What do you think?
Rate this book
The Raj Quartet #1
The Jewel in the Crown
No set of novels so richly recreates the last days of India under British rule--"two nations locked in an imperial embrace"--as Paul Scott's historical tour de force, "The Raj Quartet." The Jewel in the Crown opens in 1942 as the British fear both Japanese invasion and Indian demands for independence.
472 pages, Paperback
First published January 1, 1966
About the author
Paul Scott
181 books144 followersLibrarian Note: There is more than one author in the Goodreads database with this name. See this thread for more information.
Paul Scott was born in London in 1920. He served in the army from 1940 to 1946, mainly in India and Malaya. He is the author of thirteen distinguished novels including his famous The Raj Quartet. In 1977, Staying On won the Booker Prize. Paul Scott died in 1978.
Paul Scott was born in London in 1920. He served in the army from 1940 to 1946, mainly in India and Malaya. He is the author of thirteen distinguished novels including his famous The Raj Quartet. In 1977, Staying On won the Booker Prize. Paul Scott died in 1978.
Ratings & Reviews
Friends & Following
Create a free account to discover what your friends think of this book!
Community Reviews
Displaying 1 - 30 of 447 reviews
June 23, 2018
“English is the language of a people who have probably earned their reputation for perfidy and hypocrisy because their language itself is so flexible, so often light-headed with with statements which appear to mean one thing one year and quite a different thing the next.”
Whenever I run into someone who has been to India, not just visited, but actually lived there. I'm always infinitely too curious and whenever anyone admits to being somewhere I haven't been; I grill them Ronald Merrick style (Investigating Police Officer from the novel), well without the caning. I can almost see their face contort as conflicting memories fight for prominence. They are horrified about the squalor, the waste of life, the ever present pressing masses of people, the diseases running amok, the crippling poverty, and the stench of death. Then their face relaxes and they talk about the drop to your knees unexpected beauty of the architecture, how wonderful the people are, and those amazing intangible things about living in India that makes them pine to go back. Those intangible things that get under their skin and won't let go of them. This book is full of the intangibles that make India a mysterious, dangerous, and yet romantic place.
The Jewel in the Crown is set in 1942. This is after the great hey day of the British Empire in the 1920s when over a 1/5th of the world population rose in the morning under the British flag. The empire is crumbling and yet still the British government continued to dispatch earnest young men around the globe to shore up their interests in far flung kingdoms. It was an amazing feat using thousands to control millions. With the war pulling apart the world and Britain short on resources this the perfect point in history for India to press for independence. By 1947 Pakistan has been partitioned off and India has gained their independence.
Ethel Manners expressed it best in the novel. "Such a marvelous opportunity wasted. I mean for us, by us. Indians feel it too, don't they? I mean, in spite of the proud chests and all the excitement of sitting down as free men at their own desks to work out a constitution. Won't that constitution be a sort of love-letter to the English-the kind an abandoned lover writes when the affair has ended in what passes at the time as civilized and dignified mutual recognition of incompatibility?"
The plot of the novel is threaded through an event, one of those events that rocks the foundations of a community. Paul Scott starts the novel with the beginning of the aftermath and then spends the rest of the novel, through the various viewpoints of the principle characters, investigating and building a file of what everybody saw, experienced, overheard, and speculated about with regard to what actually happened to Daphne Manners. The victim is not cooperating because she has a secret that is more important to her than justice.
Hari Kumar is her secret and she is willing to bear the pressure of her peers and is willing to be judged in the court of public opinion to keep any hope alive that she could someday have a life with Kumar. Daphne, as all women are, was struck by how handsome Hari is and finds him a curious specimen. A man that speaks English better than the native British and yet he is black. I was struck by the fact that Indians in the book were referred to as black. I guess that is a catch all phrase for those of our species that are not white. There are no browns or yellows or cocos or caramels. I guess to keep things simple, a person is only either black or white. The more Daphne interacts with Hari the more enamored she becomes. It was unacceptable for a black man to be with a white woman. This restrictive public behavior is what leads to the tragedy.
Scott uses a host of characters to bring to life his vision of India. One scene in particular has and will haunt me for a long time. The image of a burning over turned car and the bludgeoned corpse of an Indian teacher and the British teacher Miss Crane sitting in the rain along side the road holding his unresponsive hand. This scene is a great example of Scott exploring the ripple effect of one event that leads to a tidal wave of more and more disastrous reaction.
Sister Ludmila, the sister that was not a sister, but who exhibited all the characteristics of what we wish the church could be, is a witness to part of the events surrounding the tragedy. Scott has this great scene when and old and blind Ludmila is talking with GOD.
Paul Scott infused this novel with lush, beautifully written scenes that gives the reader a real feel for a lost time and place. "There is no breeze but the stillness of the leaves and branches is unnatural. As well as these areas of radiance the switches have turned on great inky pools of darkness. Sometimes the men and women you talk to, moving from group to group on the lawn, present themselves in silhouette; although the turn of a head may reveal a glint in a liquidly transparent eye and the movement of an arm the skeletal structure of a hand holding a glass that contains light and liquid in equal measure. In the darkness too, strangely static and as strangely suddenly galvanized, are the fireflies of the ends of cigarettes."
I remember after the mini-series came out everybody was reading these tan colored paperbacks by a guy named Paul Scott.
In an era when I was gobbling down any book I could get my hands on, even at times desperate enough to read one of my mother's bodice busters, I did not read Paul Scott. I'm kind of glad I didn't because this is a book that requires a more mature mind than what I was carrying around on my shoulders then. I probably wouldn't have appreciated Paul Scott if I had tried to read him as a teenager and I may never have had this amazing experience with this book. Without a doubt I will read the rest of the Raj Quartet and can even see myself venturing deeper into his body of work.
I hope more people rediscover Paul Scott as I have and bring him back from the dusty bins of used bookstores and give him a proper place in the British canon of writers to be read and cherished.
Whenever I run into someone who has been to India, not just visited, but actually lived there. I'm always infinitely too curious and whenever anyone admits to being somewhere I haven't been; I grill them Ronald Merrick style (Investigating Police Officer from the novel), well without the caning. I can almost see their face contort as conflicting memories fight for prominence. They are horrified about the squalor, the waste of life, the ever present pressing masses of people, the diseases running amok, the crippling poverty, and the stench of death. Then their face relaxes and they talk about the drop to your knees unexpected beauty of the architecture, how wonderful the people are, and those amazing intangible things about living in India that makes them pine to go back. Those intangible things that get under their skin and won't let go of them. This book is full of the intangibles that make India a mysterious, dangerous, and yet romantic place.
The Jewel in the Crown is set in 1942. This is after the great hey day of the British Empire in the 1920s when over a 1/5th of the world population rose in the morning under the British flag. The empire is crumbling and yet still the British government continued to dispatch earnest young men around the globe to shore up their interests in far flung kingdoms. It was an amazing feat using thousands to control millions. With the war pulling apart the world and Britain short on resources this the perfect point in history for India to press for independence. By 1947 Pakistan has been partitioned off and India has gained their independence.
Ethel Manners expressed it best in the novel. "Such a marvelous opportunity wasted. I mean for us, by us. Indians feel it too, don't they? I mean, in spite of the proud chests and all the excitement of sitting down as free men at their own desks to work out a constitution. Won't that constitution be a sort of love-letter to the English-the kind an abandoned lover writes when the affair has ended in what passes at the time as civilized and dignified mutual recognition of incompatibility?"
The plot of the novel is threaded through an event, one of those events that rocks the foundations of a community. Paul Scott starts the novel with the beginning of the aftermath and then spends the rest of the novel, through the various viewpoints of the principle characters, investigating and building a file of what everybody saw, experienced, overheard, and speculated about with regard to what actually happened to Daphne Manners. The victim is not cooperating because she has a secret that is more important to her than justice.
Hari Kumar is her secret and she is willing to bear the pressure of her peers and is willing to be judged in the court of public opinion to keep any hope alive that she could someday have a life with Kumar. Daphne, as all women are, was struck by how handsome Hari is and finds him a curious specimen. A man that speaks English better than the native British and yet he is black. I was struck by the fact that Indians in the book were referred to as black. I guess that is a catch all phrase for those of our species that are not white. There are no browns or yellows or cocos or caramels. I guess to keep things simple, a person is only either black or white. The more Daphne interacts with Hari the more enamored she becomes. It was unacceptable for a black man to be with a white woman. This restrictive public behavior is what leads to the tragedy.
Scott uses a host of characters to bring to life his vision of India. One scene in particular has and will haunt me for a long time. The image of a burning over turned car and the bludgeoned corpse of an Indian teacher and the British teacher Miss Crane sitting in the rain along side the road holding his unresponsive hand. This scene is a great example of Scott exploring the ripple effect of one event that leads to a tidal wave of more and more disastrous reaction.
Sister Ludmila, the sister that was not a sister, but who exhibited all the characteristics of what we wish the church could be, is a witness to part of the events surrounding the tragedy. Scott has this great scene when and old and blind Ludmila is talking with GOD.
"I'm sorry about your eyes, HE said, but there's nothing I can do unless you want a miracle. No, I said, no miracle, thank YOU. I shall get used to it and I expect YOU will help me. Anyway, when you've lived a long time and can hardly hobble about on sticks but spend most of the day in bed your eyes aren't much use. It would need three miracles, one for the eyes, one for the legs and one to take twenty years off my age. Three miracles for one old woman! What a waste! Besides, I said, miracles are to convince the unconvinced. What do YOU take me for? An unbeliever?"
Paul Scott infused this novel with lush, beautifully written scenes that gives the reader a real feel for a lost time and place. "There is no breeze but the stillness of the leaves and branches is unnatural. As well as these areas of radiance the switches have turned on great inky pools of darkness. Sometimes the men and women you talk to, moving from group to group on the lawn, present themselves in silhouette; although the turn of a head may reveal a glint in a liquidly transparent eye and the movement of an arm the skeletal structure of a hand holding a glass that contains light and liquid in equal measure. In the darkness too, strangely static and as strangely suddenly galvanized, are the fireflies of the ends of cigarettes."
I remember after the mini-series came out everybody was reading these tan colored paperbacks by a guy named Paul Scott.
In an era when I was gobbling down any book I could get my hands on, even at times desperate enough to read one of my mother's bodice busters, I did not read Paul Scott. I'm kind of glad I didn't because this is a book that requires a more mature mind than what I was carrying around on my shoulders then. I probably wouldn't have appreciated Paul Scott if I had tried to read him as a teenager and I may never have had this amazing experience with this book. Without a doubt I will read the rest of the Raj Quartet and can even see myself venturing deeper into his body of work.
A Young Paul Scott
I hope more people rediscover Paul Scott as I have and bring him back from the dusty bins of used bookstores and give him a proper place in the British canon of writers to be read and cherished.
October 6, 2018
You'll only find 4 and 5 star reviews for The Jewel in the Crown on this site. And it is, indeed, a towering achievement. Towering! Magnificent! So ... er... what went wrong for me?
Do you remember James Joyce said that if Dublin burned down he wanted them to be able to rebuild it by reading Ulysses, meaning that every brick and stone, every chemists shop and stretch of beach, every busker and cabman's shelter was to be found in Ulysses in its exact location and condition in the book, not one atom changed around, so that in many ways Ulysses is not to be described as a work of fiction at all. (Joyce also took on the task of writing a book where if the whole English language was eaten by Godzilla they'd be able to reconstruct it again from Ulysses. But I digress.)
Paul Scott decided to do the same thing for the last days of the British in India. Brick by brick, house by house, room by room. Historians of interior decor 1945-65 can look no further. You have just won the lottery.
The bathroom is airless. There is no fan and only one window high up above the lavatory pedestal. At the opposite end of the bathroom - fifteen paces on bare feet across lukewarm mosaic that is slightly uneven and impresses the soles with the not unpleasant sensation of walking over the atrophied honeycomb of some long forgotten species of giant bee - there is an old-fashioned marble-topped washstand with an ormolu mirror on the wall above, plain white china soap-dishes and a white jug on the slab; beneath the stand a slop-bowl with a lid and a wicker-bound handle. Here too is the towel-rack, a miniature gymnastic contraption of parallel mahogany bars and upright poles, hung with immense fluffy towels and huckabacks in a diminishing range of sizes, each embroidered in blue with the initials LC.
Half way through that not untypical paragraph I was medically dead for about a whole minute.
So that was the first thing. The next thing I didn't like was the plot. Even before I started I didn't like it - the blurb announces that this is the story of a brutal rape perpetrated in somewhat mysterious circumstances upon an English woman in India. Yes, that's right, the self-same central plot of E M Forster's A Passage to India (which I thought was pretty good). How strange - it was obviously deliberate on the part of the author to lift this rape plot from Forster and re-do it, rock bands and film directors do this all the time, so why not authors? But this particular plot is kind of a drag, really. We've been down this symbolic road already - naive imperialists defiled by intimacy with the conquered peoples - it's all too crude for me. You could argue that Forster lifted the plot from Daisy Miller by Henry James and replanted it in India, and I daresay it isn't original to HJ either. Now it is true that the plot is hardly the main point of this novel because as Dr J said about Pamela, if you read this book for the story you would hang yourself. Meaning that moss, stalactites and your fingernails all grow faster than the plot in this book. So if your plot is just the hook you're hanging other things on, then get a more interesting one.
The next thing I would like to complain about is the length of many of the sentences. Paul Scott was evidently a major fan of the late Henry James and he likes to run amok with those clauses - there's a kind of effete machismo about the long sentence. It can be fun but it can so very easily be too much of a good thing. Dig the following (he is talking, as he always is in this book, about race relations) [note, the maidan is a public space in the town] :
Or is this a sense conveyed only to an Englishman, as a result of his residual awareness of a racial privilege now officially extinct, so that, borne clubwards at the invitation of a Brahmin lawyer, on a Saturday evening, driven by a Muslim chauffeur in the company of a Rajput lady, through the quickly fading light that holds lovely old Mayapore suspended between the day and the dark, bereft of responsibility and therefore of any sense of dignity other than that which he may be able to muster in himself, as himself, he may feel himself similarly suspended, caught up by his own people's history and the thrust of a current that simply would not wait for them wholly to comprehend its force, and he may then sentimentally recall, in passing, that the maidan was once sacrosanct to the Civil and Military, and respond, fleetingly, to the tug of a vague, generalised regret that the maidan no longer looks as it did once, when at this time of day it was empty of all but a few late riders cantering homewards.
Ooof... I need a lie down after a sentence like that. Was Mr Scott working with a typewriter on which the full stop key was about to break so he was trying to conserve its use? The full stop is such a pleasant thing. It is the reader's friend. It gives the brain a little pause, a little twiglet for our bird-thoughts to alight on for a second before the next sentence carries us aloft again. I like full stops.
The last thing I would like to complain about is that the characters who are given all the long monologues or who write the long letters are all tedious windbags. They don't know when to stop. I wanted to wring their scrawny necks. In my last example this guy is talking about the swanky country club in Mayapore :
The compulsory subscription was waived in the case of all but regular officers and two new types of membership were introduced. Officers with temporary or emergency commissions could enjoy either what was called Special membership, which involved paying the subscription and was meant of course to attract well-brought-up officers who could be assumed to know how to behave, or Privileged Temporary Membership which entitled the privileged temporary member to use the club's facilities on certain specific days of the week but which could be withdrawn without notice.
Oh my God.
No!
Finally, though, I just couldn't stand the company of the British colonial class in India, they were a hideous gaggle of superannuated racists so I abandoned this very remarkable and undoubtedly brilliant novel with relief.
note - I would like someone who five-starred this book to tell me if they actually liked the quotes above! Although if they do I'll probably back away slowly with wide scared eyes.
Do you remember James Joyce said that if Dublin burned down he wanted them to be able to rebuild it by reading Ulysses, meaning that every brick and stone, every chemists shop and stretch of beach, every busker and cabman's shelter was to be found in Ulysses in its exact location and condition in the book, not one atom changed around, so that in many ways Ulysses is not to be described as a work of fiction at all. (Joyce also took on the task of writing a book where if the whole English language was eaten by Godzilla they'd be able to reconstruct it again from Ulysses. But I digress.)
Paul Scott decided to do the same thing for the last days of the British in India. Brick by brick, house by house, room by room. Historians of interior decor 1945-65 can look no further. You have just won the lottery.
