Colonial Representations of India in Prose Fiction
As in representations of the other British colonies, India was used by colonial novelists as a tool of displacement of the individual and re-affirmation of the metropolitan whole. There are three methods by which this effect is achieved. The first method displays an unqualified reliance on a culture too remote to be approached except physically: a hero or protagonist in a pre-mutiny novel is at liberty to escape to India at a moment of crisis, rearrange his life to his advantage and return to a happy ending and the establishment of a newly defined metropolitan life. Dobbin of Thackeray's Vanity Fair (1848) and Peter Jenkins of Gaskell's Cranford (1853) exemplify this well. Even the child Bitherstone of Dickens' Dombey and Son (1848) regards India as his salvation.
The second method demonstrates the duality of the post-mutiny era. We are told by Patrick Brantlinger that the earliest work of fiction to deal with the mutiny is "The Perils of Certain English Prisoners", a collaboration by Dickens and Wilkie Collins in the Christmas 1857 edition of Household Words . Wilkie Collins's The Moonstone (1868) revolves around the theft and reclamation of the Koh-i-Noor and creates an ambiguous point of antagonism between Brahmin and Englishman. The Brahmins cannot be said to be wholly right or wrong in their dealings with the stone and it is the British Ablewhite who is portrayed in the most one-dimensional manner and who is cast almost as penumbra to the issues redefining the character of the former. However, only eleven years after the Mutiny, Collins's Indians remain at all times a threatening presence subject only to the most tenuous negotiation:- the reader must not forget that they belong to the realm of the non-rational. Collins' Brahmins, unaware that they are observed, participate in magical rites and his Hindus, en masse, typify Romantic notions of Man's ideal union with Nature. As re-affirmation, they reconfirm the relationship between the central characters.
The third method again demonstrates the duality of the post-mutiny era but with more emphasis on reconciliation. Later novels such as Rudyard Kipling's Kim (1901) or E. M. Forster's Passage to India (1924) attempt to remove either the Indian character from the confines of previous stereotype or the Anglo-Indian character from the confines of automatic moral superiority.
Fyodor Dostoevsky wrote the novel, Crime and Punishment, during a turbulent time in Russian history. Yet his work will speaks to any age. Dostoevsky wrote to warn against what he considered the negative effects of the trend of nihilism and rational egoism. He advances this objective by employing themes of suffering, resurrection, and death--all of these currents running through a surprisingly benevolent universe.
Often in works of fiction there exists a clear distinction between characters who are meant to be seen as good and those as evil. The hero saves the day by way of thwarting the villain's evil plan. However, in Fyodor Dostoevsky’s Crime and Punishment we are introduced to the characters of Rodion Romanovich Raskolnikov and Katerina Ivanovna Marmeladov who display acts of moral ambiguity and are neither fully hero nor villain. These character’s acts are not black and white, but fall in a gray area of uncertainty. They each show signs of villainy and heroism and their stories can be parallelled. In the final chapter of part five, the reader is given a summary of the overarching storyline via Katerina Ivanovna’s actions leading up to her death. This scene contributes to the argument of morality because it reiterates the uncertainty of the distinction between right and wrong of Raskolnikov's crime which run through the pages of this novel by showing a condensed recount of how the combination of the desire to help others and the inability to do so because of poverty have tainted both character’s moral actions.
At the close of Crime and Punishment, Raskolinkov is convicted of Murder and sentenced to seven years in Siberian prison. Yet even before the character was conceived, Fyodor Dostoevsky had already convicted Raskolinkov in his mind (Frank, Dostoevsky 101). Crime and Punishment is the final chapter in Dostoevsky's journey toward understanding the forces that drive man to sin, suffering, and grace. Using ideas developed in Notes from Underground and episodes of his life recorded in Memoirs of the House of the Dead, Dostoevsky puts forth in Crime in Punishment a stern defense of natural law and an irrefutable volume of evidence condemning Raskolnikov's actions (Bloom, Notes 25).
...l conciliation and transcendent faith if India were to arise from bloody, mutually destructive, strife and take her rightful place in the society of nations. Today, Collins's The Moonstone may be viewed not as a response to a national insurgency and/or European determination to keep the native in his place, but rather as a love story between two people who only come to see each other for what they are after misjudgements, misunderstandings, accidental and intended deceptions, and considerable self-sacrifice.
Thesis: This paper will examine how The Lonely Londoners documents the dillusionment felt by the migrants as they struggle with prejudices in mid-1950s London. I will argue that throughout The Lonely Londoners, West Indian immigrants often used optimism to cope with emptiness caused by alienation, homelessness and conflict. This paper will also contextualize how Sam Selvon's novel works in terms of postcolonial writing, as well as the prevalent trends regarding British writing during the period.
William Browne Hockley (1792 – 1860) was a pioneer in the field of Anglo-Indian literature . He is remembered today mainly for his novel Pandurang Hari. Drawing on Elleke Boehmer’s classification, one may claim that Hockley was a ‘colonialist writer’. His works, written for Englishmen at home, reflected the imperialist’s point of view. It contained an apologia for British rule in India; as a reviewer of Pandurang Hari mentions, “If we have done nothing else for India, we have made such a state of things as is described by Pandurang Hari simply impossible.” (The Saturday Review 728) This aspect of Pandurang Hari has drawn attention of many scholars. What remains unnoticed is that the novel also contains a criticism of the praxis of British rule in India. The aim of this article is to highlight that aspect of the work.
