ENG 103 Students: READ Jewel
Part 7: pp. 361-462
(see
ENG 103 Course Plan)
Paul Scott on the
Narrative "DEVICE" of the Raj Quartet:
"Use of The Writer - sometimes called The
Stranger or The Traveller (according to circumstances.) RARE APPEARANCES
BUT ALLOWS FOR THE FLEXIBILITY NEEDED IN THIS FOUR VOLUME HISTORY OF AN AGE
AND A PERIOD.
"Interviews, letters, extracts from works or
accounts written or tape-recorded by THE CHARACTERS (who have been approached
for information) PLUS THE WRITER'S OWN RECONSTRUCTIONS.
"THE WRITER NOT PRECISELY ME. SO THAT I MANAGE TO
ACHIEVE DETACHMENT AS WELL AS INVOLVEMENT." (Scott, "Notes"
167).
"The Bibighar Gardens -
Daphne Manners's written confession"
(Scott, "Notes" 167).
"Finally there is the journal kept by poor Miss Manners [Part
Seven] after Hari has been wrongfully arrested for the criminal assault on
her, and imprisoned under the Defence of India rule as a political undesirable
- a journal in which she records the truth of the events of that particular
night that ended with her running along all those deserted, ill-lit roads"
(Scott, "Method"
66).
"READ END - which shows
stranger already aware that there is MORE TO TELL (FROM PAGE 448 'Imagine then
a flat landscape . . .').
"and page 450 - 'a girl admirably suited to her surroundings where there is
always the promise of a story continuing instead of finishing'"
(Scott, "Notes" 167).
"Daphne Manners (Journal
addressed to
Lady Manners)"
[Written:] Kashmir,
April 1943 (pp. 361-451)
Daphne begins by apologizing to her aunt
"for all the trouble and embarrassment I've caused you," as well as
thanking her for "loving care," "voluntarily taking on the
responsibility for me, and for never once making me feel this was a
burden"--being "the aunt of 'that Manners girl" (361).
The journal is meant to be read in case of her death--Daphne has premonitions
that she will die in childbirth--and she does not want "to kick the
bucket knowing I've made no attempt to set the record straight and break the
silence . . ." (362, 361). Daphne acknowledges that people have
treated her as a leper because she is having this "unknown child
(unknown, unwanted, unloved it seems by anyone but me)" (363).
Daphne confesses that she wasn't a virgin
at the time of her rape, but "It is only Hari I have ever loved" and
Daphne longs to "talk about him" to her aunt; "He has been shut
out enough" (363). Although there have been mixed race
relationships before, Daphne knows her "affair" with Hari
"somehow never stood a chance. I've given up hope of ever seeing
him again" (364).
"This is why, especially, the child I bear is
important to me. Even though I can't be positive it is his. But I
think so. I believe so. If it isn't, it is still a child.
its skin may be as dark as Hari's or almost as pale as mine, or somewhere in
between. But whatever colour--he, or she, is part of my flesh and blood;
my own typically ham-fisted offerings to the future" (364).
[Plot events - also
depicted in the FILM VERSION]
Daphne recounts how she and Lili Chatterjee first came to hear of Hari
Kumar, and then meet him at Lili's cocktail party, but she didn't know the
"full story" of Hari's arrest by Ronald Merrick until Hari told her
later after their visit to the Tirupati Temple (364-365).
[THEME:]
Neither had Ronald or Lili told the "whole
story," and Daphne realizes "the extent of the silence that
surrounded this association"--a kind of "conspiracy" of
silence--"rooted in love as well as fear"--that Daphne herself
contributed to by never telling Lili of Ronald's marriage proposal
(365-367). A "fundamental law" seemed to be in operation:
"that although a white man could make love to a black girl, the black man
and white girl association was still taboo" (367).
Daphne discusses her first
impressions of Hari at Lili's cocktail party in March [1942]: "horribly
prickly," "except for the colour of his skin he wasn't an Indian at
all," "a terribly sad man" (367-370).