The bathroom is airless. There is no fan and only one window high up above the lavatory pedestal. At the opposite end of the bathroom - fifteen paces on bare feet across lukewarm mosaic that is slightly uneven and impresses the soles with the not unpleasant sensation of walking over the atrophied honeycomb of some long forgotten species of giant bee - there is an old-fashioned marble-topped washstand with an ormolu mirror on the wall above, plain white china soap-dishes and a white jug on the slab; beneath the stand a slop-bowl with a lid and a wicker-bound handle. Here too is the towel-rack, a miniature gymnastic contraption of parallel mahogany bars and upright poles, hung with immense fluffy towels and huckabacks in a diminishing range of sizes, each embroidered in blue with the initials LC.
Half way through that not untypical paragraph I was medically dead for about a whole minute.
So that was the first thing. The next thing I didn't like was the plot. Even before I started I didn't like it - the blurb announces that this is the story of a brutal rape perpetrated in somewhat mysterious circumstances upon an English woman in India. Yes, that's right, the self-same central plot of E M Forster's A Passage to India (which I thought was pretty good). How strange - it was obviously deliberate on the part of the author to lift this rape plot from Forster and re-do it, rock bands and film directors do this all the time, so why not authors? But this particular plot is kind of a drag, really. We've been down this symbolic road already - naive imperialists defiled by intimacy with the conquered peoples - it's all too crude for me. You could argue that Forster lifted the plot from Daisy Miller by Henry James and replanted it in India, and I daresay it isn't original to HJ either. Now it is true that the plot is hardly the main point of this novel because as Dr J said about Pamela, if you read this book for the story you would hang yourself. Meaning that moss, stalactites and your fingernails all grow faster than the plot in this book. So if your plot is just the hook you're hanging other things on, then get a more interesting one.
The next thing I would like to complain about is the length of many of the sentences. Paul Scott was evidently a major fan of the late Henry James and he likes to run amok with those clauses - there's a kind of effete machismo about the long sentence. It can be fun but it can so very easily be too much of a good thing. Dig the following (he is talking, as he always is in this book, about race relations) [note, the maidan is a public space in the town] :
Or is this a sense conveyed only to an Englishman, as a result of his residual awareness of a racial privilege now officially extinct, so that, borne clubwards at the invitation of a Brahmin lawyer, on a Saturday evening, driven by a Muslim chauffeur in the company of a Rajput lady, through the quickly fading light that holds lovely old Mayapore suspended between the day and the dark, bereft of responsibility and therefore of any sense of dignity other than that which he may be able to muster in himself, as himself, he may feel himself similarly suspended, caught up by his own people's history and the thrust of a current that simply would not wait for them wholly to comprehend its force, and he may then sentimentally recall, in passing, that the maidan was once sacrosanct to the Civil and Military, and respond, fleetingly, to the tug of a vague, generalised regret that the maidan no longer looks as it did once, when at this time of day it was empty of all but a few late riders cantering homewards.
Ooof... I need a lie down after a sentence like that. Was Mr Scott working with a typewriter on which the full stop key was about to break so he was trying to conserve its use? The full stop is such a pleasant thing. It is the reader's friend. It gives the brain a little pause, a little twiglet for our bird-thoughts to alight on for a second before the next sentence carries us aloft again. I like full stops.
The last thing I would like to complain about is that the characters who are given all the long monologues or who write the long letters are all tedious windbags. They don't know when to stop. I wanted to wring their scrawny necks. In my last example this guy is talking about the swanky country club in Mayapore :
The compulsory subscription was waived in the case of all but regular officers and two new types of membership were introduced. Officers with temporary or emergency commissions could enjoy either what was called Special membership, which involved paying the subscription and was meant of course to attract well-brought-up officers who could be assumed to know how to behave, or Privileged Temporary Membership which entitled the privileged temporary member to use the club's facilities on certain specific days of the week but which could be withdrawn without notice.
Oh my God.
No!
Finally, though, I just couldn't stand the company of the British colonial class in India, they were a hideous gaggle of superannuated racists so I abandoned this very remarkable and undoubtedly brilliant novel with relief.
note - I would like someone who five-starred this book to tell me if they actually liked the quotes above! Although if they do I'll probably back away slowly with wide scared eyes.
July 27, 2017
"Imagine, then, a flat landscape, dark for the moment, but even so conveying to a girl running in the still deeper shadows cast by the wall of the Bibighar Gardens an idea of immensity, of distance, such as years before Miss Crane had been conscious of standing where a lane ended and cultivation began: a different landscape but also in the alluvial plain between the mountains of the north and the plateau of the south."
The first in Paul Scott’s Raj Quartet, The Jewel in the Crown is a remarkable allegory about the relationship between the imperialistic power of Britain and her gem that is India. It is a penetrating contrast between darkness and light and contains striking metaphors that emphasize the racial tensions and the gulf between the British and the people of India at a time when their ultimate goal was that of independence. The caste system within India is also examined to such an extent that we understand the barriers between the citizens themselves. There is such a sense of place and time and Scott’s skillful writing really connects you with the beauty of the country as well as the wretchedness of the poverty-stricken. The reader sees, smells, hears and feels all, thanks to incredibly lush descriptions. The prose is really quite exquisite at times. "The range of green is extraordinary, palest lime, butter emerald, mid-tones, neutral tints. The textures of the leaves are many and varied, they communicate themselves through sight to imaginary touch, exciting the finger-tips: leaves coming into the tenderest flesh, superbly in their prime, crisping to old age; all this at the same season because here there is no autumn. In the shadows there are dark blue veils, the indigo dreams of plants fallen asleep, and odours of sweet and necessary decay, numerous places layered with the cast-off fruit of other years softened into compost, feeding the living roots that lie under the garden massively, in hungry immobility."
The story takes place in Mayapore in 1942. Britain is in the thick of World War II, Gandhi advocates for non-violence, his slogan “Quit India” is seen and heard everywhere, and political tensions are at a boiling point. We learn from the outset that this book is about the rape of a young English woman. Scott uses this plot along with the voices of several different narrators to paint a wider picture of both the history of India as well as its future. The novel is broken down into several sections that offer varying perspectives on the events leading up to the horrific crime. We are given bits and pieces of the story – it’s not so much a mystery rather than an understanding of how such a climactic event could ever come about in the first place. The culture, the prejudices, and the chaos of the time – all lead to such an eruption. The characters are diverse and richly drawn. Each has their own individual flaws, struggles, and strengths, and we come to understand their motives and actions quite intimately. Conflicts of identity, self-discovery, and forbidden love are all explored in depth. At the core of the narrative are the divisions based on race, color, and religion. Some characters cannot overcome the gap, others recognize their inability to mend the rift a bit too late, and others have it in their hearts to work towards bridging the gulf despite all odds. "… life is not just a business of standing on dry land and occasionally getting your feet wet. It is merely an illusion that some of us stand on one bank and some on the opposite. So long as we stand like that we are not living at all, but dreaming. So jump, jump in, and let the shock wake us up. Even if we drown, at least for a moment or two before we die we shall be awake and alive."
It’s very difficult to put into words the depth and feeling in this novel. The scope is far-reaching and the relationships are complex, and I found it extremely absorbing. At times I found the writing a bit heavy-handed, in particular when Scott delved into more detailed military and political history; therefore I can’t quite give this 5 stars. There were several scenes that left me speechless – their intensity being so moving. There is no denying the masterful writing of this author and I intend to read the entire Raj quartet eventually. Recommended to those that enjoy classic and historical fiction, multiple viewpoints, and complex narratives. 4 stars.
"I’m glad I came before and not in the middle of the rains. It’s best to undergo the exhaustion of that heat, the heat of April and May that brings out the scarlet flowers of the gol mohurs, the ‘flames of the forest’ (such a dead, dry, lifeless-looking tree before the blossoms burst) the better to know the joy of the wild storms and lashing rains of the first downpours that turn everything green. That is my India. The India of the rains."
The first in Paul Scott’s Raj Quartet, The Jewel in the Crown is a remarkable allegory about the relationship between the imperialistic power of Britain and her gem that is India. It is a penetrating contrast between darkness and light and contains striking metaphors that emphasize the racial tensions and the gulf between the British and the people of India at a time when their ultimate goal was that of independence. The caste system within India is also examined to such an extent that we understand the barriers between the citizens themselves. There is such a sense of place and time and Scott’s skillful writing really connects you with the beauty of the country as well as the wretchedness of the poverty-stricken. The reader sees, smells, hears and feels all, thanks to incredibly lush descriptions. The prose is really quite exquisite at times. "The range of green is extraordinary, palest lime, butter emerald, mid-tones, neutral tints. The textures of the leaves are many and varied, they communicate themselves through sight to imaginary touch, exciting the finger-tips: leaves coming into the tenderest flesh, superbly in their prime, crisping to old age; all this at the same season because here there is no autumn. In the shadows there are dark blue veils, the indigo dreams of plants fallen asleep, and odours of sweet and necessary decay, numerous places layered with the cast-off fruit of other years softened into compost, feeding the living roots that lie under the garden massively, in hungry immobility."
The story takes place in Mayapore in 1942. Britain is in the thick of World War II, Gandhi advocates for non-violence, his slogan “Quit India” is seen and heard everywhere, and political tensions are at a boiling point. We learn from the outset that this book is about the rape of a young English woman. Scott uses this plot along with the voices of several different narrators to paint a wider picture of both the history of India as well as its future. The novel is broken down into several sections that offer varying perspectives on the events leading up to the horrific crime. We are given bits and pieces of the story – it’s not so much a mystery rather than an understanding of how such a climactic event could ever come about in the first place. The culture, the prejudices, and the chaos of the time – all lead to such an eruption. The characters are diverse and richly drawn. Each has their own individual flaws, struggles, and strengths, and we come to understand their motives and actions quite intimately. Conflicts of identity, self-discovery, and forbidden love are all explored in depth. At the core of the narrative are the divisions based on race, color, and religion. Some characters cannot overcome the gap, others recognize their inability to mend the rift a bit too late, and others have it in their hearts to work towards bridging the gulf despite all odds. "… life is not just a business of standing on dry land and occasionally getting your feet wet. It is merely an illusion that some of us stand on one bank and some on the opposite. So long as we stand like that we are not living at all, but dreaming. So jump, jump in, and let the shock wake us up. Even if we drown, at least for a moment or two before we die we shall be awake and alive."
It’s very difficult to put into words the depth and feeling in this novel. The scope is far-reaching and the relationships are complex, and I found it extremely absorbing. At times I found the writing a bit heavy-handed, in particular when Scott delved into more detailed military and political history; therefore I can’t quite give this 5 stars. There were several scenes that left me speechless – their intensity being so moving. There is no denying the masterful writing of this author and I intend to read the entire Raj quartet eventually. Recommended to those that enjoy classic and historical fiction, multiple viewpoints, and complex narratives. 4 stars.
"I’m glad I came before and not in the middle of the rains. It’s best to undergo the exhaustion of that heat, the heat of April and May that brings out the scarlet flowers of the gol mohurs, the ‘flames of the forest’ (such a dead, dry, lifeless-looking tree before the blossoms burst) the better to know the joy of the wild storms and lashing rains of the first downpours that turn everything green. That is my India. The India of the rains."
January 20, 2016
It would not be an exaggeration to say that this is the most awesome novel which I have read about British India. The story is gripping: the language poetic ("the indigo dreams of flowers fallen asleep", to recall a phrase which lingers in the memory): and the characterisation near flawless. Even after more than twenty years (I think it's nearer twenty-five), I can recall the some scenes as if I had read the novel yesterday.
Just look at how Scott starts the novel off:
Imagine, then, a flat landscape, dark for the moment, but even so conveying to a girl running in the still deeper shadow cast by the wall of the Bibighar Gardens an idea of immensity, of distance, such as years before Miss Crane had been conscious of, standing where a lane ended and cultivation began...
Like To Kill a Mockingbird and One Hundred Years of Solitude, the first paragraph hooks you with the whole story encapsulated in it. Then when the novelist goes on to say "this is the story of a rape...", you are lost for good.
It is 1942, and Gandhi has delivered the ultimatum to the British - "Quit India!" - in his quietly arrogant way. Everywhere, the winds of change are felt, as the worm is finally turning. In this chaotic situation, a British woman is raped by Indians-and all hell breaks loose. “The Bibighar Incident”, as it comes to be known, grows into a metaphor: the beginning of the end of the British Raj.
Paul Scott’s extraordinary achievement is to encapsulate this huge canvas into the private lives of a few misfits. Daphne Manners, large boned and clumsy, with none of the charms of the English girl: Hari Kumar (or Harry Coomer, as he likes to call himself), Indian on the outside and English on the inside: and Merrick, the policeman, acutely conscious of his low social standing in British society. This triangle is unlike any other seen in literature, as love and hate in equal measure bind these people together, pulling them into the inevitable vortex at the Bibighar gardens.
The novel unfolds through the perspectives of different characters, often not central to the story. It gives a jagged, kaleidoscopic feel to the narrative which is perfectly in keeping with India. And as the mystery of what happened at Bibighar is revealed, we seem to hear the bells start to ring the death knell of the British Empire.
Read it!
Just look at how Scott starts the novel off:
Imagine, then, a flat landscape, dark for the moment, but even so conveying to a girl running in the still deeper shadow cast by the wall of the Bibighar Gardens an idea of immensity, of distance, such as years before Miss Crane had been conscious of, standing where a lane ended and cultivation began...
Like To Kill a Mockingbird and One Hundred Years of Solitude, the first paragraph hooks you with the whole story encapsulated in it. Then when the novelist goes on to say "this is the story of a rape...", you are lost for good.
It is 1942, and Gandhi has delivered the ultimatum to the British - "Quit India!" - in his quietly arrogant way. Everywhere, the winds of change are felt, as the worm is finally turning. In this chaotic situation, a British woman is raped by Indians-and all hell breaks loose. “The Bibighar Incident”, as it comes to be known, grows into a metaphor: the beginning of the end of the British Raj.
Paul Scott’s extraordinary achievement is to encapsulate this huge canvas into the private lives of a few misfits. Daphne Manners, large boned and clumsy, with none of the charms of the English girl: Hari Kumar (or Harry Coomer, as he likes to call himself), Indian on the outside and English on the inside: and Merrick, the policeman, acutely conscious of his low social standing in British society. This triangle is unlike any other seen in literature, as love and hate in equal measure bind these people together, pulling them into the inevitable vortex at the Bibighar gardens.
The novel unfolds through the perspectives of different characters, often not central to the story. It gives a jagged, kaleidoscopic feel to the narrative which is perfectly in keeping with India. And as the mystery of what happened at Bibighar is revealed, we seem to hear the bells start to ring the death knell of the British Empire.
Read it!
September 15, 2023
Back in the late 1960s and 70s, many young people in the UK and other Western countries were fascinated by the East, and especially by India. The search for meaning in life, something greater and mysterious, ran through youthful consciousness. Self-development was at its core; nothing to do with career paths, but to find one’s inner truth or being, and there was a burgeoning desire to experience the ideas and lifestyles of other cultures. This was reflected in the hybrid popular music, newly spicy and aromatic foods, and jingly bangles and beads, the colourful silks and brocades which flooded the fashion scene of the time – for both genders. And scores upon scores of young people upped and went to India to “find themselves”.
I too felt the pull. Teaching in an inner city school I was surrounded by children from many different cultures, the greatest group by far being those from Bangladesh, a country only formed in 1947, when India and Pakistan were partitioned. Bangladesh or East Pakistan was separate from the rest of Pakistan (West Pakistan), and the children I taught from these 3 countries were all very different from each other. In fact the children were also from different parts of India, from the Northern parts right down to Tamil Nadu and Sri Lanka (which used to be called Ceylon when under Colonial rule). My colleagues variously went off to explore, hoping to find work locally and having verbal invitations galore from the families of the children we taught, to stay with them and share their lives. Work was easy to come by, provided one was happy to live the simple life, and this was a time when “aspirations” were more to do with experiencing variety, freedom of thought and options than acquisitiveness. Assimilating wealth was decidedly uncool.
Off they went with their rucksacks, novels such as this one, and money enough for a single ticket, expecting to backpack when they were there. No internet in those days, and no mobile phones either. Occasionally those back at home would hear from them – maybe a postcard - and eventually a year or two later they might return, knowing that in the stable Britain of the time, it would be easy enough to find a job of some kind.