Michael Cook traces the migrations of our early ancestors as they expand across land and sea and populate new domains, all while establishing a life as they adapt to new landscapes and climates. Major trends, such as the rise of agriculture, the rise of society, and the invention of writing all show rich strands in the long element, that is human history and culture. Cook observes that because of mankind’s rich variety and diversity, our history is shrouded just as much as our future.
The short story "Lispeth" is a particularly rich field from which to examine notions of alterity. Kipling’s narrator points out that "It takes a great deal of Christianity to wipe out uncivilized Eastern instincts"(4). It would be tempting, given the author’s reputation as a right-wing apologist for empire, to take this comment at face value. However, I believe that "Lispeth", as a text, is centrally critical of the British in India. The missionaries and the young Briton that Lispeth idolises are repeatedly shown as being racially arrogant and duplicitous. Witness the Chaplain’s wife’s description of Lispeth’s love as a "barbarous and indelicate folly", while maintaining that the deceitful "Englishman,… was of a superior clay". Similarly, after the Chaplain’s wife says that "There is no law w...
Bibliography w/4 sources Cry , the Beloved Country by Alan Paton is a perfect example of post-colonial literature. South Africa is a colonized country, which is, in many ways, still living under oppression. Though no longer living under apartheid, the indigenous Africans are treated as a minority, as they were when Paton wrote the book. This novel provides the political view of the author in both subtle and evident ways. Looking at the skeleton of the novel, it is extremely evident that relationship of the colonized vs. colonizers, in this case the blacks vs. the whites, rules the plot. Every character’s race is provided and has association with his/her place in life. A black man kills a white man, therefore that black man must die. A black umfundisi lives in a valley of desolation, while a white farmer dwells above on a rich plot of land. White men are even taken to court for the simple gesture of giving a black man a ride. This is not a subtle point, the reader is immediately stricken by the diversities in the lives of the South Africans.
I must say that Rudyard Kipling's Kim can be interpreted as a project that articulates the "hegemonic" relations between the colonizer and the colonized during British imperial rule in India. Kipling's novel explores how Kim embodies the absolute divisions between white and non white that existed in India and elsewhere at a time when the dominantly white Christian countries of Europe controlled approximately 85 percent of the world's surface. For Kipling, who believed it was India's destiny to be ruled by England, it was necessary to stress the superiority of the white man whose mission was to
Furnham, A. (2009). The validity of a new, self-report measure of multiple intelligence. Current Psychology, 28(4), 225-239.
Kim gives a vivid picture of the complexities in India under British rule. It shows the life of the bazaar mystics, of the natives, of the British military. There is a great deal of action and movement, for Kipling's vast canvas painted in full detail. The dialogue in the novel makes use of Indian phrases translated by the author, they give the flavor of native speech in India. They are also touches of the native behavior and shrewdness.
Dostoevsky illustrates the negative repercussions of western ideals, thus negating the status quo of the 19th Century Russia in order to prove that such ideals must be eradicated through his novel Crime and Punishment. As Cornelius rebelled against the atrocious trend of the eye piercing Crocs, Dostoevsky strongly negated the Western ideals of utilitarianism, the Ubermench Theory, nihilism, and Marxism. Dostoevsky’s allegorized the events occurring in Russia in the mid 1800’s within Crime and Punishment to better explain the harmful effects of accepting these common philosophies to his fellow peers. Therefore, what is popular is not always right.
In E.M. Forster's novel A Passage to India, characters often seem grouped into one of two opposing camps: Anglo-Indian or native Indian. All the traditional stereotypes apply, and the reader is hard pressed to separate the character from his or her racial and ethnic background. Without his "Britishness", for instance, Ronny disappears. However, a few characters are developed to the point that they transcend these categories, and must be viewed as people in their own right. Perhaps the most interesting of these is Mrs. Moore. Not only do ethnic boundaries not usually apply to her, but these divisions often blur in her case. Mrs. Moore straddles the line between conventional East and West in a number of different ways, and in some cases leaves both behind completely.
There are people bustling, merchants selling, Anglo-Indians watching, and birds flying overhead. How many perspectives are there in this one snippet of life? They are uncountable, and that is the reality. Modernist writers strive to emulate this type of reality into their own work as well. In such novels, there is a tendency to lack a chronological or even logical narrative and there are also frequent breaks in narratives where the perspectives jump from one to another without warning. Because there are many points of view and not all of them are explained, therefore, modernist novels often tend to have narrative perspectives that suddenly shift or cause confusion. This is because modernism has always been an experimental form of literature that lacks a traditional narrative or a set, rigid structure. Therefore, E. M. Forster, author of A Passage to India, uses such techniques to portray the true nature of reality. The conflict between Adela, a young British girl, and Aziz, an Indian doctor, at the Marabar Caves is one that implements multiple modernist ideals and is placed in British-India. In this novel, Forster shows the relations and tension between the British and the Indians through a series of events that were all caused by the confusing effects of modernism. E.M. Forster implements such literary techniques to express the importance or insignificance of a situation and to emphasize an impression of realism and enigma in Chandrapore, India, in which Forster’s novel, A Passage to India, takes place.