Diplomsko Delo

UNIVERZA V MARIBORU FILOZOFSKA FAKULTETA Oddelek za anglistiko in amerikanistiko

DIPLOMSKO DELO

Andreja Gr ča

Maribor, 2013

UNIVERZA V MARIBORU FILOZOFSKA FAKULTETA Oddelek za anglistiko in amerikanistiko

Diplomsko delo

VZHOD IN ZAHOD V HEAT AND DUST

Graduation thesis

EAST AND WEST IN R. P. JHABVALA’S HEAT AND DUST

Mentorica: Dr. Michelle Gadpaille Kandidatka: Andreja Gr ča

Maribor, 2013

Lektorica: Petra Kvas, abs. Slov. jezika s književnostjo

FILOZOFSKA FAKULTETA Koroška cesta 160 2000 Maribor, Slovenija www.ff.um.si

IZJAVA

ABSTRACT

The aim of this diploma paper is to analyze the dynamic of East and West encounter and the problems that ensue when the cultures of East and West meet in the novel Heat and Dust by Ruth Prawer Jhabvala. The author is a westerner, who lived in India for the most part of her adult life and therefore had a unique position of insider – outsider. She is able to observe the dynamic from a detached point of view. She uses orientalist discourse that puts West above East, but because Jhabvala uses irony, she mocks this kind of attitude and this classifies the text as post-colonial. Within this dynamic, I also explored the relationship between men and women, as well as women in India. The relationships in the novel can not prosper because of the cultural differences, supporting the Forsterian idea that East and West can never be friends. Another aim of this diploma is to explore the background of orientalist discourse as explained by Edward Said in his book Orientalism . Said explains the development of orientalism and how the orientalist discourse feeds it.

Key words: Orientalism, post-colonialism, irony, East and West, India

POVZETEK

Namen te diplomske naloge je analizirati dinamiko odnosa med Vzhodom in Zahodom in probleme, ki se pojavijo ob sre čanju kultur Vzhoda in Zahoda v romanu Heat and Dust avtorice Ruth Prawer Jhabvala. Avtorica je rojena na Zahodu, ve čino svojega odraslega življenja pa je preživela v Indiji, kar ji je omogo čilo unikaten in objektiven pogled na to dinamiko. Uporablja orientalisti čno izrazoslovje, ki postavlja Zahod nad Vzhod, vendar z uporabo ironije takšen odnos degradira, to pa uvrš ča njen roman med postkolonialisti čne tekste. Znotraj te dinamike sem bolj podrobno raziskala odnose med moškimi in ženskami ter tudi položaj žensk v Indiji. Odnosi v romanu ne uspevajo zaradi kulturnih razlik, kar podpira Fosterjevo idejo, da Vzhod in Zahod nikoli ne moreta biti prijatelja. Drugi namen diplome je raziskati ozadje orientalisti čnega izrazoslovja, kot ga pojasnjuje Edward Said v svoji knjigi Orientalism . Said pojasni razvoj orientalizma in kako ga orientalisti čno izrazoslovje podpira.

Klju čne beside: orientalizem, post-kolonializem, ironija, Vzhod in Zahod, Indija

Table of Contents

1. Introduction ...... 1 2. The background of Orientalism, Jhabvala in India ...... 2 2.1 Jhabvala in India ...... 5 3. Westerners in the East ...... 9 4. The relationship between men and women in the Indian setting ...... 29 5. Women in India ...... 44 6. Conclusion ...... 47