This then, was the time when I first read The Jewel in the Crown, along with many of my friends. It was a time when British people were tired, and largely ashamed, of their Imperial past.
Here is the allegorical painting, “The Jewel in her Crown”
reflecting a time when India was considered the “jewel” of Queen Victoria’s Empire.
But the magnetism of India for 1960s and 70s youth, was nothing to do with Colonialism, but rather the reverse. Nobody was interested any more in the names of the Empire builders, now long gone, whose statues were beginning to be an embarrassment in cities and towns. They were the old fogies, sometimes a source of great hilarity and ridicule. Yet still, there was this quartet of literary novels by Paul Scott, set in the dying days of the British Raj in India. It seemed an extraordinary theme to have chosen in trendy 1966.
So it was not surprising that critical acclaim was slow to come. My own reading was in the late 1970s, and by 1984 a television series had been made of the four novels, a series which starred many famous actors and introduced a few who today are household names. For fourteen hours, spread over three months, the nation was gripped by this part of our history; shameful and noble by turn. It was a gamble, but one which was a huge success. It sparked a huge wave of nostalgia for the British Raj, and an interest in romantic writers such as M.M. Kaye. People were fascinated by the dynamics of the relationships, by the idea of a small country ruling such a huge one, encompassing such vast differences and variety. But the constitutional aspect was played down. People did not want politics and law courts. The novelty aspect was uppermost. Glamour and squalor. The “stiff upper lip” British, the majestic rajahs, the English Officers’ clubs and the cool, haughty memsahibs. The traditions of India. This is what came across very well in the dramatisation of “The Raj Quartet”, under the general title of the first novel, The Jewel in the Crown. The story line was gripping too, and once seen, it remains a series which is not easily forgotten.
Thirty-odd years later, sensibilities have changed once more. The lines are blurred. As a country we are far more multicultural, and India no longer seems exotic, but just a country where our friends of all cultures might have relatives, or a holiday destination for those with spare cash. Travelling is easier than ever before. People move from continent to continent without it feeling like a momentous decision. We can pick up the phone and talk to someone on the other side of the world as easily as to our neighbours.
Reading the original first novel, The Jewel in the Crown now, it seems even more like a piece of history long gone, with perceptions we find mind-bogglingly patronising, and so alien to our modern view that they are hard to grasp. The British largely viewed their role in India as “nurturing” another culture until they were politically mature enough to govern themselves. But during the Second World War was a time of political unrest in India. For years the British had promised to leave India to govern itself, but when World War II broke out, Britain feared that the Japanese would invade India if they left. The Indian leaders, in particular the Mahatma Gandhi, demanded that the British quit India, but because they considered the time to be militarily dangerous for India, the British administrative and military establishment actively tried to suppress any unrest in the towns.
The Jewel in the Crown is a long novel, focusing on the rising power struggle in India. The tensions between the Indian population of the fictitious town of Mayapore, and the British civil and military authorities are high. Not only is British rule beginning to waver, and be considered as inappropriate even by some of the British themselves, but there are complex additional tensions, due to political, racial and religious differences.
It is clear that the human relationships are portrayed only to demonstrate a far larger political concern. In fact, just as in E.M. Forster’s earlier masterpiece, “A Passage to India”, the characters can be seen as a metaphor for the entire novel. In many ways, The Jewel in the Crown seems like its natural successor, even to its mirroring the Adela/Aziz affair.
The novel is written in seven episodes, each told from a different point of view. It is not in chronological order, as each character focuses on what is paramount in their minds, and their voices – even to the very vernacular - are very clear. Sometimes they speak directly to the reader (or a listener who may be present in the narrative), and sometimes we read part of a letter, or official report. The writing is stylish and convincing. There is a great sense of place; the sights and smells of India are very present, and the descriptions are powerful and evocative. Allowing these different viewpoints of what is basically the same story, the same history, told through the eyes of different characters, is inspired, as it allows for many more nuances than a simple direct telling of the story could. The shades of Anglo–Indian sensibilities – loyalties and prejudices - become much more marked. Although we are told at the very beginning what the story will be about, the actual facts of what happens in the Bibighar Gardens on one fateful evening are not revealed until the main character involved describes them in the final pages.
This is from page 1:
“This is the story of a rape, of the events that led up to it and followed it and of the place in which it happened. There are the action, the people, and the place; all of which are interrelated but in their totality incommunicable in isolation from the moral continuum of human affairs.”
We see how slight was the hold on their power, which the British Raj had at this time. We see how increasingly desperate to “keep order” (as they saw it) they were becoming; and how easy it was becoming for an innocent person to be found guilty of political crimes against the British occupation and sent to prison.
It is surprising that such a book can hold the attention, since there is no attempt at mystery or tension, but merely a carefully balanced and largely neutral account, giving equal weight to all points of view, and showing how misrepresentations, partisan beliefs, ambitions and resentments influenced the events portrayed. For of course although this is a time capsule, a snippet of time, the human condition itself is timeless.
To this very day we have our Captain Ronald Merricks and our Hari Kumars: the prejudiced and the proud. We have our Daphne Manners and our Edwina Cranes: the intelligent and the well-meaning. We have our “Sister” Ludmillas – our eccentrics – and our Army Officers with their devotion to duty, the Brigadier A.V. Reid and the Deputy Commissioner, Robin White. We can recognise Lady Chatterjee’s enduring dignity under duress too, as timeless.
It is perhaps a matter of personality and reading taste, which sections a specific reader will find most interesting.
The first part is entitled, “Miss Crane”. Edwina Crane, the head of the Christian schools in the district which includes Mayapore, (a fictional Indian town) narrates her own life story. From the very start the author makes an excellent job of making us empathise with the viewpoint character. We feel Miss Edwina Crane’s frustration and great sense of honour, even though her life has been so channelled, and she is set in that specific time. She tries to think freely, and to escape the bounds of her culture and class. . Her story is very moving, and details both the increasingly strained relationships between the British and the Indian people, and the catastrophic events leading up to her final act of .
“As Mr. Poulson said afterwards, the troubles in Mayapore began for him with the sight of old Miss Crane sitting in the pouring rain by the roadside holding the hand of a dead Indian.”
It is indeed a tragic tale, and happening at the same time, in many ways parallels the central theme; the rape of a young British woman, both revealing the unrest, oppression and mob rule between which communities lurched at this time. By now we realise that this novel is not just an exciting drama, set in India during the time when it was under British rule. Paul Scott is going to point out some disturbing facts, and make his readers ask awkward questions. The British were well-meaning, but even some of those British there had begin to wonder whether they were doing any good, or merely fuelling the growing dissention between factions, as well as that against their governance.
Part 2, “The MacGregor House” switches time and place. The MacGregor House is a grand house in Mayapore, which had been built by a wealthy Scotsman. He had been killed, along with his wife and child, in a violent uprising many years before. There is a local legend that the ghost of his wife still haunts the house. Near the house are the Bibighar Gardens, once the gardens of another large house owned by MacGregor, but which he had burned down, leaving only the walled garden. Both house and garden are known to be places of sorrow and tragedy, thought to be “unlucky”. We meet the present inhabitant of the house, the narrator of this section, the Anglo-Indian Lady Chatterjee. She is the widow of Sir Nello, a businessman and benefactor who had been knighted by the British. With her lives shy and gawky young Daphne Manners, the English niece of a great friend of hers, and their Indian servants Bhalu and Raju. Lili Chatterjee’s viewpoint is actually written as overt narration to an unknown listener. We gradually learn a lot of history, and also, because she is referring to events in her past, we hear what is to come in the novel, becoming more aware of the events in a fuller sense than in a standard timeline novel. Some things become clearer, some remain as intriguing hints.
The third section switches to “Sister Ludmilla”, who has yet another unique viewpoint. Her origins are mysterious, and she sounds slightly Germanic. Although she dresses like a nun, and the locals calls her such, she does not seem to be one. Sister Ludmilla has established a “Sanctuary” in Mayapore where she feeds and cares for those who are sick and homeless in the Indian community, whom she “collects” on a stretcher, and takes back to her sanctuary to look after. She has a reputation for being an eccentric, since only the dying seem to interest her.
In part four, “An Evening at the Club” we get more of a sense of the ruling British sensibilities. It describes a visitor to Mayapore being entertained at the “Gymkhana Club”. Ostensibly this club caters for all, the British, Anglo-Indian and Indian people. But we see the snubs, both outright and implied, which the British women direct at Lady Chatterjee and a lawyer named Mr. Srinivasan. We are getting a sense of the complex nature of Indian society, and the burgeoning unrest and resentment. We start to fill in more details of the picture.
Part Five is particularly interesting. Titled “Young Kumar” it is the life story of one of the protagonists “Hari Kumar”, starting a couple of generations back. It describes how his father was so concerned that he should be English, that he should think himself English from the inside, that he was called “Harry Coomer” at his prestigious English public school “Chillingborough”. He dreaded his son speaking the sing-song English adopted by those educated Indians, whom he considered lackeys of the British in India. We learn the history of this family; the story of his father, Duleep, who renamed himself “David”, and the two versions of the end of his life. We learn what Hari has done with his life so far, and why it is that Hari is now in India, unable to speak more than “pidgin Hindi”, and feeling like a fish out of water. His education and tastes are English; his accent impeccably English upper class. In England he would have status. Here though, he is aware, he has no money, no status, no prospects and is faced with with amusement, contempt or resentment, wherever he turns. His face – his colour - does not match his accent. He seems more English than the English themselves. He also, unsurprisingly, has an enormous chip on his shoulder.
Part Six is a bit of a slog to read, in my opinion, unless you are particularly interested in military strategy. It is a very dry account. The first section, “The Military”, is an account by Brigadier A.V. Reid, who has been sent from Rawalpindi to oversee the formation of an Indian infantry division of the British Army in Mayapore. It is an extract from part of his memoirs, describing the events leading up to the unrest and the ensuing uprising in Mayapore. “The Civil”, coming second, is a transcript of Deputy Commissioner Robin White’s version of the same events. It is a meticulous account of the political factions and conditions which pertain. However, additionally through these accounts, we get a very full picture of some of the characters involved in the issues, particularly Captain Ronald Merrick, the British police superintendent, whom we have not met directly.
Part Seven, “The Bibighar Gardens” is by far the most gripping part of the novel to read. It mostly comprises extracts from a journal by Daphne Manners, the niece of a former governor of India. It is addressed to her aunt, Lady Ethel Manners, with whom she used to live before she went to live in the MacGregor House with Lady Chatterjee, a friend of the Manners’ family. Written retrospectively as an apology, there is a lot of preamble, filling in the scene and the time. By this we become certain that Daphne Manners is both intelligent and trustworthy as a narrator. It is a tragic tale, as she record the events clearly, dispassionately and in great detail. We see great courage and suffering, , and the iniquities of her life at the time, within an Indian society which was largely segregated.
This is an outstanding novel, which could easily rate 5 stars if it were not for the sheer bulk, and a feeling that parts of it are a little too long and rambling. The pace is steady, and it feels very detached and “English”, even though the perceptions of Anglo-Indians and Indians seem authentic. The insight is startling. There are so many shades of sensitivity or oversensitivity to ethnicity, or simple brutishness.
This remarkable novel is not an easy read; inevitably difficult perhaps because we see a society where the prejudice is so endemic, even when those in power viewed themselves as “benevolent”. And because we are aware of the history following, we know it can only get worse. You can feel the underlying throbbing tensions throughout the read. We wince at the liberal-minded British, who come across as paternalistic, and patronising.
Paul Scott is a master of style. The structure is intriguing and works well. The book is written as a sort of jigsaw puzzle, to put together intriguing snippets to make the whole. He drops hints, and refers to events in the past which we want to have fully fleshed out. All the different viewpoints and times add a richness. This is not a page-turner, but a leisurely read; a book where the reader can immerse themselves in the atmosphere and sense of place. Also the different narrative perspectives and flashbacks, the varying time frames, lead the reader to a slower pace.
Paul Scott was conscripted into the British Army as a private early in 1940, and all his novels draw on his experiences of India and service in the armed forces. They feature social privilege and class, oppression and racial strata within the British Empire. He always felt himself to be an outsider in his own country:
“For me, the British Raj is an extended metaphor [and] I don’t think a writer chooses his metaphors. They choose him.”
The central metaphor is the parting gift, the semi-allegorical and semi-historical picture, “The Jewel in Her Crown”, given to Miss Crane when she transferred from Muzzfirabad to Mayapore:
“the old Queen, (whose image the children now no doubt confused with the person of Miss Crane) surrounded by representative figures of her Indian empire: princes, land owners, merchants, money-lenders, sepoys, farmers, servants, children, mothers, and remarkably clean and tidy beggars...An Indian prince...was approaching the throne bearing a velvet cushion on which he offered a large and sparkling gem”.
The “jewel” in the title is India herself, in the crown of the British Empire. The metaphor conveys paternalism, with Indian people a subject race, who are ruled by the British Raj. The Queen is Victoria, but metaphorically she is the Raj too. There is love in this paternalistic relationship, but in the end it is thwarted.
As I closed the book, I realised that I had made an assumption on page one. When I read, “This is the story of a rape ...” I had assumed that the rape was of a person.
But it is not only that. It is also about the rape of a country.
I too felt the pull. Teaching in an inner city school I was surrounded by children from many different cultures, the greatest group by far being those from Bangladesh, a country only formed in 1947, when India and Pakistan were partitioned. Bangladesh or East Pakistan was separate from the rest of Pakistan (West Pakistan), and the children I taught from these 3 countries were all very different from each other. In fact the children were also from different parts of India, from the Northern parts right down to Tamil Nadu and Sri Lanka (which used to be called Ceylon when under Colonial rule). My colleagues variously went off to explore, hoping to find work locally and having verbal invitations galore from the families of the children we taught, to stay with them and share their lives. Work was easy to come by, provided one was happy to live the simple life, and this was a time when “aspirations” were more to do with experiencing variety, freedom of thought and options than acquisitiveness. Assimilating wealth was decidedly uncool.
Off they went with their rucksacks, novels such as this one, and money enough for a single ticket, expecting to backpack when they were there. No internet in those days, and no mobile phones either. Occasionally those back at home would hear from them – maybe a postcard - and eventually a year or two later they might return, knowing that in the stable Britain of the time, it would be easy enough to find a job of some kind.
This then, was the time when I first read The Jewel in the Crown, along with many of my friends. It was a time when British people were tired, and largely ashamed, of their Imperial past.
Here is the allegorical painting, “The Jewel in her Crown”
reflecting a time when India was considered the “jewel” of Queen Victoria’s Empire.
But the magnetism of India for 1960s and 70s youth, was nothing to do with Colonialism, but rather the reverse. Nobody was interested any more in the names of the Empire builders, now long gone, whose statues were beginning to be an embarrassment in cities and towns. They were the old fogies, sometimes a source of great hilarity and ridicule. Yet still, there was this quartet of literary novels by Paul Scott, set in the dying days of the British Raj in India. It seemed an extraordinary theme to have chosen in trendy 1966.
So it was not surprising that critical acclaim was slow to come. My own reading was in the late 1970s, and by 1984 a television series had been made of the four novels, a series which starred many famous actors and introduced a few who today are household names. For fourteen hours, spread over three months, the nation was gripped by this part of our history; shameful and noble by turn. It was a gamble, but one which was a huge success. It sparked a huge wave of nostalgia for the British Raj, and an interest in romantic writers such as M.M. Kaye. People were fascinated by the dynamics of the relationships, by the idea of a small country ruling such a huge one, encompassing such vast differences and variety. But the constitutional aspect was played down. People did not want politics and law courts. The novelty aspect was uppermost. Glamour and squalor. The “stiff upper lip” British, the majestic rajahs, the English Officers’ clubs and the cool, haughty memsahibs. The traditions of India. This is what came across very well in the dramatisation of “The Raj Quartet”, under the general title of the first novel, The Jewel in the Crown. The story line was gripping too, and once seen, it remains a series which is not easily forgotten.
Thirty-odd years later, sensibilities have changed once more. The lines are blurred. As a country we are far more multicultural, and India no longer seems exotic, but just a country where our friends of all cultures might have relatives, or a holiday destination for those with spare cash. Travelling is easier than ever before. People move from continent to continent without it feeling like a momentous decision. We can pick up the phone and talk to someone on the other side of the world as easily as to our neighbours.
