Quote: "India a nation! What an apotheosis! Last comer to the drab nineteenth-century sisterhood! Waddling in at this hour of the world to take her seat! She, whose only peer was the Holy Roman Empire, saw Mau beneath: they didn't want it, thsaid in their hundred voices, "No, not yet," and the sky said, "No, not there."
The reader can tell that the Englishman is hardly interested in an India or any part of India that replicates that of Victorian England. Instead, through their friendship, Forster creates a model of exchange. This is different from the modern nineteenth-century narratives of Anglo-India, which usually involves a vulnerable Englishwoman. That sort of story, which was employed to justify the intense retributive violence of the so-called Indian Mutiny, is exactly what A Passage to India is designed to move beyond.
You can also notice that Forster uses an older narrative form when he focuses on Adela Queste. However,, Adela's story is a Victorian holdover Forster......
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Approximate Word Count: 393
Approximate Pages: 2 (260 words per double-spaced page) |