1. Introduction

The Booker prize-winning novel Heat and Dust by Ruth Prawer Jhabvala is a post-colonial text that addresses several issues that appear when East meets West. There is a lot of orientalist rhetoric to be found in the text, a rhetoric that Edward Said explores in his prominent and authoritative book Orientalism . The basic characteristic of orientalist rhetoric is the division of East and West into opposite structures, where the first is there only to be a negative reflection of the latter. Thus the East or “Orient” and its people, called “Orientals”, are given negative attributions and serve to reflect the West as its positive counterpart. In the novel, Jhabvala uses this kind of prejudicial thinking and writing, but by the use of several different techniques, she makes it appear ridiculous and wrongful, making this novel a post-colonial novel. The techniques she uses include irony and the division of the plot into two parallel stories that run fifty years apart. With the use of the first, she ridicules the western characters in their attempt to play their positive part in the orientalist division of the world and failing miserably at it. With the use of the second, she can portray India of 1970s, with the Westerners failing again. My thesis is that these characters fail in India because of the orientalist image that they have through the wrongful representation of the East, found even today in books and other texts, spread throughout the West. I will also show how Jhabvala’s own experience of living in India and her own beliefs about the encounter of East and West influence the novel. My thesis is that she shares the opinion of E. M. Forster, and that is that East and West can never be friends. This fact is mirrored in every relationship between Easterners and Westerners in both parts of the plot, as well as in the fact that the two stories are set fifty years apart, during which time huge social and political changes occur, and still the same cultural challenges are visible in the relationships. The one thing that does not change is the social position of Indian women. Jhabvala criticizes the persistent social rules that make these women’s position impossible.

2. The background of Orientalism, Jhabvala in India

Orientalism , the book by E. W. Said, is considered one of the most important texts in the field of post-colonialism, a theoretical foundation when thinking of post-colonialism as an intellectual movement. It helps explain how post-colonial rhetoric or discourse evolved and formed into a way in which Westerners perceive the East. According to Said, “Continued investment made Orientalism, as a system of knowledge about the Orient, an accepted grid for filtering through the Orient into Western consciousness” (Said 6). I mention Said and his book because this will help to show how Jhabvala used orientalist discourse and other elements of Orientalism in the book Heat and Dust to show how Westerners still perceive India through stereotypical notions, through an “accepted grid”. With the use of irony, the book gains a whole new dimension and can be categorized into a post-colonial context. With an ironic undertone, she mocks the colonial stereotypes about Indians, Westerners’ stamping of the natives with otherness, and wrapping their culture and religious beliefs into grotesquerie. I will explore this dimension later in this chapter and start by examining the background of Orientalism as explained by Said. When Europeans started to explore beyond their continent, explorers met with the unknown, the mysterious – new races and new cultures. It is natural for the human being, as Said argues, to try to familiarize the unknown, so he tries to gain knowledge about it, study it and write about it in order to make it familiar. Since Europeans had the means to travel, explore and write about new places and people, it is they who are familiarizing the unknown. To make it familiar means to incorporate it into their own - western - culture, explain it in a way that fits the western world and degrade it in comparison to the West. For example, as Said puts it in Orientalism, “since Christ is the basis of Christian faith, it was assumed – quite incorrectly – that Mohammed was to Islam as Christ was to Christianity. Islam became an image whose function was not so much to represent Islam in itself as to represent it for the medieval Christian” (Said 60). With the power to explore and write about the unknown, comes the power to judge, assign attributes and represent the “others”. This term is used by colonizing nations and denotes all

“colonized subjects” in order to establish a “binary separation of the colonizer and colonized and asserting the naturalness ad primacy of the colonizing culture and world view” (Ashcroft, Griffiths, and Tiffin 169). The first Orientalists were the 19 th Century scholars who translated writings about the Orient into English to spread knowledge of conquered people in the West. The need to spread this knowledge was based on the conviction that, in order to make the conquest of the new people truly effective, the conquerors needed to know as much as possible about the other. Said here argues that in this way knowledge became power. By knowing the Orient, the West could own it, manipulate it and rule it. What is characteristic of these texts, as Said further explains, is that they are always based on some previous orientalist text. These texts incorporate a style of thought that is based upon an ontological and epistemological distinction that is made between the “Orient” and the “Occident”. Let us start by explaining how these texts all use the same vocabulary that Said called “orientalist discourse”. The 19 th Century scholars could say what they said, in the way they did, because a still earlier tradition of orientalism one provided them with a vocabulary, imagery, rhetoric, and figures with which to say it. This is what Said calls “orientalist discourse”. What he means by the term “discourse” is the codified vocabulary that is used every time one talks, writes or thinks about the Orient and can be found in all orientalist texts. Since all these texts are always based on some previous orientalist text, Said argues that orientalist discourse spread and became more and more an accepted and established way in which Westerners perceive the East. It can be found in elaborate theories, novels, political accounts, social descriptions concerning Oriental people, their customs, way of thinking and even destiny. This discourse of power, as it is sometimes called, contains representative figures or tropes, such as “us” vs. “them”, “normal” vs. “strange”, “civilized” vs. “barbaric”, “strong” vs. “weak”, etc. Such discourse helps promote differences by polarizing the two worlds, the result being the oriental more oriental, the westerner more western, besides “limit[ing] the human encounter between different cultures, traditions, and societies. The sense for