[Narration: Daphne circles
back in the story:] After her first
weeks in Mayapore, Daphne went through a period of hating everything about
India, and felt the need to break "my vow, never to go to the [white-only
Gymkhana] club because Lili [being an Indian, however well born] couldn't go
with me" (370-371).
Daphne recalls the
Saturday she went to the War Week Exhibition [towards the end of April 1942],
met Deputy Commissioner Robin White and Brigadier Reed, saw Hari Kumar again
on the maidan, and went up and talked to him, and then ran into Ronald Merrick
at the club that evening (372-376).
[Narration: Daphne returns
to the narrative present:] Daphne asks
her aunt to provide for her child even if "you can't bear to have it near
you" and gives directions about what to name the child (376-377).
Daphne speaks of her mother, who hated India, and her father, who loved India
(377).
Daphne raises the other
name that she and her aunt never mention: "Bibighar"
(378). This was "the one place in Mayapore where we [Daphne and
Hari] could be together and be utterly natural with each other," and
Daphne explains how difficult it was for them to meet anywhere else, even
though they did nothing more that sit "side by side on the edge of the
mosaic 'platform' with our feet dangling, like two kids sitting on a
wall" (379).
After her "good
deed" meeting with Hari on the maidan during War Week Exhibition [April
1942], Daphne explains the circumstances of her dinner invitation to Hari [in
early May 1942]--for she knew he'd never just "drop by"--and the
pleasurable evening they spent alone together at MacGregor House
(380-384). The following Saturday, Daphne is invited by Mrs. Gupta Sen [Hari's
Aunt Shalini] to dinner at her home in Chillianwallah Bagh; Hari is late
picking her up, the tonga-wallah gave him trouble because of his pidgin Hindi,
but gracious Aunt Shalini sets all to rights, and they have a lovely evening
(385-389).
[THEME &
CHARACTER:] It was after that evening that "Mayapore
seemed to change for me," expanded from the narrow confines of MacGregor
house and the British cantonment out "to the other side of the
river" [the native town] (390). As Mayapore felt bigger, Daphne
felt smaller and "sort of split my life into three parts"
(390): her white life at the hospital and the club, her home life at
MacGregor House with Lili, mixing with Indians and English trying to
"work together," and her relationship with Hari--the one thing that
made Daphne feel "like a person again," paradoxically requiring that
she become small so that she could "squeeze into this restricted,
dangerous little space," "imprisoned but free, diminished by
everything that loomed from outside, but not diminished from the inside
. . ." (390).
"There's an awful weight still on my
mind about Ronald [Merrick]. . . . there are things about Ronald that no one
is prepared to discuss in front of me. . . . He is like a dark shadow, just on
the edge of my life" (391). Daphne fears "he hurt Hari in some
special horrible way..." (391). Merrick "was on Sister
Ludmila's conscience too," and before Daphne
explains to her aunt "what actually happened at the Bibighar," she
must "say something about Ronald, and...about Sister Ludmila" (391).
Daphne recounts her relationship with Ronald Merrick,
wondering "just how much...he was genuinely and quite
unexpectedly attracted to me as a person?" and confesses her anger
when she discovered so late that Merrick and Hari had been "enemies"
(391-392) [she discovers this the evening of her visit
to the Temple with Hari, see p. 397] Then Daphne recounts her
relationship with Sister Ludmila (392, 394-396), digressing at one point to an
unsettling memory of her taking Hari into Uncle
Nello's museum room in MacGregor House: she and Hari
were also like museum "exhibits" to the Europeans of the cantonment
(393). She also recalls that Hari let go her hand after they left the museum
room, leaving Daphne feeling "deserted, caught out,
left alone to face something," one of "repeated experiences of
finding myself emotionally out on a limb" with Hari (393).
