, A Passage to India." Twentieth-Century Interpretations of A Passage to India, Englewood Cliffs, N.J.: Prentice Hall, 1970. Herz, Judith Scherer. A Passage to India: Nation and Narration. New York: Twayne Publishers, 1993. . Read More