western power over the Orient is taken for granted as having the status of scientific truth” (Said 45-46).

Forster claims that the English and Indians can never be friends. Rudyard Kipling supports the same theory when he says that “East is East and West is West”. This is all due to orientalist discourse, which puts Easterners and Westerners into opposite corners by making distinctions, using the words “we” and “they”. The people of East and West stay apart, remain in opposite corners and can never be friends. Such is also Jhabvala’s disposition towards the question of Eastern and Western relationship, because there are several clues in Heat and Dust that point to that fact. Orientalist discourse and visual imagery place the Orient into the role of the West’s symmetrical counterpart. It is placed there to serve as a reflection of the West, and that is its sole purpose. What is important here is that this counterpart, this Other to the West, is always depicted as primitive, weak, unintelligent and inferior, in order to reflect the West as strong, intelligent and superior, to assert its supremacy and justify colonization. Orientalist discourse becomes a powerful tool for the West to rule over the Orient. One of the most significant constructions of Orientalist scholars is the term “Orient” itself. For what this term encompasses is a vast region that spreads across a myriad of cultures and countries. It includes most of Asia as well as the Middle East. It essentializes an image of a prototypical Oriental – a biological inferior that is culturally backward, peculiar, and unchanging. That means that all the people of the East could be attributed the same characteristics – personal, cultural, etc.; they would then be “Orientals” with “orientalist” characteristics, as if individuals did not exist outside the Western world. The Persian, the Indian, the African, etc., all behave in the same (oriental) way. This means that they are lazy, primitive and savage. They do not use logic, have no initiative and therefore cannot progress from their state without the help of the intelligent, advanced Western ruler. Another aspect that should be taken into consideration is consent on the “native’s” part. What the colonizer believed was that his was the stronger culture; he was of superior race; he was educated; his beliefs were the right ones.

Therefore, he believed himself to be the one whom the natives need in the process of becoming civilized and advanced. He was the colonizer; he had the means to spread his culture; he had the power to speak for the native. If the native could speak for himself, he would, but he cannot, so the Westerner does that for him. In Orientalism , Said mentions Denys Hay’s “idea of Europe”, which he explains is “a collective notion identifying “us” Europeans as against all “those” non- Europeans, and indeed it can be argued that the major component in European culture is precisely what made that culture hegemonic both in and outside Europe: the idea of European identity as a superior one in comparison with all non- European peoples and cultures. There is, in addition, the hegemony of European ideas about the orient, “themselves reiterating European superiority over oriental backwardness” (Said 7). That idea of European superiority was also incorporated into educational system throughout the colonies, including India. Many generations of natives were educated in the spirit that the European ways, culture and values are also the right ones for them. The consequences of this can be seen in independent India today, as well as in other newly independent countries, as they search for confidence and a sense of equality. This phenomenon is also illustrated in the novel Heat and Dust .

2.1 Jhabvala in India

One European who had never left Europe but knew about Eastern cultures from western books was Ruth Prawer Jhabvala, the author of Heat and Dust . She was born to Jewish parents in 1927 in Cologne, Germany. She and her family fled the Nazis in 1939 and emigrated to England. There she received her MA in English Literature at the University of London. In the same year she met an Indian Parsi architect, married him and moved to India in 1951, at the age of twenty-four. She spent most of her adult life in India. Jhabvala was an expatriate living in India; thus, many critics claim she had the unique position of an “insider–outsider”, a detached point of view when writing about India, enabling her to develop an ironic tone in her work, for which she was often praised. Many Indian critics, however, criticized her for that, as