Linking June 1942 experiences of dinner with Hari and
Aunt Shalini in Chillianwallah Bagh and dinner with Ronald when he proposes,
Daphne feels her life had become "unreal...because
there didn't seem to be any kind of future in front of me that I wanted and
could have. Why? Holding one hand out, groping, and
the other out backwards linked to the security of what was known and
expected" (394). After an unfortunate evening
with Hari at a Chinese restaurant, Daphne first saw Sister Ludmila
(394-395).
Sister Ludmila has in her spartan room at
the Sanctuary "an image of the Siva dancing in a circle of cosmic
fire" and a "framed biblical text" that Daphne connects (395):
the winged image of smiling Shiva "makes you think that you could leap
into the dark with him and come to no harm" (396). Daphne
"took to" Sister Ludmila, judging her "an extraordinary
woman," and goes to the Sanctuary often," though she did not share
this information with people like Ronald Merrick or Aunt Lili, would not share
"this part of my life" with anyone from her other lives (396): unconsciously
at this time, Daphne had divided her "life into these watertight
compartments" (397): MacGregor House
and Lili; at the club with Ronald and "the girls and boys"; Sister
Ludmila at the Sanctuary clinic; time spent with Hari at the Bibighar
(397). Daphne was having "adventures," breaking all the
rules, but "it was awfully difficult for me" (397). At
the Bibighar, Daphne "sensed something having gone badly wrong at one
time that hadn't yet been put right but could be if you only knew how": she
revises her first opinion that the Bibighar is typically Indian: the Bibighar
"was typical of no place, but only of human acts
and desires that leave their mark in the most unexpected and sometimes
chilling way" (398). Daphne recalls the day
she and Hari sheltered from the rain in the Bibighar, after they'd gone to
Subhas Chand's booth to choose a photograph to send to her aunt for her
birthday (398-399). Europeans shopping in the cantonment bazaar
that day "stared at us in the most unpleasant manner" (399).
Later in the Bibighar waiting out the downpour, Daphne explained how she felt
about the Bibighar, asked about Hari's friend Colin
Lindsey and is rebuffed, they leave feeling edgy "as if we had had
a quarrel, a lover's quarrel" (400).
Daphne doesn't see
Hari again for over a week: "But all the time I was thinking
of Hari, wanting to see him but not doing anything about it" (400).
Finally she writes him a note proposing that he take her
to the Tirupati Temple (400). Hari rings up
2 days later and agrees to try to arrange the visit on Saturday, but Daphne
hasn't heard from him again by Friday evening (401). She has dinner at
the club with Ronald and declines another invitation for Saturday evening
because she is expecting to visit the Temple with Hari. At this
point, Ronald "warns" her against her association with Hari Kumar
(401), insists that "'colour'" does matter
"'like hell,'" and confesses that "'[t]he whole idea [of a
white English woman with a black Indian man ] revolts me'"
(402).
Back home at the
MacGregor House, Daphne receives a note from Hari that he's arranged the
Temple visit for Saturday evening (402). That whole
evening, Daphne feels that "the difference between
his [Hari's] life and mine" was "the theme....He was deliberately
trying to put me off" (402). Daphne describes the visit to
Tirupati Temple to do "puja" (404-407). "I felt like a
trespasser" (407). Afterwards at the MacGregor House, Daphne
confronts Hari: "'You've been trying to put me off, haven't you?'"
(407). Both Hari and Daphne become angry, and it is then that Daphne
learns the story of Hari's arrest by Ronald Merrick at the Sanctuary (408),
which Hari thought Daphne had known all along (409). After Hari leaves, Daphne
analyzes their relationship (410). Their friendship "was put
to the test too often to survive," Daphne realizes she is physically
attracted to Hari, and "I was in love with him," and she
"wanted to protect him from danger," even if it meant "let[ting]
him go" (410). She spends every night the
next week at the club where she sees Ronald Merrick; she knew that when
people noticed her there they would also notice that she wasn't with Hari; she
plays "a charade" of conforming to the "idea" of
"white superiority" (411). But all the while, Daphe wants Hari.
[Theme:]
"I thought that the whole bloody affair of us in
India had reached flash point. . . . because it was based on a violation.