Reading the original first novel, The Jewel in the Crown now, it seems even more like a piece of history long gone, with perceptions we find mind-bogglingly patronising, and so alien to our modern view that they are hard to grasp. The British largely viewed their role in India as “nurturing” another culture until they were politically mature enough to govern themselves. But during the Second World War was a time of political unrest in India. For years the British had promised to leave India to govern itself, but when World War II broke out, Britain feared that the Japanese would invade India if they left. The Indian leaders, in particular the Mahatma Gandhi, demanded that the British quit India, but because they considered the time to be militarily dangerous for India, the British administrative and military establishment actively tried to suppress any unrest in the towns.
The Jewel in the Crown is a long novel, focusing on the rising power struggle in India. The tensions between the Indian population of the fictitious town of Mayapore, and the British civil and military authorities are high. Not only is British rule beginning to waver, and be considered as inappropriate even by some of the British themselves, but there are complex additional tensions, due to political, racial and religious differences.
It is clear that the human relationships are portrayed only to demonstrate a far larger political concern. In fact, just as in E.M. Forster’s earlier masterpiece, “A Passage to India”, the characters can be seen as a metaphor for the entire novel. In many ways, The Jewel in the Crown seems like its natural successor, even to its mirroring the Adela/Aziz affair.
The novel is written in seven episodes, each told from a different point of view. It is not in chronological order, as each character focuses on what is paramount in their minds, and their voices – even to the very vernacular - are very clear. Sometimes they speak directly to the reader (or a listener who may be present in the narrative), and sometimes we read part of a letter, or official report. The writing is stylish and convincing. There is a great sense of place; the sights and smells of India are very present, and the descriptions are powerful and evocative. Allowing these different viewpoints of what is basically the same story, the same history, told through the eyes of different characters, is inspired, as it allows for many more nuances than a simple direct telling of the story could. The shades of Anglo–Indian sensibilities – loyalties and prejudices - become much more marked. Although we are told at the very beginning what the story will be about, the actual facts of what happens in the Bibighar Gardens on one fateful evening are not revealed until the main character involved describes them in the final pages.
This is from page 1:
“This is the story of a rape, of the events that led up to it and followed it and of the place in which it happened. There are the action, the people, and the place; all of which are interrelated but in their totality incommunicable in isolation from the moral continuum of human affairs.”
We see how slight was the hold on their power, which the British Raj had at this time. We see how increasingly desperate to “keep order” (as they saw it) they were becoming; and how easy it was becoming for an innocent person to be found guilty of political crimes against the British occupation and sent to prison.
It is surprising that such a book can hold the attention, since there is no attempt at mystery or tension, but merely a carefully balanced and largely neutral account, giving equal weight to all points of view, and showing how misrepresentations, partisan beliefs, ambitions and resentments influenced the events portrayed. For of course although this is a time capsule, a snippet of time, the human condition itself is timeless.
To this very day we have our Captain Ronald Merricks and our Hari Kumars: the prejudiced and the proud. We have our Daphne Manners and our Edwina Cranes: the intelligent and the well-meaning. We have our “Sister” Ludmillas – our eccentrics – and our Army Officers with their devotion to duty, the Brigadier A.V. Reid and the Deputy Commissioner, Robin White. We can recognise Lady Chatterjee’s enduring dignity under duress too, as timeless.
It is perhaps a matter of personality and reading taste, which sections a specific reader will find most interesting.
The first part is entitled, “Miss Crane”. Edwina Crane, the head of the Christian schools in the district which includes Mayapore, (a fictional Indian town) narrates her own life story. From the very start the author makes an excellent job of making us empathise with the viewpoint character. We feel Miss Edwina Crane’s frustration and great sense of honour, even though her life has been so channelled, and she is set in that specific time. She tries to think freely, and to escape the bounds of her culture and class. . Her story is very moving, and details both the increasingly strained relationships between the British and the Indian people, and the catastrophic events leading up to her final act of .
“As Mr. Poulson said afterwards, the troubles in Mayapore began for him with the sight of old Miss Crane sitting in the pouring rain by the roadside holding the hand of a dead Indian.”
It is indeed a tragic tale, and happening at the same time, in many ways parallels the central theme; the rape of a young British woman, both revealing the unrest, oppression and mob rule between which communities lurched at this time. By now we realise that this novel is not just an exciting drama, set in India during the time when it was under British rule. Paul Scott is going to point out some disturbing facts, and make his readers ask awkward questions. The British were well-meaning, but even some of those British there had begin to wonder whether they were doing any good, or merely fuelling the growing dissention between factions, as well as that against their governance.
Part 2, “The MacGregor House” switches time and place. The MacGregor House is a grand house in Mayapore, which had been built by a wealthy Scotsman. He had been killed, along with his wife and child, in a violent uprising many years before. There is a local legend that the ghost of his wife still haunts the house. Near the house are the Bibighar Gardens, once the gardens of another large house owned by MacGregor, but which he had burned down, leaving only the walled garden. Both house and garden are known to be places of sorrow and tragedy, thought to be “unlucky”. We meet the present inhabitant of the house, the narrator of this section, the Anglo-Indian Lady Chatterjee. She is the widow of Sir Nello, a businessman and benefactor who had been knighted by the British. With her lives shy and gawky young Daphne Manners, the English niece of a great friend of hers, and their Indian servants Bhalu and Raju. Lili Chatterjee’s viewpoint is actually written as overt narration to an unknown listener. We gradually learn a lot of history, and also, because she is referring to events in her past, we hear what is to come in the novel, becoming more aware of the events in a fuller sense than in a standard timeline novel. Some things become clearer, some remain as intriguing hints.
The third section switches to “Sister Ludmilla”, who has yet another unique viewpoint. Her origins are mysterious, and she sounds slightly Germanic. Although she dresses like a nun, and the locals calls her such, she does not seem to be one. Sister Ludmilla has established a “Sanctuary” in Mayapore where she feeds and cares for those who are sick and homeless in the Indian community, whom she “collects” on a stretcher, and takes back to her sanctuary to look after. She has a reputation for being an eccentric, since only the dying seem to interest her.
In part four, “An Evening at the Club” we get more of a sense of the ruling British sensibilities. It describes a visitor to Mayapore being entertained at the “Gymkhana Club”. Ostensibly this club caters for all, the British, Anglo-Indian and Indian people. But we see the snubs, both outright and implied, which the British women direct at Lady Chatterjee and a lawyer named Mr. Srinivasan. We are getting a sense of the complex nature of Indian society, and the burgeoning unrest and resentment. We start to fill in more details of the picture.
Part Five is particularly interesting. Titled “Young Kumar” it is the life story of one of the protagonists “Hari Kumar”, starting a couple of generations back. It describes how his father was so concerned that he should be English, that he should think himself English from the inside, that he was called “Harry Coomer” at his prestigious English public school “Chillingborough”. He dreaded his son speaking the sing-song English adopted by those educated Indians, whom he considered lackeys of the British in India. We learn the history of this family; the story of his father, Duleep, who renamed himself “David”, and the two versions of the end of his life. We learn what Hari has done with his life so far, and why it is that Hari is now in India, unable to speak more than “pidgin Hindi”, and feeling like a fish out of water. His education and tastes are English; his accent impeccably English upper class. In England he would have status. Here though, he is aware, he has no money, no status, no prospects and is faced with with amusement, contempt or resentment, wherever he turns. His face – his colour - does not match his accent. He seems more English than the English themselves. He also, unsurprisingly, has an enormous chip on his shoulder.
Part Six is a bit of a slog to read, in my opinion, unless you are particularly interested in military strategy. It is a very dry account. The first section, “The Military”, is an account by Brigadier A.V. Reid, who has been sent from Rawalpindi to oversee the formation of an Indian infantry division of the British Army in Mayapore. It is an extract from part of his memoirs, describing the events leading up to the unrest and the ensuing uprising in Mayapore. “The Civil”, coming second, is a transcript of Deputy Commissioner Robin White’s version of the same events. It is a meticulous account of the political factions and conditions which pertain. However, additionally through these accounts, we get a very full picture of some of the characters involved in the issues, particularly Captain Ronald Merrick, the British police superintendent, whom we have not met directly.
Part Seven, “The Bibighar Gardens” is by far the most gripping part of the novel to read. It mostly comprises extracts from a journal by Daphne Manners, the niece of a former governor of India. It is addressed to her aunt, Lady Ethel Manners, with whom she used to live before she went to live in the MacGregor House with Lady Chatterjee, a friend of the Manners’ family. Written retrospectively as an apology, there is a lot of preamble, filling in the scene and the time. By this we become certain that Daphne Manners is both intelligent and trustworthy as a narrator. It is a tragic tale, as she record the events clearly, dispassionately and in great detail. We see great courage and suffering, , and the iniquities of her life at the time, within an Indian society which was largely segregated.
This is an outstanding novel, which could easily rate 5 stars if it were not for the sheer bulk, and a feeling that parts of it are a little too long and rambling. The pace is steady, and it feels very detached and “English”, even though the perceptions of Anglo-Indians and Indians seem authentic. The insight is startling. There are so many shades of sensitivity or oversensitivity to ethnicity, or simple brutishness.
This remarkable novel is not an easy read; inevitably difficult perhaps because we see a society where the prejudice is so endemic, even when those in power viewed themselves as “benevolent”. And because we are aware of the history following, we know it can only get worse. You can feel the underlying throbbing tensions throughout the read. We wince at the liberal-minded British, who come across as paternalistic, and patronising.
Paul Scott is a master of style. The structure is intriguing and works well. The book is written as a sort of jigsaw puzzle, to put together intriguing snippets to make the whole. He drops hints, and refers to events in the past which we want to have fully fleshed out. All the different viewpoints and times add a richness. This is not a page-turner, but a leisurely read; a book where the reader can immerse themselves in the atmosphere and sense of place. Also the different narrative perspectives and flashbacks, the varying time frames, lead the reader to a slower pace.
Paul Scott was conscripted into the British Army as a private early in 1940, and all his novels draw on his experiences of India and service in the armed forces. They feature social privilege and class, oppression and racial strata within the British Empire. He always felt himself to be an outsider in his own country:
“For me, the British Raj is an extended metaphor [and] I don’t think a writer chooses his metaphors. They choose him.”
The central metaphor is the parting gift, the semi-allegorical and semi-historical picture, “The Jewel in Her Crown”, given to Miss Crane when she transferred from Muzzfirabad to Mayapore:
“the old Queen, (whose image the children now no doubt confused with the person of Miss Crane) surrounded by representative figures of her Indian empire: princes, land owners, merchants, money-lenders, sepoys, farmers, servants, children, mothers, and remarkably clean and tidy beggars...An Indian prince...was approaching the throne bearing a velvet cushion on which he offered a large and sparkling gem”.
The “jewel” in the title is India herself, in the crown of the British Empire. The metaphor conveys paternalism, with Indian people a subject race, who are ruled by the British Raj. The Queen is Victoria, but metaphorically she is the Raj too. There is love in this paternalistic relationship, but in the end it is thwarted.
As I closed the book, I realised that I had made an assumption on page one. When I read, “This is the story of a rape ...” I had assumed that the rape was of a person.
But it is not only that. It is also about the rape of a country.
December 21, 2013
India is The Jewel in the Crown. It signified the Crown's most precious dominion of the Victorian era- its control, forced conformity, "civilizing" and exploitation of India.
Missionary Edwina Crane's semiallegorical picture titled "The Jewel in Her Crown"
In 1942, the end of Empire was imminent, becoming a reality; the only justifiable reason for the British remaining in India was to defeat the Japanese threat of invasion. But, the Indians had lost faith in imperial justifications, their riotous emotions stirred up by Gandhi's seditious slogan: "Quit India". He suggested that the British should leave India "to God or to anarchy."
Scott picked this specific rebellious time to place the rape of the English woman- Daphne Manners- by a rioting gang of Indian "savages"; the brutal beating and framing of her lover- an anglicized, well educated, sophisticated Indian man, Hari Kumar- and the pursuant, violent aftermath between civilians and the police force, led by the arrogant, bigoted, less educated Brit, Ronald Merrick. These events play out as metaphors of white - black relationships and prejudice, superiority and forced submission, resentment and contempt, power and injustice, divide and rule.
Paul Scott had an impressive grasp of the political history of India. His rich characters and themes were well constructed but complex in nature (I do like an allegory, of which there are many). For example, Hari is Indian born, raised in England, educated at a prestigious school and speaks English better than the Brits. He has difficulty finding work back in India because he doesn't speak Hindi. He lacks understanding of his identity and feels like a nobody. Because of the color of his skin, he feels "invisible". He is the hybridized product of England and India. As such, he is both the pride and the failure of imperialism. "Hari", or what he represents, is what this novel is about.
I highly recommend the Jewel in the Crown - I'll definitely be reading the rest of the Raj Quartet.
Missionary Edwina Crane's semiallegorical picture titled "The Jewel in Her Crown"
In 1942, the end of Empire was imminent, becoming a reality; the only justifiable reason for the British remaining in India was to defeat the Japanese threat of invasion. But, the Indians had lost faith in imperial justifications, their riotous emotions stirred up by Gandhi's seditious slogan: "Quit India". He suggested that the British should leave India "to God or to anarchy."
Scott picked this specific rebellious time to place the rape of the English woman- Daphne Manners- by a rioting gang of Indian "savages"; the brutal beating and framing of her lover- an anglicized, well educated, sophisticated Indian man, Hari Kumar- and the pursuant, violent aftermath between civilians and the police force, led by the arrogant, bigoted, less educated Brit, Ronald Merrick. These events play out as metaphors of white - black relationships and prejudice, superiority and forced submission, resentment and contempt, power and injustice, divide and rule.
"There was nothing to conform with, except an idea, a charade played around a phrase: white superiority... India had reached flash point. It was bound to because it was based on a violation. A white man in India can feel physically superior without unsexing himself. But what happens to a woman if she tells herself that 99 percent of the men she sees are not men at all, but creatures of an inferior species whose color is their main distinguishing mark? What happens when you unsex a nation, treat it like a nation of eunuchs? Because that's what we've done,
isn't it?" - Daphne Manners
Paul Scott had an impressive grasp of the political history of India. His rich characters and themes were well constructed but complex in nature (I do like an allegory, of which there are many). For example, Hari is Indian born, raised in England, educated at a prestigious school and speaks English better than the Brits. He has difficulty finding work back in India because he doesn't speak Hindi. He lacks understanding of his identity and feels like a nobody. Because of the color of his skin, he feels "invisible". He is the hybridized product of England and India. As such, he is both the pride and the failure of imperialism. "Hari", or what he represents, is what this novel is about.
"There is a salvation of a kind for a boy like him. He is the leftover, the loose end of our reign, the kind of person we created -I suppose for the best intentions...
The worst aspects of our colonialism will just evaporate into history as imperial mystique, foolish glorification of a severely practical and greedy policy." - Lady Ethel Manners
I highly recommend the Jewel in the Crown - I'll definitely be reading the rest of the Raj Quartet.
January 28, 2019
Truly excellent historical novels capture the history of a time and place through human interactions. History is made by human beings going about their business, with all their failings, prejudices and strivings. This novel is one of the better ones I've ever read in helping to understand India under British rule, The Raj. It not only tells us what, but how, and even more importantly, why. This is the first book of a quartet, and I have no doubt that when I finish the fourth one, I can claim it is the "War and Peace" of India.
The cast of characters in this one is large, set during a time of riots and unrest in Myapore in 1942. WWII is threatening civilization, the Japanese are considering invading India, and white and black, men and women, peasants and politicians are going about their daily lives. I won't go into plot developments because they are numerous, but I will say that young Hari Kumar is one of the most heartbreaking characters among many in this story. I hope to meet him again in the second book, but if not, I wish him well.
The cast of characters in this one is large, set during a time of riots and unrest in Myapore in 1942. WWII is threatening civilization, the Japanese are considering invading India, and white and black, men and women, peasants and politicians are going about their daily lives. I won't go into plot developments because they are numerous, but I will say that young Hari Kumar is one of the most heartbreaking characters among many in this story. I hope to meet him again in the second book, but if not, I wish him well.