they claimed that she represented India from a western point of view and for western audience and therefore gave her audiences a distorted image of what India and her people were like. Heat and Dust for example, was, in their opinion, just another orientalist text, written for a western audience and following the orientalist tradition of representing the East. My thesis is that she uses orientalist discourse together with irony to show how completely false the image of India is in the eyes of Westerners, owing to the orientalist tradition that helped distort that image, and with the use of an ironic undertone she successfully mocked that image. At the same time, however, she cannot accept Indian gullibility as she approaches it with her logical mind, her English education, culture and personality. She is a Westerner who was taught to think logically and was brought up in English culture. Her culture and education are so different from Indian culture that she has difficulty understanding it. Out of that fact, comes her conviction that speaks in favor of Forster’s and Kipling’s words. European and Indian cultures are too different, people, therefore, are too different. English-educated and acculturated people find it extremely hard to stay and live in India. In An Experience of India , she wrote an essay as the introduction, titled “Myself in India” (1971), where she described her relationship with and disposition towards India. She describes India as “very strong” and often “too strong for European nerves” (“Myself in India” 9). Then she describes how all Europeans usually react to India in a sort of cycle: when they first come to India, they love everything about it. Then comes the second stage, when the excitement wears off and they realize that India is not what they read about and heard about in Europe. Disillusionment follows and in the end comes the third stage, where Europeans start to loathe everything Indian. She goes on explaining that for some people this is the end stage, while for some the cycle renews itself. The latter is also true for herself, so that she sometimes feels like she is “strapped to a wheel that goes round and round and sometimes I’m up and sometimes I’m down” (“Myself in India” 9). To be able to stay in India, she says, you need “a mission and a cause” and be “patient, cheerful, unselfish, strong” (“Myself in India” 9). She describes herself as nothing like that. She is over-analytical, has weak nerves

and cannot shut down her logical mind. What is most disturbing to her is the poverty and other horrors that are the consequence of poverty. This is the fact that overshadows everything she otherwise likes about India. As is shown in the novel Heat and Dust , Indians are so used to the horrors they see every day that they get used to them and are not moved by them anymore. Jhabvala cannot do that and refuses to adapt to the point where she is indifferent to the suffering around her. Also, she is not a person with a mission, such as a doctor or a social worker, who is trying to make things better, this being the only alternative to adaptation. Instead, she feels like a person who lives on that poverty as “on a back of an animal” (“Myself in India” 10) and she cannot live with that knowledge in her mind. In her opinion, the only way of accepting the suffering that surrounds her is the Hindu religion and belief in reincarnation. This belief is what, in her opinion, enables Indians to accept the death and disease around them; those that are well off can live with a clear conscience because in a previous life they did something good to deserve all the gifts in this life. Those that suffer, comfort themselves with the conviction that in the next life they will be the ones with the privilege of having enough to eat (“Myself in India” 10). This essay also signifies the shift in Jhabvala’s interest from India – in her earlier works she speaks mostly of the problems of Indian marriage and family – to herself and other Westerners in India. This is the time when she has already become disillusioned by India, which is obvious from her work of that time and also applies to Heat and Dust . In the essay she goes on describing modern Westernized Indians, educated in England, who wear saris and celebrate traditional Indian poems and music, but who, in reality, are all “synthetic” to her, not what they really are but what they were taught to be, a perfect mix of East and West. Such Indians are at one point also described in Heat and Dust : Karim and Kitty. These Indians are Western educated but return to their Indian roots because they are told it is the right thing to do. It is all due to the English educational system in colonial times, when Indians were made aware of their inadequacies in comparison to English culture and history. The environment, too, oppresses Jhabvala: the dry, flat land and the heat make it hard to think. She says that the climate invites one not to exercise the