Perhaps at one point there was a moral as well as a physical force at
work. But the moral thing had gone sour. . . . [W]hat happens to a woman
if she tells herself that 99 per cent of the men she sees are not men at all,
but creatures of an inferior species whose colour is their main distinguishing
mark? What happens when you unsex a nation, treat it like a nation of
eunuchs? . . . God knows what happens. What will happen. The whole
thing seems to go from bad to worse, year after year. There's dishonesty
on both sides because the moral issue has gone sour on them as well as on
us. We're back to basics, the basic issue of who jumps and who says
jump. . . . It's become a vulgar scramble for power on their point and an
equally smug hanging-on on ours. . . . It's our fault that [the moral issue
is] dead because it was our responsibility to widen it, but we narrowed it
down . . . by never suiting actions to words. . . . and God know how many
centuries you have to go back to trace to its source [Indians'] apparent fear
of skins paler than their own. God help us if they ever lose that
fear" (411-412).
In the end, Daphne
cannot wait for Hari to contact her again: she writes that she wants to talk
to him and asks him to meet her at the Sanctuary after work on August 9, 1942.
On August 8, Congress votes to uphold Gandhi's resolution and Congress members
are arrested. The afternoon of August 9, Miss Crane is brought into the
hospital and Daphne visits her. Miss Crane
keeps saying, "'I'm sorry. Sorry it's too late,'" and
"'Nothing,' over and over. 'There's nothing I can do'"
(413, 414).
August 9, 1942; 5:45
p.m.: Daphne goes to the Sanctuary after work.
[Section of Daphne's journal that the unnamed
Narrator gives Robin White to read years later begins p. 414--see
footnote--and ends p. 420.]
Hari is not there and doesn't come. Daphne sits with Sister
Ludmila for hour until dusk and tells her about the visit to Tirupati
Temple. Daphne begins bicycling home, but stops at
the Bibighar Gardens (415-416). There she
finds Hari. When he lights her cigarette, Daphne takes hold of Hari's
hand. He asks, "'What were you trying to prove? That you
don't mind our touching?'" (416). Daphne insists that she at least
had "'got beyond that'" (416). Hari roughly insists that she
put out the cigarette and that he see her home. "I couldn't bear
it, having him so near, knowing I was about to lose him"
(417). "But then we were kissing," and touching his bare
back, "we were both lost" (417).
The rape and its
aftermath: After Hari and Daphne make love and lie half-asleep,
the assailants converge first on Hari, pulling him away and tying him up, then
on Daphne, covering her head with her rain cape and gang-raping her
(417). Daphne speaks of a recurring nightmare, of faces, of blindness,
of Shiva assaulting her, then returns to that night (417-418). She
discovers Hari tied up, crawls to him "like a kid" and unbinds him,
comforts him as he cries "for shame, I suppose, and for what had happened
to me that he'd been powerless to stop," then he holds her and they cling
"to each other like two children frightened of the dark"
(418). Hari lifts and carries Daphne toward the Bibighar gate, she
worries about where her bicycle is, she pushes him away when he tries to
carry beyond the gate, "into the light, into the cantonment" which
would be safe for her, but not for him (419). Daphne's panic increases
when Hari cries, "'I've got to be with you. I love you.
Please let me be with you'" (419), thinking "of what they might do
to him if he said to them, 'I love her. We love each
other'" (419). Daphne beats at Hari and makes him promise to say
that they've not seen each other that night and he knows nothing
(419-420). Daphne holds Hari one last time, then breaks free and runs
out of the gateway and into the dark, though she experiences moments of
doubt that she is doing the wrong thing (420).
[Theme - cf. Miss
Crane - from Daphne's journal:] "I said: 'There's nothing I can
do, nothing, nothing,' and
wondered where I'd heard those words before, and began to run again, through
those awful ill-lit deserted roads that should have been leading me home but
were leading me nowhere I recognised; into safety that wasn't safety because
beyond it there were the plains and the openness that made it seem that if I
ran long enough I would run clear off the rim of the world" (420).