April 26, 2021
Under-appreciated, this is a masterful look at the complications (sexual and otherwise) of colonialism. It read like a lucid dream, words tumbling off the page in a haze of memory and suspicion and the aching need to remember. Just read the first paragraph, and you know you're in the hands of a master stylist:
"Imagine, then, a flat landscape, dark for the moment, but even so conveying to a girl running in the still deeper shadow cast by the wall of the Bibighar Gardens an idea of immensity, of distance, such as years before Miss Crane had been conscious of standing where a lane ended and cultivation began: a different landscape but also in the alluvial plain between the mountains of the north and the plateau of the south."
"Imagine, then, a flat landscape, dark for the moment, but even so conveying to a girl running in the still deeper shadow cast by the wall of the Bibighar Gardens an idea of immensity, of distance, such as years before Miss Crane had been conscious of standing where a lane ended and cultivation began: a different landscape but also in the alluvial plain between the mountains of the north and the plateau of the south."
June 20, 2018
Paul Scott’s Jewel in the Crown is an expansive work that tackles every difficult issue that could be imagined for British ruled India. It takes place during the 1940’s, with World War II being fought and ravaging the English homeland, India being used as a buffer between the British forces and Japan, and the painful transition to self-government that can no longer be pushed off by the British rulers. Into this powder keg are dropped an English girl, Daphne Manners, who has been raised by a liberal-minded aunt and uncle, and an Indian boy, Hari Kumar, who has been reared in England and knows nothing of India and the squalor or prejudices she contains.
On page one we are told, This is the story of a rape, of the events that led up to it and followed it and of the place in which it happened. It is indeed all of that, but it is also the story of people caught in an out-of-control situation that is both personal and political, and an event that is subjected to interpretations that do not seek for truth or justice and are rooted in prejudice and preconception.
"The action of such an attitude is rather like that of a sieve. Only what is relevant to the attitude gets through. The rest gets thrown away. The real relevance and truth of what gets through the mesh then depends on the relevance and truth of the attitude, doesn't it? If one agrees with that one is at once back on the ground of personal preference--even prejudice--which may or may not have anything to do with truth."
Therein lies the problem, even the most even-handed of the British find it almost impossible not to view the Indian people through this sieve, this attitude, that always leaves them with more or less the outcome they anticipate, primarily because they have pre-ordained it. They do not know what to do with a person who should be on their side of the divide but who fails to look at the Indian population through this filter.
In consequence of this attitude, any Indian who does not fit the mold is suspect. Any Indian who does not know and keep his place is dangerous. Any Indian who cannot see that the color of his skin excludes him from a higher society must be taught the finer lessons of societal behavior. Which brings us to Ronald Merrick, a small-minded man who holds a position of too much authority and with too much power and does not hesitate to abuse it or the people who are put in his path. The heightened tensions of the time allow him the latitude he needs to take a very personal revenge on a woman whom he feels has spurned him in favor of an inferior, and a man for whom he has only contempt.
This might be the story of the physical rape of Daphne Manners, but it is as much the story of the emotional rape of Hari Kumar. He is subjected to a kind of demoralization and dehumanization that makes a person weep in despair for all of mankind. At one point in the novel he states that he has become invisible, and he is right that the true self, the individual who is really Harry Coomer (the name he used in England all of his first eighteen years of life), can no longer be seen by anyone beneath the forced personae of Hari Kumar. In his lonely, isolated existence, in which he belongs to neither side of the society--not English because his skin is the wrong color, not Indian because his upbringing and exposures make him foreign--he finds Daphne Manners, a person who sees Harry Kumar, the whole person, both the Indian and the English reality. For Daphne, Harry is real, he is visible.
Kumar was a man who felt in the end he had lost everything, even his Englishness, and could then only meet every situation--even the most painful--in silence, in the hope that out of it he would dredge back up some self-respect.
It hurt me to think that Harry felt the need to gather his self-respect. He had done nothing to deserve the loss of it in the first place. The fact that he was anything but proud of himself was a result of the demeaning reactions of those around him, but in a society that was this constricted, knowing your place was difficult for even those who were raised in full knowledge of their station.
During the English Raj, there were two Indias. They existed side-by-side and they required contact, but there was no tolerance for intermingling them and most of the British population thought of the Indians as a lower species of being, undeserving of their attentions. For those Indians who did achieve some status in government or business, the general attitude was that they should be grateful and remember precisely where the invisible line was drawn. The truly accepting and open officials, such as Daphne’s Aunt Ethel and Uncle Henry, were rare.
The Jewel in the Crown is an impressive and important work. Scott manages to bring India to life in a physical as well as a spiritual sense. He paints scenes that swelter, you can smell the stench of the waste in the river, you can picture the long verandah of The MacGregor House and the lush and overgrown remains of the Bibighar Gardens, smell the fetid breath of the beggars and the acrid smoke of the cheap cigarettes. He is just as facile in painting emotional territory. It was easy to feel the confusion, distress, unhappiness, humiliation, condescension, and momentary joys of his characters.
Perhaps this is why Mayapore had got bigger but made me smaller, because my association with Hari--the one thing that was beginning to make me feel like a person again--was hedged about, restricted, pressed in on until only by making yourself tiny could you squeeze into it and stand, imprisoned but free, diminished by everything that loomed from outside, but not diminished from the inside; and that was the point, that’s why I speak of joy.
I am looking forward to reading the next novel in this series that make up the Raj Quartet. With all the novels and movies I have seen that dealt with this time period, this one stands out as the first time I have felt that India was at my fingertips in all her guises and with all her glories and flaws.
On page one we are told, This is the story of a rape, of the events that led up to it and followed it and of the place in which it happened. It is indeed all of that, but it is also the story of people caught in an out-of-control situation that is both personal and political, and an event that is subjected to interpretations that do not seek for truth or justice and are rooted in prejudice and preconception.
"The action of such an attitude is rather like that of a sieve. Only what is relevant to the attitude gets through. The rest gets thrown away. The real relevance and truth of what gets through the mesh then depends on the relevance and truth of the attitude, doesn't it? If one agrees with that one is at once back on the ground of personal preference--even prejudice--which may or may not have anything to do with truth."
Therein lies the problem, even the most even-handed of the British find it almost impossible not to view the Indian people through this sieve, this attitude, that always leaves them with more or less the outcome they anticipate, primarily because they have pre-ordained it. They do not know what to do with a person who should be on their side of the divide but who fails to look at the Indian population through this filter.
In consequence of this attitude, any Indian who does not fit the mold is suspect. Any Indian who does not know and keep his place is dangerous. Any Indian who cannot see that the color of his skin excludes him from a higher society must be taught the finer lessons of societal behavior. Which brings us to Ronald Merrick, a small-minded man who holds a position of too much authority and with too much power and does not hesitate to abuse it or the people who are put in his path. The heightened tensions of the time allow him the latitude he needs to take a very personal revenge on a woman whom he feels has spurned him in favor of an inferior, and a man for whom he has only contempt.
This might be the story of the physical rape of Daphne Manners, but it is as much the story of the emotional rape of Hari Kumar. He is subjected to a kind of demoralization and dehumanization that makes a person weep in despair for all of mankind. At one point in the novel he states that he has become invisible, and he is right that the true self, the individual who is really Harry Coomer (the name he used in England all of his first eighteen years of life), can no longer be seen by anyone beneath the forced personae of Hari Kumar. In his lonely, isolated existence, in which he belongs to neither side of the society--not English because his skin is the wrong color, not Indian because his upbringing and exposures make him foreign--he finds Daphne Manners, a person who sees Harry Kumar, the whole person, both the Indian and the English reality. For Daphne, Harry is real, he is visible.
Kumar was a man who felt in the end he had lost everything, even his Englishness, and could then only meet every situation--even the most painful--in silence, in the hope that out of it he would dredge back up some self-respect.
It hurt me to think that Harry felt the need to gather his self-respect. He had done nothing to deserve the loss of it in the first place. The fact that he was anything but proud of himself was a result of the demeaning reactions of those around him, but in a society that was this constricted, knowing your place was difficult for even those who were raised in full knowledge of their station.
During the English Raj, there were two Indias. They existed side-by-side and they required contact, but there was no tolerance for intermingling them and most of the British population thought of the Indians as a lower species of being, undeserving of their attentions. For those Indians who did achieve some status in government or business, the general attitude was that they should be grateful and remember precisely where the invisible line was drawn. The truly accepting and open officials, such as Daphne’s Aunt Ethel and Uncle Henry, were rare.
The Jewel in the Crown is an impressive and important work. Scott manages to bring India to life in a physical as well as a spiritual sense. He paints scenes that swelter, you can smell the stench of the waste in the river, you can picture the long verandah of The MacGregor House and the lush and overgrown remains of the Bibighar Gardens, smell the fetid breath of the beggars and the acrid smoke of the cheap cigarettes. He is just as facile in painting emotional territory. It was easy to feel the confusion, distress, unhappiness, humiliation, condescension, and momentary joys of his characters.
Perhaps this is why Mayapore had got bigger but made me smaller, because my association with Hari--the one thing that was beginning to make me feel like a person again--was hedged about, restricted, pressed in on until only by making yourself tiny could you squeeze into it and stand, imprisoned but free, diminished by everything that loomed from outside, but not diminished from the inside; and that was the point, that’s why I speak of joy.
I am looking forward to reading the next novel in this series that make up the Raj Quartet. With all the novels and movies I have seen that dealt with this time period, this one stands out as the first time I have felt that India was at my fingertips in all her guises and with all her glories and flaws.
February 10, 2021
The Jewel in the Crown is abstruse, convoluted, and complicated, which is just how the British left India. Racism is slammed in the reader’s face, sharply defining that strange bird known as white superiority. Additionally, the dissection of British/Indian/male/female Muslim/Hindu segregation and it’s subtleties is powerful.
This is one of the most backwards, inside out unfolding of a story I’ve ever read. Each character’s perspective is separately presented and the whole picture is not clear until the end. Character motivations and backgrounds are tightly portrayed and the reader comes to know that a relationship between a white girl and a black boy can only end in tragedy. The use of symbolism in names and descriptions (her eyesight was blurry) helps to convey personalities and conflicts.
Coincidentally, while watching The Crown series on Netflix, I caught Churchill mumbling something about all this trouble was because Mountbatten gave India back. Initially, I thought it a flippant remark when in actuality it reflects the conflict within Britain about its deep seated colonialism.
It’s a complicated work but worth every effort.
This is one of the most backwards, inside out unfolding of a story I’ve ever read. Each character’s perspective is separately presented and the whole picture is not clear until the end. Character motivations and backgrounds are tightly portrayed and the reader comes to know that a relationship between a white girl and a black boy can only end in tragedy. The use of symbolism in names and descriptions (her eyesight was blurry) helps to convey personalities and conflicts.
Coincidentally, while watching The Crown series on Netflix, I caught Churchill mumbling something about all this trouble was because Mountbatten gave India back. Initially, I thought it a flippant remark when in actuality it reflects the conflict within Britain about its deep seated colonialism.
It’s a complicated work but worth every effort.
August 19, 2007
My yardstick for excellent writing about a foreign culture is probably Paul Scott's "The Raj Quartet", which was the basis for the BBC TV series "The Jewel in the Crown". I think these four books are a real tour de force - he writes in several different voices throughout, but remains - I think - completely sensitive to the political and social complexities and subtleties of the situation in India towards the end of the British occupation. Very nuanced, extraordinarily sensitive writing.
Only space on the shelf considerations prevents me from including all four of the quartet on my top 20 shelf (which is now full, and may eventually need to be expanded to 25). Though I do think, if I had to make a judgement that books 1 and 3 in the quartet slightly outrank the other two. But, overall, if you find yourself with time on your hands (even if you don't), the "Raj Quartet" is a wonderful world in which to lose yourself for a couple of weeks.
Then check out the BBC series on DVD and marvel at just how perfect the adaptation is. A true pleasure.
Only space on the shelf considerations prevents me from including all four of the quartet on my top 20 shelf (which is now full, and may eventually need to be expanded to 25). Though I do think, if I had to make a judgement that books 1 and 3 in the quartet slightly outrank the other two. But, overall, if you find yourself with time on your hands (even if you don't), the "Raj Quartet" is a wonderful world in which to lose yourself for a couple of weeks.
Then check out the BBC series on DVD and marvel at just how perfect the adaptation is. A true pleasure.
March 23, 2014
This one will haunt me. The Jewel in the Crown sings an evening raga for India, filled with the sounds of rain, the dust of the dry season, the smells, the labyrinthine back alleys and segregated neighborhoods, and a looming sense of disaster -- national and personal.
I have never seen multiple points of view handled more effectively. The characters weave their way through multiple narratives and are glimpsed through each others' eyes; most of the characters are also granted a moment when they speak for themselves and always in a voice that is theirs alone. Pacing, sentence structure, exposition, the way dialog is rendered, even the clarity of the storytelling, shifts with each new point of view. I was so awed by the technique that I found myself flipping back through the pages thinking 'how is he doing that to my brain?', but as the story unfolded I found myself reading faster and faster, willing myself towards some end that I sensed would be dark, but perhaps not without hope.
I don't think its a spoiler to say that the end is just that way, an evening raga that is sad, but has hopes of dawn, 'the promise of a story continuing instead of finishing', of India as '...the repository of a tradition established for the sake of the future rather than of the past.' Not every mystery is resolved, but that too is like a raga, the only musical form 'conscious of breaking silence and going back into it when it was finished.'
PG-warning: a brutal rape scene--you know its going to happen since the book says so on the first page, but it is still shocking. Other dark thematic elements (bloody uprisings, racism).
I have never seen multiple points of view handled more effectively. The characters weave their way through multiple narratives and are glimpsed through each others' eyes; most of the characters are also granted a moment when they speak for themselves and always in a voice that is theirs alone. Pacing, sentence structure, exposition, the way dialog is rendered, even the clarity of the storytelling, shifts with each new point of view. I was so awed by the technique that I found myself flipping back through the pages thinking 'how is he doing that to my brain?', but as the story unfolded I found myself reading faster and faster, willing myself towards some end that I sensed would be dark, but perhaps not without hope.
I don't think its a spoiler to say that the end is just that way, an evening raga that is sad, but has hopes of dawn, 'the promise of a story continuing instead of finishing', of India as '...the repository of a tradition established for the sake of the future rather than of the past.' Not every mystery is resolved, but that too is like a raga, the only musical form 'conscious of breaking silence and going back into it when it was finished.'
PG-warning: a brutal rape scene--you know its going to happen since the book says so on the first page, but it is still shocking. Other dark thematic elements (bloody uprisings, racism).
June 8, 2018
The Liminal Viewpoint
And in its amazing approach to style. Look at the second sentence of my quote above; it is deliberately involuted writing, whose phrases curl in and around each other in a manner both dense and rich. I quoted that first sentence because it is such a clear summary of the book: the rape, the context of events, and the setting: the fictional town of Mayapore in British-ruled India in 1942. But as I read on, I find that it is the second, more difficult, sentence that is the more significant. For that is what Scott achieves, to paint a complex, many-faceted portrait of "the continuum of human affairs," out of which the story emerges almost by accident, in passing glimpses in a rear-view mirror.
I realize, of course, that there may be some potential readers of the saga who have not seen the Granada series. For them, there will be no question of privileging one thread of "story" over all the rest that Scott gives us, and for their sake I should not say too much more. But there is still the author's own summary, "This is the story of a rape…". Halfway through the book, the crime has been referred to only in passing or evoked by repeated mention of the locale (the Bibighar Gardens, Scott's talismanic equivalent of Forster's Marabar Caves). And we have met the victim, an independently-minded English girl called Daphne Manners, only through a couple of her letters and a few observations by others. Indeed, by the first time we hear of her, on page 74, she is referred to simply as "the girl," and her story has already receded far into the past. Yet the atmosphere of tension is intense.
So what does Scott do while keeping his main story at bay? He gives us a series of portraits of characters whose role in the drama will be peripheral at best, but who collectively will tell us more about the complex interaction of the various British and Indian circles in Mayapore than any single viewpoint could possibly do. There is Edwina Crane, an English spinster who originally went out as a governess, but fell in love with the country, stayed on as a teacher, and wound up as the superintendent of mission schools. There is Lady Chatterjee, widow of local benefactor Sir Nello Chatterjee, and the doyenne of Indian Society. There is Sister Ludmilla, a woman of supposedly Eastern European origin, not affiliated with any religious order, but doing work very like that of Mother Theresa later. There is the lawyer Mr. Srinivasan, writing in 1964, long after the all-white institutions have been opened up, but vividly remembering the years when the first faint cracks in the bastion of privilege began to appear.