mind, but of course, Jhabvala cannot live like that for long. She would do anything not to be sucked into that “bog of passive, intuitive being” (“Myself in India” 13). Wherever she turns, there is hostility, whether it is in the environment or in the sight of human suffering. At the time when Jhabvala wrote Heat and Dust (1975), she fell ill with jaundice. In the same year she moved to New York, where she still lives today. “Myself in India” gives us an approximate idea of how Jhabvala felt about India when she wrote the novel Heat and Dust and helps to shed light on the disposition and the tone in which the book was written. It also reflects her experience of India. The novel Heat and Dust consists of two parallel stories. One story is set in the1920s, the time of the British Raj, and talks about Olivia, a woman who comes to live in India with her husband Douglas, who is an English government official in Satipur. Soon, she falls in love with the Nawab, the prince of Khatm, a neighboring province, and has a brief affair with him. She gets pregnant, but does not know whose child she is carrying, so with the help of Indian midwives she has an abortion and ruins her reputation when she is found out by a British doctor. She flees to the mountains where she spends the rest of her life in solitude. The second story is set 50 years later in the 1970s. The narrator of the novel, whose grandmother was Douglas’s second wife, comes to India to find out more about Olivia’s story. She comes to know about Olivia from the letters that Olivia writes to her sister Marcia. She has a brief affair with her Indian landlord, Inder Lal and also gets pregnant. She decides to keep the baby, stays in India and moves to the mountains. What we can feel throughout the novel is a subtle ironic undertone that must be recognized in order to understand Jhabvala’s text correctly. Some Indian critics criticized her for presenting a distorted image of India to her Western readers, thus helping the orientalist tradition to spread. However, if we read the book with the ironic undertone in mind and notice what is unsaid, but evident between the lines, we can see that she tries, in a post-colonial manner, to mock the image Westerners have about India. At the time the novel was written, the 1970s, the Hindu religion was popular in a Western world that was divided by the Cold

War. Gurus and their teachings were highly praised, and many people would come to India to follow a guru and explore spirituality. Jhabvala cannot understand such people. Looking around, she notices a familiar pattern in Western behavior in India. That is what fuels her ironic tone: her sense of comedy. What is ahead for these Westerners is disillusionment and the realization that the real India is nothing like the image they had in mind when they arrived. In the novel, the narrator, too, meets such characters, traveling through India and who have to learn the hard way what India is really like. In the 1920s part of the book, she mocks the superior attitude of the English towards Indians by presenting us with English characters that are far from the perfect image that the British in India try to establish. Also new in this novel is the political aspect of Indian history. When the novel is read closely, we can detect the brooding in the background that signals the future uprisings against the British and subsequent Indian emancipation. Here, too, Jhabvala uses irony when she illustrates how inadequate the British are in detecting the disturbances. This is due to their arrogant self-assurance of their rule in India and underestimation of Indians’ ability to organize and rebel.

3. Westerners in the East

The modern part of the novel gives much more insight into modern India, the challenges it faces and how the colonial past is both echoed and rooted in the lives of the Indians. The part of the novel that depicts the colonial past gives insight into the prejudice and racism of the Anglo-Indians and helps explain the present. The story of the narrator is written in the form of a diary she keeps. The first entry shows that the narrator, like most Westerners, came to Bombay with a certain image of India:

Arrived in Bombay today. Not what I had imagined at all. Of course I had always thought of arrival by ship, had forgotten how different it would be by plane. All those memoirs and letters I’ve read, all those prints I’ve seen. I really must forget about them. Everything is different now. ( Heat and Dust 2)

This image is based on Olivia’s letters and memoirs. All that the narrator knows about living in India is what she learned from these sources. The inhabitants of the Civil Lines kept mostly to themselves and made their surroundings and lives as English as possible, having little contact with Indians. Their bungalows were furnished and carpeted; they socialized with the Nawab, a prince of the neighboring state, who gave dinner parties, which are an English form of entertainment and socializing. The lives of the Memsahibs - the wives of government officials – resembled the lives of women in England: they stayed at home, visited each other, complained about their dirty Indian servants, and made plans for a yearly trip to Simla, a place higher in the mountains, where they stayed during the summer, when it was too hot for them in the plains. It is no wonder, then, that India is not what the narrator imagined. However, she soon realizes that she must forget about what she has read and heard about India so far. Westerners often come to India with the same wrong idea. This is due to the orientalist tradition in the texts that describe India as a mysterious, exotic place, governed by spirituality and love. Perhaps this is the image Jhabvala had in mind when she moved to Delhi; leaving a Europe shattered by war, she was perhaps expecting to move to an exotic paradise. When Westerners experience India, most of them realize that this is a place full of hungry, suffering people, disease, thieves and indifference to all these facts. This is what Said tries to show in his book Orientalism ; many Westerners learn about foreign countries only through similar sources. These sources, by using the same orientalist discourse, often help distort the image and create the stereotypes that then form the “grid” mentioned in the previous chapter. It is true, however, that this was once the only way to learn about foreign countries – through these texts. The narrator learns that India from today is nothing like India from Olivia’s letters and when she arrives, she learns the harsh truth. What the narrator experiences the very first night in Bombay is horrible. She is staying in a hostel, and the light from the streets that shines through the window fills the room with a “ghostly reflection, so that the sleeping people seem like washed-up bodies” ( Heat and Dust 3). When she looks out of the window and down on the street, the sight

