Seminar # 2 - Jewel in the Crown

Jim Hawes
Seminar #2 Questions & Response
17 April 2002

Discussion Questions:

		Cora "mentioned geography at one point and I was wondering: Doesn't geography sometimes dictate how history is played out and why?
		When Ronald Merrick has Kumar beaten after the rape, could this symbolize the British panic over the possibility of losing India?

Seminar #2 Response: Summary questions and comments on Jewel in the Crown for 4/17/02

		On the web page it is quoted that, "Hari never writes his friend the truth of “what it meant to find himself living on the wrong side of the river in a town like Mayapore” (229). Could this be a sign of his embarrassment over his British educational background? Or could it be his confusion over his cultural background caused by that same education? Later he seems to think he should become and Englishman like his father wanted him to be. Was his father British or Indian?
		Could Hari represent an overall caste system problem for other cultures as well as those of India?
		The text mentions several letters written by differing characters. Could these letters be real? In other words are they letters that Scott actually found when he went to India?
		In your summary you pointed out the continued image of a girl running. I am a little confused about what this might represent. Its continued use seems to represent something in the text but I am missing just what that is.
		A love hate relationship between Britain and India was also mentioned today. On page (62) Scott writes, "For years since the eighteenth century, and in each century since, we have said at home in England, in Whitehall, that the day would come when our rule in India will end, not bloodily but in peace…a perfect gesture of equality and friendship and love." This phrase seems to back up what you said about the relationship. It also shows some contradiction in Britain's place in India. They are saying there will be a peaceful withdrawal of their rule, but the end of their rule seems to be represented in the text as something opposite of peaceful.

Wendy Weber
Seminar #2 Questions & Response
17 April 2002

Discussion Questions:

		Initially I wondered why Daphne [Manners] was drawn to Hari [Kumar]- - he seems arrogant, but also angry
		I understand that Hari is filled with feelings of self-loathing; does Daphne identify with him for that reason?

Seminar #2 Summary: The Jewel in the Crown

As discussion leader, Cora first compared the novel and the video. The video reconstructs the events of the novel in chronological order. In the novel, key events are described from different points of view and they are not in chronological order, so we get the story in parts and pieces. What the author has done is create a story, which develops in the way a historian would reconstruct a historical event. The fictional event is the rape of Daphne Manners.

In order to reconstruct the story for video a screenwriter had to translate it for film. In the video version it has been constructed into episodes; therefore, the filmmakers are presenting their interpretation.

In part one the narrator reconstructs events based on how Miss Crane experienced them. Her personal belongings end up in a repository after her death. In telling the story this way, the author is able to tell the story from multiple perspectives. Miss Crane’s version is one version. India’s version is different from the colonizer’s version. The tragic story of Miss Crane (burning herself in the shed) is an excursion off the main track of the story, but there are a lot parallels between Daphne and Miss Crane. Repetition points us toward the theme or themes.

The portrait of the Jewel in the Crown is described often. The jewel is India and the crown is Queen Victoria. Daphne is near-sighted, which is significant, she can’t see into the distance. It is also significant that we lose Daphne and Hari. There are a lot of in-between characters. The baby is of mixed blood. Merrick is between classes. Hari is raised English but he has black skin; and he hates himself. All of these details are significant. The author writes, “the little matter of the color of one’s skin.”

The novel is very descriptive and there are references to the political scene; real locations, figures (Gandhi), and events (the Quit India campaign). Different characters replay the same crisis/issues. After Daphne dies, Sarah Layton continues the story. She visits Lady Manners and asks to see the baby. Characters embody ideas, philosophies, and power struggles.

We don’t get the whole story until the end, through letters written by Daphne. This style of narrative requires more from the reader. On the historical level there is another type of rape—it’s not just the story of the rape of Daphne Manners, but the figurative rape of India by Britain through colonization. Everything is interrelated; stories don’t happen in isolation, “they are incommunicable in isolation from the moral continuum of human affairs.”

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