None of these people plays a leading part in the story of the rape and its aftermath, but they are very much part of Scott's larger picture. For the crime, when it occurs, will be a polarizing event, a white woman attacked by brown assailants. Indeed, as Scott will make amply clear, India in 1942 was already strongly polarized, dragged into an unpopular war by its British overlords, Ghandi and the Congress Party calling for independence, harsh measures taken against any sign of insurrection, and all this against the simmering conflicts between Hindu and Moslem among the native people, and the terrible racial snobbery on the part of the colonists, most especially the female of the species. I see now that Scott chose these particular foci precisely because they challenge the polarities, because they are liminal. So we have the English governess who leaves her own tribe to work with Indians, the widow of an Indian awarded one of the highest honors from the British crown, a white woman of uncertain nationality whose mission is to work with the poor, and an Indian lawyer enjoying the first fruits of a supposedly classless society.
With the fifth section, we finally get to a major character, Hari Kumar. But he too is liminal: an Indian given an upper-class education in England, but now returned on account of his father's bankruptcy to a country whose native languages he does not even speak. This entire part, furthermore, is back-story, starting with Hari's grandfather; it approaches the threshold of the Bibighar, but does not cross it. The protagonists of the sixth section, "Civil and Military," are both figures of British power in Mayapore: the civil commissioner and the brigadier commanding the troops. But they only emphasize the unbridgeable divide, between reaching a working understanding of the Indians on the one hand, and putting down threats with force on the other.
All these accounts, compiled many years later by a shadowy figure we come to recognize as the author, have given us an extraordinary window onto the political, religious, and cultural background of the Raj. Finally, in the journal of Daphne Manners herself which forms the closing section, we get a direct continuous narrative. But Daphne may be the most liminal figure of all, because she is smack in the middle of that divide, and the only one who freely crosses it. What pulls her out of the security of her tribe is the power of physical attraction. For before there was ever a rape, there was a daring and passionate love.
======
Here are links to my reviews of all the books in the Quartet, in order:
1. The Jewel in the Crown
2. The Day of the Scorpion
3. The Towers of Silence
4. A Division of the Spoils
And to Scott's semi-comic quasi-sequel: Staying On.
This is the story of a rape, of the events that led up to it and followed it, and of the place in which it happened. There are the action, the people, and the place; all of which are interrelated but in their totality incommunicable in isolation from the moral continuum of human affairs.The third paragraph of the first part of the first volume of Paul Scott's monumental Raj Quartet. This my first time reading it, but I thought I knew it from having seen the British Granada TV series twice now, the last quite recently. But Scott's book is a revelation. It is not just the fact of its being another medium; it occupies another dimension—several of them, in fact. Even beside EM Forster's A Passage to India , that touchstone critique of colonialism, it is a work of genius in its scale, in the stupendous breadth of its sympathies, and in its extraordinary narrative technique.
And in its amazing approach to style. Look at the second sentence of my quote above; it is deliberately involuted writing, whose phrases curl in and around each other in a manner both dense and rich. I quoted that first sentence because it is such a clear summary of the book: the rape, the context of events, and the setting: the fictional town of Mayapore in British-ruled India in 1942. But as I read on, I find that it is the second, more difficult, sentence that is the more significant. For that is what Scott achieves, to paint a complex, many-faceted portrait of "the continuum of human affairs," out of which the story emerges almost by accident, in passing glimpses in a rear-view mirror.
I realize, of course, that there may be some potential readers of the saga who have not seen the Granada series. For them, there will be no question of privileging one thread of "story" over all the rest that Scott gives us, and for their sake I should not say too much more. But there is still the author's own summary, "This is the story of a rape…". Halfway through the book, the crime has been referred to only in passing or evoked by repeated mention of the locale (the Bibighar Gardens, Scott's talismanic equivalent of Forster's Marabar Caves). And we have met the victim, an independently-minded English girl called Daphne Manners, only through a couple of her letters and a few observations by others. Indeed, by the first time we hear of her, on page 74, she is referred to simply as "the girl," and her story has already receded far into the past. Yet the atmosphere of tension is intense.
So what does Scott do while keeping his main story at bay? He gives us a series of portraits of characters whose role in the drama will be peripheral at best, but who collectively will tell us more about the complex interaction of the various British and Indian circles in Mayapore than any single viewpoint could possibly do. There is Edwina Crane, an English spinster who originally went out as a governess, but fell in love with the country, stayed on as a teacher, and wound up as the superintendent of mission schools. There is Lady Chatterjee, widow of local benefactor Sir Nello Chatterjee, and the doyenne of Indian Society. There is Sister Ludmilla, a woman of supposedly Eastern European origin, not affiliated with any religious order, but doing work very like that of Mother Theresa later. There is the lawyer Mr. Srinivasan, writing in 1964, long after the all-white institutions have been opened up, but vividly remembering the years when the first faint cracks in the bastion of privilege began to appear.
None of these people plays a leading part in the story of the rape and its aftermath, but they are very much part of Scott's larger picture. For the crime, when it occurs, will be a polarizing event, a white woman attacked by brown assailants. Indeed, as Scott will make amply clear, India in 1942 was already strongly polarized, dragged into an unpopular war by its British overlords, Ghandi and the Congress Party calling for independence, harsh measures taken against any sign of insurrection, and all this against the simmering conflicts between Hindu and Moslem among the native people, and the terrible racial snobbery on the part of the colonists, most especially the female of the species. I see now that Scott chose these particular foci precisely because they challenge the polarities, because they are liminal. So we have the English governess who leaves her own tribe to work with Indians, the widow of an Indian awarded one of the highest honors from the British crown, a white woman of uncertain nationality whose mission is to work with the poor, and an Indian lawyer enjoying the first fruits of a supposedly classless society.
With the fifth section, we finally get to a major character, Hari Kumar. But he too is liminal: an Indian given an upper-class education in England, but now returned on account of his father's bankruptcy to a country whose native languages he does not even speak. This entire part, furthermore, is back-story, starting with Hari's grandfather; it approaches the threshold of the Bibighar, but does not cross it. The protagonists of the sixth section, "Civil and Military," are both figures of British power in Mayapore: the civil commissioner and the brigadier commanding the troops. But they only emphasize the unbridgeable divide, between reaching a working understanding of the Indians on the one hand, and putting down threats with force on the other.
All these accounts, compiled many years later by a shadowy figure we come to recognize as the author, have given us an extraordinary window onto the political, religious, and cultural background of the Raj. Finally, in the journal of Daphne Manners herself which forms the closing section, we get a direct continuous narrative. But Daphne may be the most liminal figure of all, because she is smack in the middle of that divide, and the only one who freely crosses it. What pulls her out of the security of her tribe is the power of physical attraction. For before there was ever a rape, there was a daring and passionate love.
======
Here are links to my reviews of all the books in the Quartet, in order:
1. The Jewel in the Crown
2. The Day of the Scorpion
3. The Towers of Silence
4. A Division of the Spoils
And to Scott's semi-comic quasi-sequel: Staying On.
February 24, 2022
L’ho trovato un libro interessante, soprattutto per gli argomenti che tratta: amori nascosti, segreti da mantenere, rivolte, complotti, razzismo, ingiustizia sociale, la forte crisi politica di due paesi dai destini intrecciati. Nonostante il periodo e l’ambientazione mi piace notevolmente.. il libro mi ha deluso: presenta una narrazione molto lenta, spesso monotona che non invoglia a proseguire, si cambia personaggio e la narrazione dalla prima passa alla terza persona, troppe descrizioni minuziose, anche superflue, il libro racconta gli stessi eventi da punti di vista diversi per mostrare come più persone vedono o pensano una stessa cosa: nel complesso un libro che ho letto ma che non rileggerei più.
January 14, 2024
A novel about WWII era India and after. I couldn't get through its all too florid prose.
December 5, 2013
Susan and I were discussing this book. This is how I explained my three stars to her:
I got up at 4 this morning to write the review which I was thinking about as I lay in bed........then I ended up doing other stuff. I am so terribly busy at the moment.
The book does an excellent job of depicting how Indians and the British looked at each other at the time of Partition. Nevertheless, from the very beginning you know pretty much who did what and even why. The book discusses the same events over and over again showing how the different characters saw these same events. It is interesting to see how the views diverge, however it IS repetitive.
I would have liked to have felt some empathy for at least a few of the characters. Although accurately rendered, the words of the British military figures really exasperated me. British mannerisms have a tendency to annoy me. So even if the story accurately portrays the characters I did not enjoy it.
The audiobook narration was stupendous. Sam Dastor was able to sound like a woman , a man, a British person or an Indian. I checked several times b/c I could not believe there was just one narrator.
I am not one to love a mystery and I am not one who loves British mannerisms. You get a lot of both in this book. Good book, but not a good fit for ME.
What the book does best is perfectly describe how the Indians and British viewed each other, the feelings that prevailed in the 30s and 40s when Partition occurred. You actually get very little history, but you do get the atmosphere of the times.
The above explains why I gave the book three stars. I liked it but not more. That isn't to say it isn't a very well written book.
Oh yeah, as you are told right smack in the beginning, this is a book about a rape. The question that is discussed over and over is who did it, who was accused and why each character behaved as they did.
I got up at 4 this morning to write the review which I was thinking about as I lay in bed........then I ended up doing other stuff. I am so terribly busy at the moment.
The book does an excellent job of depicting how Indians and the British looked at each other at the time of Partition. Nevertheless, from the very beginning you know pretty much who did what and even why. The book discusses the same events over and over again showing how the different characters saw these same events. It is interesting to see how the views diverge, however it IS repetitive.
I would have liked to have felt some empathy for at least a few of the characters. Although accurately rendered, the words of the British military figures really exasperated me. British mannerisms have a tendency to annoy me. So even if the story accurately portrays the characters I did not enjoy it.
The audiobook narration was stupendous. Sam Dastor was able to sound like a woman , a man, a British person or an Indian. I checked several times b/c I could not believe there was just one narrator.
I am not one to love a mystery and I am not one who loves British mannerisms. You get a lot of both in this book. Good book, but not a good fit for ME.
What the book does best is perfectly describe how the Indians and British viewed each other, the feelings that prevailed in the 30s and 40s when Partition occurred. You actually get very little history, but you do get the atmosphere of the times.
The above explains why I gave the book three stars. I liked it but not more. That isn't to say it isn't a very well written book.
Oh yeah, as you are told right smack in the beginning, this is a book about a rape. The question that is discussed over and over is who did it, who was accused and why each character behaved as they did.
May 27, 2020
May 15, 2020: Another reread. If you want the BEST review of this book, check out my friend, Bionic Jean's review. When Jean undertakes to write a review, it is the most thorough and informative you will ever want to read. So far, however, she has only done the first three, as she is spacing them out. The fourth is still on the way. This is a powerfully sweeping historical fiction about the sunset of British Raj. It is a time commitment but you will never forget it.
Late 1990's??? - One of my all time favorite works of fiction. Have watched the BBC production of "The Jewel in the Crown" more times than I can remember. It still enthralls me.
Late 1990's??? - One of my all time favorite works of fiction. Have watched the BBC production of "The Jewel in the Crown" more times than I can remember. It still enthralls me.
May 27, 2017
But we've got far beyond that stage of colonial simplicity. We've created a blundering judicial robot. We can't stop it working... We created it to prove how fair, how civilised we are. But it is a white robot and it can't distinguish between love and rape.
A searing, harrowing, bleak and terrible indictment of British rule in India, this is perhaps the most sophisticated, nuanced and self-aware analysis of colonialism and its inevitably violent destruction that I've read.
Told via a series of voices, the narrative is a palimpsest that centres on events in 1942 when Gandhi was advocating non-violent resistance, and when a young English woman is brutally raped - but these stories are over-written by later perspectives as participants recall their involvement from a future point. This mode of telling does mean that there's a lack of dynamism in the story as so much is 'told' to us rather than shown or dramatised, but the richness, the detail, the acute analysis, the creation of viewpoints is so magnificently crafted that I could forgive that.
This isn't an easy read both because of the sometimes horribly-disturbing subject matter, and the density of the narrative and sheer amount of detail packed into the story - it's a book that requires, and deserves, concentration. But the payoff is magnificent.
A searing, harrowing, bleak and terrible indictment of British rule in India, this is perhaps the most sophisticated, nuanced and self-aware analysis of colonialism and its inevitably violent destruction that I've read.
Told via a series of voices, the narrative is a palimpsest that centres on events in 1942 when Gandhi was advocating non-violent resistance, and when a young English woman is brutally raped - but these stories are over-written by later perspectives as participants recall their involvement from a future point. This mode of telling does mean that there's a lack of dynamism in the story as so much is 'told' to us rather than shown or dramatised, but the richness, the detail, the acute analysis, the creation of viewpoints is so magnificently crafted that I could forgive that.
This isn't an easy read both because of the sometimes horribly-disturbing subject matter, and the density of the narrative and sheer amount of detail packed into the story - it's a book that requires, and deserves, concentration. But the payoff is magnificent.
September 4, 2019
End of Empire...
It’s 1942 and tensions are running high in India. Britain, with its usual high-handedness, has decided that Indian troops will join the war effort without consulting the Indian leaders. Gandhi is demanding that the British quit India, even though that will probably mean that the Japanese move in. When the British arrest the leaders of the Independence movement, for a few short days the peace of Mayapore is broken as rioters take to the streets. And in that time one British woman will see her idealistic dreams destroyed while another will be brutally raped. Eighteen years later, an unnamed researcher will come to Mayapore to try to discover the truth of what happened in those days.
Scott starts by telling us:
But in fact it’s the story of two rapes – the rape perpetrated on Daphne Manners, a white girl who made the fatal mistake of falling in love with an Indian man, and the rape perpetrated by the British Empire on the culture, society and people of India. Written at the height of the breast-beating anti-Colonial guilt experienced in Britain following the gradual letting go of their empire, Scott shows no mercy in his dissection of the evils committed, not so much by individual Brits, though there’s some of that, but by the imposition of one dominant culture over another.
The book is told in a series of sections, each concentrating on one character, and gradually building to create an in-depth picture of fictional Mayapore, which functions as a manageable microcosm for India as a whole. It takes a long time to get to Daphne’s story, deliberately, as Scott circles round, showing life in Mayapore from many different angles and over a period of years both before and after the event, creating a feeling of eventual inevitability about her rape as a thing that rises out of that ‘moral continuum of human affairs’, and feeds back into it.
Scott uses many different styles to tell his story. Some parts are first person “spoken” accounts told to the researcher, some are third person narratives, some take the form of letters between characters, or official reports, and some come from Daphne’s journal. In the third person sections, where it’s written, presumably, in the author’s own style, the language is frequently complex, rather spare and understated at the moments of greatest emotion, but often with lush beauty in the descriptive passages, creating a wonderful sense of this town and the surrounding country. In the other sections, Scott creates individual voices for each of the narrators, suited to the form they’re using, and he sustains these superbly so that one gets a real feel for the personalities behind even the driest and most factual reports.
Some of the sections are intensely human stories, like that of Edwina Crane, a woman who has devoted her empty and lonely life to the Church of England mission schools that teach the Indian children how to be good little English-speaking Christians. Her admiration for Gandhi has finally been destroyed by his recent actions and she has found that the Indian women she had looked to for a meagre form of social life are no longer so keen to be patronised by white women. Or the story of Hari Kumar, an Indian boy brought up in England and suddenly transported back to the country of his birth, where he is an outsider to both cultures – unable to speak the Indian languages and lacking knowledge of their way of life, but as a ‘native’ he is not allowed to be a part of the British community either, despite his impeccable English manners and education.
Other sections are told to the researcher and although their purpose is to shed light on Daphne’s story, the characters reveal as much about themselves along the way: Lady Lili Chatterjee, high caste and with a British title via her deceased husband, she is respected by the British but still subjected to constant, often unthinking, discrimination; or Mr Srinivasan, a lawyer who was involved in the Independence movement, and who shows us the Indian perspective on the political questions. The reports from the military and civil authorities are formal in style, but are accompanied by letters to the researcher, where the characters are able to look back on and reassess events with the perspective of time passed.
