A Passage to India

A Passage to India is a novel by E.M. Forster. It appeared in 1924 and is Forster's best known and most widely read novel. It is set in India and potrays the divisions between the native population and the British.

Plot

It is the story of the two English ladies Adela Quested and her fiance's mother Mrs. Moore coming to Chandrapore, India. Although they come because Adela is to marry Mrs. Moore's son, the city's magistrate Ronny Haeslop, the two women point out their willingness to see the real India, undeterred by the evident racism of the established British community in Chandrapore. As a matter of fact, they form a friendship with Dr. Aziz, a muslim doctor who is the assistant to the local British doctor. He invites them to show them the Marabar Caves, Chandrapore's only real attraction. Fielding, the principal of the local college, Dr. Godbole, a Hindu teacher, were to join them, but on the day of the excursion they miss the train so that Aziz goes ahead with the two ladies and his rather absurd entourage. In the caves, things start to go horribly wrong. Adela mistakenly believes to be assaulted by Aziz and Mrs. Moore has a profound nihilistic epiphany ("Everything exists, nothing has values") from which she never recovers psychologically. Although Dr. Aziz is eventually acquitted of the charge of rape, his trial widens the divisions between the native population and the British.

Analysis

According to Lionel Trilling, A Passage to India is the most comfortable and conventional novel by Forster. The novel creates a clear pattern of the reader's emotions and keeps with it throughout the novel. This pattern always remains simple and easy to grasp and it excels through its objectivity. Sympathy is given to Mrs. Moore and Fielding, Adela Quested is regarded with interest and Aziz and his friends with affectionate understanding. On the other hand, the reader is taught to withhold all sympathies from the British officials, who are portrayed as arrogant and autocratic. The really interesting thing about the novel, however, is not these strikingly simple pattern which is also confirmed by the rather simple plot as outlined above. Behind the plot there is the story.. The story is abstract and philosophical, and it is about separations. The separations of the natives from the British, of Muslims from Hindus, of men from women etc. This is Trilling about the unique discrepancy between plot and story:

"The story is beneath and above the plot and continues beyond time. It is, to be sure, created by the plot, it is the plot's manifold reverberation, but it is greater that the plot and contains it. The plot is as decisive as a judicial opinion; the story is an impulse, a tendency, a perception [...]. This relation of plot and story tells us that we are dealing with a political novel of an unusual kind. The characters are of sufficient size for the plot; they are not large enough for the story - and that indeed is the point of the story."

Works cited

Forster, E. M.. A Passage to India. Ann Arbor: Borders Classics, 2006

Trilling, Lionel. E.M. Forster.Oxford: OUP, 1982

http://www.themillions.com/2011/09/modern-library-revue-25-a-passage-to-india.html