A Passage To India End Quote ResponseEssay Preview: A Passage To India End Quote ResponseReport this essayQuote: “India a nation! What an apotheosis! Last comer to the drab nineteenth-century sisterhood! Waddling in at this hour of the world to take her seat! She, whose only peer was the Holy Roman Empire, saw Mau beneath: they didnt want it, thsaid in their hundred voices, “No, not yet,” and the sky said, “No, not there.”
The reader can tell that the Englishman is hardly interested in an India or any part of India that replicates that of Victorian England. Instead, through their friendship, Forster creates a model of exchange. This is different from the modern nineteenth-century narratives of Anglo-India, which usually involves a vulnerable Englishwoman. That sort of story, which was employed to justify the intense retributive violence of the so-called Indian Mutiny, is exactly what A Passage to India is designed to move beyond.
You can also notice that Forster uses an older narrative form when he focuses on Adela Queste. However,, Adelas story is a Victorian holdover Forster invokes in order to leave behind. Even as he borrows from the Victorians, he demonstrates his distance from Victorian culture by denouncing the femininity it held in high regard. In this way, Forster in a way covers his tracks, and disguises his appropriation of his feminized view. However, Aziz clearly joins the revolutionary chorus when he declares that “India shall be a nation! No foreigners of any sort! Hindu and Moslem and Sikh and all shall be one!” You can also notice Forster suggests that the colonial presence in India is intolerable; he is clearly not convinced by the revolutionary problems of nationalism:
Perhaps, I must say, this is the one aspect of this book that seems to merit more critique:
A few days ago and this time I read a review that suggested that, despite the widespread opposition, that Forster’s attempt to re-establish Victorian femininity had been in vain. I don’t know if that’s actually the case. But it’s important for readers to understand what I said:
I think this book takes a somewhat counter-intuitive view of this issue; while I thought some elements of Forster’s work could have appeared in a more recent form, that seems less clear. Forster’s emphasis on Indian women is really quite similar to that used by Abad, for example, where in his book “Buddha of the East” Abad explicitly argues that women “despise the Indian throne and the rule over all other peoples. I, in part, am looking forward to a period of transition that is not merely cultural, but also social.”
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[2]I feel that for now this could be attributed simply to Forster’s “misrepresenting” the fact that “India had changed and had been changed in many respects”. However, after reading this article, one’s expectations should be tempered by his view of the changes that occurred in a few decades (in the US at least), and for that it was necessary to note another article. This essay was edited and also made available by the author.
You may also notice that Fielding taunts Aziz with the remark “India a nation! What an apotheosis! Last comer to the drab nineteenth-century sisterhood!” As a Muslim, Aziz himself is only half taken with the idea of the modern nation as he recognizes the es of teleology and origins that accompany