And in the last section we learn Daphne’s own story in her own words – not just the story of her rape, but of her life, of the choices she made and of her reasons for making them.
Scott creates a vivid and believable picture of the society, culture and politics that led to this moment in time, but he never forgets to put people at the heart of it. While some sections are focused very much on the political situation and, as a result, might be rather dry for readers who are less interested in that aspect, these are broken up by the often intensely intimate stories of the characters, many of whom become unforgettable. Since I’m fascinated by the British Empire, and India especially, I found the political stuff just as engrossing as the personal. Superbly written, intelligent at the political level and deeply moving at the personal – a wonderful novel.
www.fictionfanblog.wordpress.com
It’s 1942 and tensions are running high in India. Britain, with its usual high-handedness, has decided that Indian troops will join the war effort without consulting the Indian leaders. Gandhi is demanding that the British quit India, even though that will probably mean that the Japanese move in. When the British arrest the leaders of the Independence movement, for a few short days the peace of Mayapore is broken as rioters take to the streets. And in that time one British woman will see her idealistic dreams destroyed while another will be brutally raped. Eighteen years later, an unnamed researcher will come to Mayapore to try to discover the truth of what happened in those days.
Scott starts by telling us:
This is the story of a rape, of the events that led up to it and followed it and of the place in which it happened. There are the action, the people, and the place; all of which are interrelated but in their totality incommunicable in isolation from the moral continuum of human affairs.
But in fact it’s the story of two rapes – the rape perpetrated on Daphne Manners, a white girl who made the fatal mistake of falling in love with an Indian man, and the rape perpetrated by the British Empire on the culture, society and people of India. Written at the height of the breast-beating anti-Colonial guilt experienced in Britain following the gradual letting go of their empire, Scott shows no mercy in his dissection of the evils committed, not so much by individual Brits, though there’s some of that, but by the imposition of one dominant culture over another.
The book is told in a series of sections, each concentrating on one character, and gradually building to create an in-depth picture of fictional Mayapore, which functions as a manageable microcosm for India as a whole. It takes a long time to get to Daphne’s story, deliberately, as Scott circles round, showing life in Mayapore from many different angles and over a period of years both before and after the event, creating a feeling of eventual inevitability about her rape as a thing that rises out of that ‘moral continuum of human affairs’, and feeds back into it.
Scott uses many different styles to tell his story. Some parts are first person “spoken” accounts told to the researcher, some are third person narratives, some take the form of letters between characters, or official reports, and some come from Daphne’s journal. In the third person sections, where it’s written, presumably, in the author’s own style, the language is frequently complex, rather spare and understated at the moments of greatest emotion, but often with lush beauty in the descriptive passages, creating a wonderful sense of this town and the surrounding country. In the other sections, Scott creates individual voices for each of the narrators, suited to the form they’re using, and he sustains these superbly so that one gets a real feel for the personalities behind even the driest and most factual reports.
Some of the sections are intensely human stories, like that of Edwina Crane, a woman who has devoted her empty and lonely life to the Church of England mission schools that teach the Indian children how to be good little English-speaking Christians. Her admiration for Gandhi has finally been destroyed by his recent actions and she has found that the Indian women she had looked to for a meagre form of social life are no longer so keen to be patronised by white women. Or the story of Hari Kumar, an Indian boy brought up in England and suddenly transported back to the country of his birth, where he is an outsider to both cultures – unable to speak the Indian languages and lacking knowledge of their way of life, but as a ‘native’ he is not allowed to be a part of the British community either, despite his impeccable English manners and education.
Other sections are told to the researcher and although their purpose is to shed light on Daphne’s story, the characters reveal as much about themselves along the way: Lady Lili Chatterjee, high caste and with a British title via her deceased husband, she is respected by the British but still subjected to constant, often unthinking, discrimination; or Mr Srinivasan, a lawyer who was involved in the Independence movement, and who shows us the Indian perspective on the political questions. The reports from the military and civil authorities are formal in style, but are accompanied by letters to the researcher, where the characters are able to look back on and reassess events with the perspective of time passed.
And in the last section we learn Daphne’s own story in her own words – not just the story of her rape, but of her life, of the choices she made and of her reasons for making them.
Scott creates a vivid and believable picture of the society, culture and politics that led to this moment in time, but he never forgets to put people at the heart of it. While some sections are focused very much on the political situation and, as a result, might be rather dry for readers who are less interested in that aspect, these are broken up by the often intensely intimate stories of the characters, many of whom become unforgettable. Since I’m fascinated by the British Empire, and India especially, I found the political stuff just as engrossing as the personal. Superbly written, intelligent at the political level and deeply moving at the personal – a wonderful novel.
www.fictionfanblog.wordpress.com
December 23, 2021
Really a beautiful book; really tough one thoough. Incredibly written: UN-english like: almost no dialogues, long long sentences (12/15/20 lines without a fullstop!), more hypotaxis than parataxis. It says "This is the story of a rape, of the events that led up to it and followed it and of the place in which it happened. There are the action, the people, and the place, all of which are interrelated but in their totality incommunicable in isolation from the moral continuum of human affairs.". But it's much more than this. It's the articulated telling of the socalled "partition", but seen from different point of view. Looking into several different aspects, language included! Highly recomended
I realised how much easier it was to talk to another English woman, even if you disagreed with everything she said. People of the same nationality use a kind of shorthand in conversation, don’t they? You spend less effort to express more
Only I had seen the darkness in him, and the darkness in the white man, in Merrick. Two such darknesses in opposition can create a blinding light. Against such a light ordinary mortals must hide their eyes.
because we were thinking in a foreign language that we had never properly considered in relation to our own. [...]English is not spare. But it is beautiful. It cannot be called truthful because its subtleties are infinite. It is the language of a people who have probably earned their reputation for perfidy and hypocrisy because their language itself is so flexible, so often light-headed with statements which appear to mean one thing one year and quite a different thing the next. At least, this is so when it is written, and the English have usually confided their noblest aspirations and intentions to paper. Written, it looks like a way of gaining time and winning confidence. [...] On the college teaching staff there was a preponderance of Englishmen. At the Government Higher School, most of the instruction, although in English, had been in the hands of Indians. He had always understood exactly On the college teaching staff there was a preponderance of Englishmen. At the Government Higher School, most of the instruction, although in English, had been in the hands of Indians. He had always understood exactly
Gandhi was right, of course, it was shameful that in talking to university students he had to speak a foreign language. The reason he had to speak it wasn’t only because all the young men there had achieved their present status by learning and reading in English, but because it was probably the only language they all shared in common. We did nothing really to integrate communities, except by building railways between one and the other to carry their wealth more quickly into our own pockets.
'I could not help but feel proud of the years of British rule. Even in these turbulent times the charm of the cantonment helped one to bear in mind the calm, wise and enduring things. One had only to cross the river into the native town to see that in our cantonments and civil lines we had set an example for others to follow and laid down a design for civilised life that the Indians would one day inherit.' vs 'We were in India for what we could get out of it.'
In those days I was intensely puzzled by Gandhi. On the whole I distrust great men. I think one should. - me too!
Ronald said, ‘That’s the oldest trick in the game, to say colour doesn’t matter. It does matter. It’s basic. It matters like hell.’
In the end I couldn’t bear the silence, the inaction, the separation, the artificiality of my position. I wrote to him. I had no talent for self-denial. It’s an Anglo-Saxon failing, I suppose. Constantly we want proof, here and now, proof of our existence, of the mark we’ve made, the sort of mark we can wear round our necks, to label us, to make sure we’re never lost in that awful dark jungle of anonymity.
I realised how much easier it was to talk to another English woman, even if you disagreed with everything she said. People of the same nationality use a kind of shorthand in conversation, don’t they? You spend less effort to express more
Only I had seen the darkness in him, and the darkness in the white man, in Merrick. Two such darknesses in opposition can create a blinding light. Against such a light ordinary mortals must hide their eyes.
because we were thinking in a foreign language that we had never properly considered in relation to our own. [...]English is not spare. But it is beautiful. It cannot be called truthful because its subtleties are infinite. It is the language of a people who have probably earned their reputation for perfidy and hypocrisy because their language itself is so flexible, so often light-headed with statements which appear to mean one thing one year and quite a different thing the next. At least, this is so when it is written, and the English have usually confided their noblest aspirations and intentions to paper. Written, it looks like a way of gaining time and winning confidence. [...] On the college teaching staff there was a preponderance of Englishmen. At the Government Higher School, most of the instruction, although in English, had been in the hands of Indians. He had always understood exactly On the college teaching staff there was a preponderance of Englishmen. At the Government Higher School, most of the instruction, although in English, had been in the hands of Indians. He had always understood exactly
Gandhi was right, of course, it was shameful that in talking to university students he had to speak a foreign language. The reason he had to speak it wasn’t only because all the young men there had achieved their present status by learning and reading in English, but because it was probably the only language they all shared in common. We did nothing really to integrate communities, except by building railways between one and the other to carry their wealth more quickly into our own pockets.
'I could not help but feel proud of the years of British rule. Even in these turbulent times the charm of the cantonment helped one to bear in mind the calm, wise and enduring things. One had only to cross the river into the native town to see that in our cantonments and civil lines we had set an example for others to follow and laid down a design for civilised life that the Indians would one day inherit.' vs 'We were in India for what we could get out of it.'
In those days I was intensely puzzled by Gandhi. On the whole I distrust great men. I think one should. - me too!
Ronald said, ‘That’s the oldest trick in the game, to say colour doesn’t matter. It does matter. It’s basic. It matters like hell.’
In the end I couldn’t bear the silence, the inaction, the separation, the artificiality of my position. I wrote to him. I had no talent for self-denial. It’s an Anglo-Saxon failing, I suppose. Constantly we want proof, here and now, proof of our existence, of the mark we’ve made, the sort of mark we can wear round our necks, to label us, to make sure we’re never lost in that awful dark jungle of anonymity.
September 11, 2018
Absolutely top drawer! The ‘Jewel in the Crown’ is the first part of Paul Scott’s ‘Raj Quartet’, four novels that deal with the final years of the British Raj in India. The focus of the novel is the story of the events leading up to a rape and what follows, and is disclosed mainly through the pronouncements of the characters in the novel. We soon become aware that the people telling their stories are actually the story itself, and the rape is really just an event through which the author lays bare the thoughts and attitudes of that age. It is hard believe that people could hold views like those and behave as they did, but maybe years in the future someone will be puzzling over our views and behavior in the same way. A really sobering look at the past that should make us consider the present. I would say more, but I must bash off and grab a nimbu before tiffin, and then make a start on the next one in the quartet.
April 27, 2017
Though this book ranks high on the literary scale, and as a subject of interest-- India at the end of the British era, 1930-40s, I got tired of reading it long before the end. Scott gives so many viewpoints of the same event, it was difficult for me to continue turning the pages. Mixed feelings about continuing the series.
November 28, 2015
This is a very clever novel.
If you were ever interested in the last years before Indian Independence, this is the novel. After the arrests of Gandhi and other members of the Indian Congress of 1942 a white woman Daphne Manners is attacked and raped by an unknown gang. But this is not by any means a clear cut, simple historical fiction. Scott uses this one event to look at India under a microscope in 1942, the complex social hierarchies and political philosophies.
'Jewel in the Crown' is a very circular narrative, at times very stream of consciousness, most of the novel is told throw interviews of secondary characters, but I like how this gives a large physiological scope, the Kipling like army officer, the well meaning missionary, the radical, the saint, and the upper class Indian.
I just wish I knew nothing of this novel when I picked it up. I was watching 'Faulks on Fiction' when he discuses one of the Villains of the novel, but Scott opened up a different world, one that is on the point of boiling point, and the English are too busy having a tea party to know that water is bubbling over the pot. But with out Faulks I would have never heard of this book or the Raj quartet.
This is still very much an English view of India, but it is fair and well balanced, and a gorgeous piece of literature.
If you were ever interested in the last years before Indian Independence, this is the novel. After the arrests of Gandhi and other members of the Indian Congress of 1942 a white woman Daphne Manners is attacked and raped by an unknown gang. But this is not by any means a clear cut, simple historical fiction. Scott uses this one event to look at India under a microscope in 1942, the complex social hierarchies and political philosophies.
'Jewel in the Crown' is a very circular narrative, at times very stream of consciousness, most of the novel is told throw interviews of secondary characters, but I like how this gives a large physiological scope, the Kipling like army officer, the well meaning missionary, the radical, the saint, and the upper class Indian.
I just wish I knew nothing of this novel when I picked it up. I was watching 'Faulks on Fiction' when he discuses one of the Villains of the novel, but Scott opened up a different world, one that is on the point of boiling point, and the English are too busy having a tea party to know that water is bubbling over the pot. But with out Faulks I would have never heard of this book or the Raj quartet.
This is still very much an English view of India, but it is fair and well balanced, and a gorgeous piece of literature.
January 20, 2016
Unlike Wide Saargasso Sea, Paul scott casts a wider net to encompass not only social aspect of British reign in India but also explores class warfare within British Indians and the slowly brewing times of revolution.Set in a country on the brink of war and weary of colonial rule, gang rape of a young British woman associated with a young Indian man shakes the apparent stillness that seemed to have covered the vast lands. It stops being a case about a British and an Indian; the investigation takes a different turn when the British woman, Daphne, mentions possibility of a Muslim to be present during the heinous act. The case takes a completely different turn when he
mentions her attackers could very well be British. Using this very publicized case, Paul Scott ruthlessly tears down class structure within British living in India, the communal tension that had always been on back burner in many Indian states, non-sympathetic British rules for educated Indians and the general apathy that many characters have - irrespective of their race or color, towards another.
The event acts as a trigger to already engaging elements in the novel. It brings forth Ronald Merrick, the investigating police officer with internalized homophobia into the mix. A low ranking, lower middle class born Merrick finds at odds with British educated Indian Hari Kumar (who identifies as a British irrespective of his race) and sees him as his prime suspect. Though its a well known fact amidst many British women that Daphene and Hari were lovers, no one speaks out about it. Merrick sees Hari as an antagonist and an object of attraction which he takes out sadistically during Hari's interrogation. Merrick is representative of a tired class that wants nothing but to go home and live their life. This conflict doesn't exist in all the characters which is interesting because some of them - like Lady Crane, loves India in their own way. It's the only life they have known and its a way of life that's still untouched by changes that is happening in the rest of the world and England itself. [Hari isn't allowed in British Indian establishment in India while in England he was free to do so.]
Having several people tell the story gives an interesting dimension to the narration. Each character touches upon subjects they think are vital to explore and some times even digress from the subject at hand. This technique has given Scott to maintain vagueness about things that would otherwise difficult to do so. Thus the narration spends less time in tedious investigation and more on the characters themselves.
Its not a very easy book to read and nor its a book where I can say "I enjoyed it" as there is nothing entertaining about the story. It was a great read for the literature that it is and what it has carried in those pages.
My favorite quote from this book remains - Our so called independence was rather like a shot-gun wedding.
mentions her attackers could very well be British. Using this very publicized case, Paul Scott ruthlessly tears down class structure within British living in India, the communal tension that had always been on back burner in many Indian states, non-sympathetic British rules for educated Indians and the general apathy that many characters have - irrespective of their race or color, towards another.
The event acts as a trigger to already engaging elements in the novel. It brings forth Ronald Merrick, the investigating police officer with internalized homophobia into the mix. A low ranking, lower middle class born Merrick finds at odds with British educated Indian Hari Kumar (who identifies as a British irrespective of his race) and sees him as his prime suspect. Though its a well known fact amidst many British women that Daphene and Hari were lovers, no one speaks out about it. Merrick sees Hari as an antagonist and an object of attraction which he takes out sadistically during Hari's interrogation. Merrick is representative of a tired class that wants nothing but to go home and live their life. This conflict doesn't exist in all the characters which is interesting because some of them - like Lady Crane, loves India in their own way. It's the only life they have known and its a way of life that's still untouched by changes that is happening in the rest of the world and England itself. [Hari isn't allowed in British Indian establishment in India while in England he was free to do so.]
Having several people tell the story gives an interesting dimension to the narration. Each character touches upon subjects they think are vital to explore and some times even digress from the subject at hand. This technique has given Scott to maintain vagueness about things that would otherwise difficult to do so. Thus the narration spends less time in tedious investigation and more on the characters themselves.