Paul Scott on the above
quoted passage: different characters' attitudes, their relationships to the
central situation of Daphne Manners, the meaning of the girl running, and the
"moral drift of history":
"[Robin] White has a sense of obligation to the Indians he rules -
[Brigadier] Reid's sense is more that of the obligation the Indians are under
for the benefit of white rule [see Part Six]. Each attitude is
reflected in that of the missionary, Miss Crane [see Part One].
Both are comments on the central situation of the girl - who, falling in love
with an Indian, attempted to associate with him simply as a human being.
When it comes to it . . . we find that she is running to save that
association, not running away from it. . . .
"This [passage] illustrates something else important about
the image of the girl running. There is not just the question of why she
is running but of the place she is running. Here I am using the
immensity of India to say something about the littleness of the individual
human attempt to make an impression on the world as we know it - and this in
turn is meant to say something about the frailty of individual human action in
the face of pressures of the collective conscience - what I call the moral
drift of history. When Daphne says she feels that if she ran long enough
she would run clear off the rim of the world she is echoing that first
paragraph [of the novel - see Part One]"
(Scott, "Method"
68).
Daphne reflects upon the difference it would have made
were Hari a white Englishman, and upon parallels between her case and Edwina
Crane's (420-421): "Miss Crane was hit a few times, but it
was the Indian teacher with her who was murdered. They assaulted me
because they had watched an Indian making love to me. The taboo was
broken for them" (421).
Daphne arrives home
at the MacGregor House, is met by Aunt Lili, rejects then accepts the help of
Raju and Bhalu to get to her room, Dr. Anna Klaus is called to attend her,
Ronald Merrick shows up asking questions, then Anna Klaus arrives (421-424).
To her Aunt
Manners: "I've told the truth, Auntie, as well as I know how.
I'm sorry I wasn't able to tell it before. I hate lies. But I
think I would tell them again. Nothing that happened after the Bibighar
proves to me now that I was wrong to fight for Hari by denying I'd seen
him" (424). Daphne agonizes over whether she did the right
thing, told the right lies, as she recounts the "story" she told to
authorities, why she did so, how she responded to developments in her case and
supposed "evidence" that resulted in the imprisonment of Hari and
the other accused Indian men, and her hearing--after which she believes for a
short time that "we've won" (424-444). Although Hari and the
other "boys" are not tried for rape, they are imprisoned
indefinitely for political reasons under Defence of India rules.
Sometime later Connie White visits Daphne out of a woman's
"curiosity" (445). Ultimately, what Connie White cannot
understand is why Hari never defended himself, why he responded doggedly
"'I have nothing to say'" to all questions (449). "[I]f
Hari Kumar had been an Englishman I could have understood his silence better,
although even then it would have had to be a silence imposed on him by a
woman'" (449). Daphne begins laughing hysterically during this
interview: "I needed to be able to say, 'But Harry is an
Englishman'" for Daphne realizes that Hari had acted "like a white
man should when a girl made him give a promise" (450). She also
decides Hari did this "To punish himself. To give him something new
about himself that he could mock" (450).
[Theme:] Then Daphne
decides that "there is nothing to say." She meditates on
Hari's and other Indians' silence: "Nothing [to say], that is, if they
are intent on building instead of destroying. Behind all the
chatter and violence of India--what a deep, lingering silence. S[h]iva
dances in it. Vishnu sleeps in it. Even their music is
silence. It's the only music I know that sounds conscious of breaking
silence, of going back into it when it's finished, as if to prove that every
man-made sound is an illusion" (450-451).
A few weeks later,
Daphne knows that she is pregnant and sends for Dr. Anna Klaus (451).
As Klaus prepares to give Daphne a sedative to help her sleep, Daphne
exclaims, "'What am I to do, Anna? I can't live without
him'" Anna replies: "'This you must learn to do. To live
without'" (451).