Its not a very easy book to read and nor its a book where I can say "I enjoyed it" as there is nothing entertaining about the story. It was a great read for the literature that it is and what it has carried in those pages.
My favorite quote from this book remains - Our so called independence was rather like a shot-gun wedding.
February 16, 2010
This was recommended to me by a friend in the real world (hats off to AC in Islington) and I have to say I am extremely grateful. ‘The Jewel in the Crown’ is an excellent novel, which manages to bring together well drawn characters, a beautiful setting, a crime story and an examination of a disintegrating society.
Towards the end of the Raj a gang rape takes place in Mayapore province. We learn the events leading up to the rape, its immediate aftermath, the way the case against the accused was prosecuted and the effects the whole affair had on those involved. The framing device has a writer contacted the witnesses twenty years after and eliciting their first-hand accounts, as such the narration changes from chapter to chapter as we find out more about the character’s lives in this tumultuous period. There are undoubtedly a lot of digressions – they’re necessary to fully flesh out the world – but the central crime and its effects are never lost sight of.
Paul Scott is not a writer I knew a great deal about (though thanks to my good chum Wikipedia I now know a bit more) but I’m deeply impressed with what I’ve read so far and will hunt down other books by him.
Masterful.
Towards the end of the Raj a gang rape takes place in Mayapore province. We learn the events leading up to the rape, its immediate aftermath, the way the case against the accused was prosecuted and the effects the whole affair had on those involved. The framing device has a writer contacted the witnesses twenty years after and eliciting their first-hand accounts, as such the narration changes from chapter to chapter as we find out more about the character’s lives in this tumultuous period. There are undoubtedly a lot of digressions – they’re necessary to fully flesh out the world – but the central crime and its effects are never lost sight of.
Paul Scott is not a writer I knew a great deal about (though thanks to my good chum Wikipedia I now know a bit more) but I’m deeply impressed with what I’ve read so far and will hunt down other books by him.
Masterful.
June 2, 2019
Daphne Manners, Hari Kumar, and Mayapore—where have you been all my life?
Although at times the seemingly infinite depths of self-awareness of our hero ("young Mr. Kumar") and heroine ("that Manners girl") strain credulity, this is the sole flaw in this mind-expanding, gorgeous, devastating, and provocative look at a number of exemplary British and Indian specimens living on the edge between brown and white in 1942 in rural India.
Mr. Scott starts Jewel with the story of a sexless, agnostic, Gandhi-admiring spinster named Miss Crane who has bootstrapped out a kind of dignity as a mission school administrator in Mayapore:
Mr. Scott begins weaving the boldface historical events of 1940s India seamlessly into his surprisingly affecting portrait of Miss Crane, all the while making the most lee-side of introductions to the book's large, sweeping gusts of cast and plot (riots, a self-immolation, and a rape). Mr. Scott had me by the time he as Lady Chatterjee (a well-connected Rajput widow witheringly portrayed as a shallow hanger-on by Scott as Miss Crane) charms out of the gate in Chapter 2 with pragmatic, sharp, self-effacing good humor (complete with a matching withering portrait of Miss Crane):
This is 2+2=5. This is (finally, finally!) an author in full control of his material. The clarity of Mr. Scott's vision and his ability to render the improbable not only convincing but inevitable hardly waver over 500+ pages as demarcated, off-center layer upon demarcated, off-center layer accumulate to form, of all things, a big and beautiful broken heart:
Although at times the seemingly infinite depths of self-awareness of our hero ("young Mr. Kumar") and heroine ("that Manners girl") strain credulity, this is the sole flaw in this mind-expanding, gorgeous, devastating, and provocative look at a number of exemplary British and Indian specimens living on the edge between brown and white in 1942 in rural India.
Mr. Scott starts Jewel with the story of a sexless, agnostic, Gandhi-admiring spinster named Miss Crane who has bootstrapped out a kind of dignity as a mission school administrator in Mayapore:
"She had devoted her life, in a practical and unimportant way, trying to prove that fear was evil because it promoted prejudice, that courage was good because it was a sign of selflessness, that ignorance was bad because fear sprang from it, that knowledge was good because the more you knew of the world's complexity the more clearly you saw the insignificance of the part you played."
Mr. Scott begins weaving the boldface historical events of 1940s India seamlessly into his surprisingly affecting portrait of Miss Crane, all the while making the most lee-side of introductions to the book's large, sweeping gusts of cast and plot (riots, a self-immolation, and a rape). Mr. Scott had me by the time he as Lady Chatterjee (a well-connected Rajput widow witheringly portrayed as a shallow hanger-on by Scott as Miss Crane) charms out of the gate in Chapter 2 with pragmatic, sharp, self-effacing good humor (complete with a matching withering portrait of Miss Crane):
"The English have always revered saints but hated them to be shrewd."
This is 2+2=5. This is (finally, finally!) an author in full control of his material. The clarity of Mr. Scott's vision and his ability to render the improbable not only convincing but inevitable hardly waver over 500+ pages as demarcated, off-center layer upon demarcated, off-center layer accumulate to form, of all things, a big and beautiful broken heart:
"You settle for the second-rate, you settle for the lesson you appear to have learned and forget the lesson you hoped to learn and might have learned, and so learn nothing at all, because the second-rate is the world's common factor, and any damned fool people can teach it, any damned fool people can inherit it."
March 22, 2018
From BBC Radio 4 Extra:
Daphne Manners arrives in Mayapore and meets two men who are to change her life: Hari Kumar and Ronald Merrick.
The last days of the British Raj in India as the Second World War leads inevitably towards independence.
Paul Scott's classic series of novels dramatised by John Harvey.
Daphne Manners - Anna Maxwell Martin
Ronald Merrick - Mark Bazeley
Hari Kumar - Prasanna Puwanarajah
Lily Chatterji - Josephine Welcome
Sister Ludmilla - Susan Engel
Dr De Souza - Kulvinder Ghir
Miss Edwina Crane - Phyllida Law
Dr Anna Klaus - Susan Jameson
Poulson - John Rowe
Sergeant Singh/Gupta Sen - Ravin J Ganatra
Other parts played by Helen Longworth, Robert Hastie, Emily Wachter and Stephen Hogan.
Music by Raiomond Mirza.
Director: Sally Avens.
First broadcast on BBC Radio 4 in 2005.
https://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/b09v...
Daphne Manners arrives in Mayapore and meets two men who are to change her life: Hari Kumar and Ronald Merrick.
The last days of the British Raj in India as the Second World War leads inevitably towards independence.
Paul Scott's classic series of novels dramatised by John Harvey.
Daphne Manners - Anna Maxwell Martin
Ronald Merrick - Mark Bazeley
Hari Kumar - Prasanna Puwanarajah
Lily Chatterji - Josephine Welcome
Sister Ludmilla - Susan Engel
Dr De Souza - Kulvinder Ghir
Miss Edwina Crane - Phyllida Law
Dr Anna Klaus - Susan Jameson
Poulson - John Rowe
Sergeant Singh/Gupta Sen - Ravin J Ganatra
Other parts played by Helen Longworth, Robert Hastie, Emily Wachter and Stephen Hogan.
Music by Raiomond Mirza.
Director: Sally Avens.
First broadcast on BBC Radio 4 in 2005.
https://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/b09v...
September 30, 2015
This book took a long time to get going. And it was not a quick read by any stretch of the imagination. In fact, it was taking long enough that I had to adjust how much I was trying to read in a day, so I didn't keep getting frustrated by never getting near my goal. Despite that, I kept reading, and it was never that I wasn't enjoying it. Just that it was slow, and incredibly looping, moving around and around the crux of the novel without ever quite getting close to it until the end.
Note: The rest of this review has been withdrawn due to the changes in Goodreads policy and enforcement. You can read why I came to this decision here.
In the meantime, you can read the entire review at Smorgasbook
Note: The rest of this review has been withdrawn due to the changes in Goodreads policy and enforcement. You can read why I came to this decision here.
In the meantime, you can read the entire review at Smorgasbook
January 10, 2014
If agape is selfless love, a passion committed to the other, then that is how I felt at the end of The Jewel in the Crown.
There are two stories here, one within the other. The inner story is of a young Englishwoman named Daphne who immerses herself in India and the flow of history during the volatile period of 1942. The larger story is of the relationship between the colonizer and its subject, both yearning for India's freedom, yet unable to get it done.
In both cases, they are stories of the Siva cycle of destruction and rejuvenation (or creation), so entwined they not only can't be separated, but sometimes can't be told apart.
A story this complex that treats time as spatial may be best understood graphically. More than anything, this story reminds me of a thangka, those stylized paintings of the East, especially India, that frequently tell a story.
Perhaps Siva should occupy the center, I'm thinking with his second wife Parvati, who not so coincidentally to Scott's story is the daughter of the Englishwoman Daphne (more on her later). Parvati also is the brother of Vishnu, a deity of some significance in The Crown Jewel.
A difficulty is their posture and gestures. All goddesses in Hinduism, or so I'm led to believe, derive from Parvati. So obviously she must be portrayed as powerful.
But, also, in Scott's story, she is quite the accomplished singer of traditional Indian songs, bringing to mind the singer of the 19th century, the consort of MacGregor, moved into the house of women, displaced by the wife (required acquisition to be socially acceptable in the colonizer's social confines).
The anonymous singer, of course, runs off with her dark-skinned lover, a story that repeats itself in the more recent story of Daphne and Hari/Harry.
The problem with Siva's posture in the center of our thangka is that in Scott's story his dancing manifestation is cited. This is fine for our principal concern, the unity of the cyclic destruction and rejuvenation manifested in our larger story of colonizer and colonized, as well as the inner story of Daphne and Hari/Harry.
But it is most difficult to incorporate the union of male and female aspects, or qualities, in that posture. So, I think we should remove Parvati from the center space, and place her in the union posture with Siva below and in front of Siva's placement.
The Ganges River, flowing into the sea, dark in the foreground, completes the bottom-center foreground.
On either side of the river are Daphne and Hari/Harry, thus completing the triangle (triangles are important in Scott's story, see pages 134 & 149, for instance) of Daphne, Hari/Harry, and the union of Siva and Parvati, which aptly describes the relationship between the historical and mythical figures.
Daphne, in a posture of courage in search of wholeness (think Siva's destruction/rejuvenation), will be placed a foot in the waters, ready to give herself over to the flow, whatever may come, as there is no bridge capable of crossing (p.142).
In the upper left corner, with a line connecting it to the central Siva, is MacGregor House "where there is always the promise of a story continuing instead of finishing" (p.461) and a place of trust, compromise, exploratory, noncommittal, learning, not accusatory (p.444). Opposite in the right upper corner is Bibighar Gardens, a place where something had gone horribly wrong, still alive, that can be set right, if only one knew how. By implication it is Indian, and universal (p.398). Bibighar is the former house of women, now in ruins, but nonetheless also an arbor to provide temporary shelter for the union of Daphne and Hari/Harry, but at the same time it is the place of the union between the destructive force and Daphne.
Along either side of Siva's space, in the appropriate postures: Ludmila, who ferries the dead and understands, "For in this life, living, there is no dignity except perhaps laughter" (p.133). And Deputy Commissioner Robin White who understands "the moral drift of history" (p.342), and its matrix of "emotions," "ambitions," and "reactions." And his wife, who understood Daphne's motivations, and her sacrifice.
In the upper center, between MacGregor House and Bibighar Lady Chatterjee, whose chattering reveals far more than idle gossip, and above Siva's center positioning is the sleeping, dreaming Vishnu, brother of Paravati.
Finally, to the right and just below Hari/Harry is Parvati in her singing posture, with two attendants approaching bearing a palanquin. She sings:
Oh, my father's servants, bring my palanquin.
I am going to the land of my husband. All my
Companions are scattered. They have gone to
different homes.
Paul Scott
There are two stories here, one within the other. The inner story is of a young Englishwoman named Daphne who immerses herself in India and the flow of history during the volatile period of 1942. The larger story is of the relationship between the colonizer and its subject, both yearning for India's freedom, yet unable to get it done.
In both cases, they are stories of the Siva cycle of destruction and rejuvenation (or creation), so entwined they not only can't be separated, but sometimes can't be told apart.
A story this complex that treats time as spatial may be best understood graphically. More than anything, this story reminds me of a thangka, those stylized paintings of the East, especially India, that frequently tell a story.
Perhaps Siva should occupy the center, I'm thinking with his second wife Parvati, who not so coincidentally to Scott's story is the daughter of the Englishwoman Daphne (more on her later). Parvati also is the brother of Vishnu, a deity of some significance in The Crown Jewel.
A difficulty is their posture and gestures. All goddesses in Hinduism, or so I'm led to believe, derive from Parvati. So obviously she must be portrayed as powerful.
But, also, in Scott's story, she is quite the accomplished singer of traditional Indian songs, bringing to mind the singer of the 19th century, the consort of MacGregor, moved into the house of women, displaced by the wife (required acquisition to be socially acceptable in the colonizer's social confines).
The anonymous singer, of course, runs off with her dark-skinned lover, a story that repeats itself in the more recent story of Daphne and Hari/Harry.
The problem with Siva's posture in the center of our thangka is that in Scott's story his dancing manifestation is cited. This is fine for our principal concern, the unity of the cyclic destruction and rejuvenation manifested in our larger story of colonizer and colonized, as well as the inner story of Daphne and Hari/Harry.
But it is most difficult to incorporate the union of male and female aspects, or qualities, in that posture. So, I think we should remove Parvati from the center space, and place her in the union posture with Siva below and in front of Siva's placement.
The Ganges River, flowing into the sea, dark in the foreground, completes the bottom-center foreground.
On either side of the river are Daphne and Hari/Harry, thus completing the triangle (triangles are important in Scott's story, see pages 134 & 149, for instance) of Daphne, Hari/Harry, and the union of Siva and Parvati, which aptly describes the relationship between the historical and mythical figures.
Daphne, in a posture of courage in search of wholeness (think Siva's destruction/rejuvenation), will be placed a foot in the waters, ready to give herself over to the flow, whatever may come, as there is no bridge capable of crossing (p.142).
In the upper left corner, with a line connecting it to the central Siva, is MacGregor House "where there is always the promise of a story continuing instead of finishing" (p.461) and a place of trust, compromise, exploratory, noncommittal, learning, not accusatory (p.444). Opposite in the right upper corner is Bibighar Gardens, a place where something had gone horribly wrong, still alive, that can be set right, if only one knew how. By implication it is Indian, and universal (p.398). Bibighar is the former house of women, now in ruins, but nonetheless also an arbor to provide temporary shelter for the union of Daphne and Hari/Harry, but at the same time it is the place of the union between the destructive force and Daphne.
Along either side of Siva's space, in the appropriate postures: Ludmila, who ferries the dead and understands, "For in this life, living, there is no dignity except perhaps laughter" (p.133). And Deputy Commissioner Robin White who understands "the moral drift of history" (p.342), and its matrix of "emotions," "ambitions," and "reactions." And his wife, who understood Daphne's motivations, and her sacrifice.
In the upper center, between MacGregor House and Bibighar Lady Chatterjee, whose chattering reveals far more than idle gossip, and above Siva's center positioning is the sleeping, dreaming Vishnu, brother of Paravati.
Finally, to the right and just below Hari/Harry is Parvati in her singing posture, with two attendants approaching bearing a palanquin. She sings:
Oh, my father's servants, bring my palanquin.
I am going to the land of my husband. All my
Companions are scattered. They have gone to
different homes.
Paul Scott
March 6, 2019
Part One of The Raj Quartet, this long novel has rape as its core...but not the physical rape of Daphne. That rape is used as a vehicle to explore the complex relationships between the British and the Indians in India in the years leading up to 1942.
The book is divided into sections, each one giving a different perspective on the "Bibighar Incident" and on what it means to be Indian, to be British, to be a colonizer and one of the colonized, to be black or white...an engrossing multi-faceted work that presents the happenings like a kaleidoscope. The characters are fully realized and the overall effect is deeply moving. A wonderful read.
The book is divided into sections, each one giving a different perspective on the "Bibighar Incident" and on what it means to be Indian, to be British, to be a colonizer and one of the colonized, to be black or white...an engrossing multi-faceted work that presents the happenings like a kaleidoscope. The characters are fully realized and the overall effect is deeply moving. A wonderful read.
Displaying 1 - 30 of 447 reviews