is even more horrific; there are children with missing limbs and people looking for the remains of food in the gutter. The Indians are not the only ones that suffer. In a hotel across the street there are Europeans who are in a terrible state. There is no sign of or similarity with Olivia’s romantic India. Jhabvala makes it clear how strongly India can affect Westerners. A woman, a missionary, who sleeps in the same dormitory, explains:

The sidewalk outside A.’s [hotel] was crowded – not with Indians but with Europeans. They looked a derelict lot. . . . “They beg from each other and steal from each other. . . . But others there are, women and men, they’ve been here for years and every year they get worse. You see the state they’re in. They’re all sick, some of them dying. One day I saw a terrible sight. He can’t have been more than thirty, perhaps German or Scandinavian – he was very fair and tall. . . . there was a monkey sitting by him and the monkey was delousing him. . . . I looked in that man’s face – in his eyes – and I tell you I saw a soul in hell.” (Heat and Dust 5)

The narrator is warned right away about how strongly India can affect people. It can be too much to take, as for the Europeans in A.’s hotel. It is ironic that people come to such a place to save their souls, when obviously Jhabvala is convinced that this is not the right place for saving one’s soul. The Europeans have come, probably looking for some purpose, but they have turned into beggars. The narrator soon discards her expectations. To her, too, the Europeans outside that hotel do seem like souls in hell. Ironically, the Westerners in the modern part of the book are no longer all-knowing conquerors, but lost, ruined souls, looking for direction and guidance in a land they once tried to modify according to their beliefs. The narrator’s further experience of India remains negative when she meets three English travelers in Satipur who have had nothing but bad experiences so far: the pair was robbed of their watches, cheated by a man they met on a train, the girl developed dysentery and ringworm, and was molested and robbed; the young man got a disease that might be jaundice ( Heat and Dust 21); the list goes on and on. The pair came to India to find desired spiritual enrichment. They became

interested in the Hindu religion after they attended a lecture on Universal Love by a visiting swami in London. From the way Jhabvala describes this swami, it is evident that she does not think much of swamis and their lectures: the swami had a soft caressing voice, melting eyes and a smile of joy. He created a beautiful atmosphere with banana leaves, jasmine and incense ( Heat and Dust 22). Jhabvala’s tone when describing this meeting is not only ironic (here we already know that the travelers’ experience could not be further from his teachings) but almost comic:

The swami, . . . told them that Universal love was an ocean of sweetness that lapped around all humanity and enfolded them in tides of honey. . . . the swami’s discourse was accompanied by two of his disciples one of whom softly played a flute while the other, even more softly, beat two tiny cymbals together. … They were mostly Europeans and wore saffron robes and had very pure expressions on their faces as if cleansed of all sin and desire ( Heat and Dust 22).

Jhabvala is laughing at the escapism of Westerners into Eastern religions. When the narrator asks them why they have come to India, the girl answers: “To find peace.” and then adds: “But all I found was dysentery” ( Heat and Dust 21). Jhabvala seems not to have a problem with the Hindu religion as such. It is the swamis who appear to her to be using the teachings of Hindu religion to get what they want: money and food. Therefore, she does not think that the swamis are holy at all; in the novel, the narrator describes the Indian holy men that pass through Satipur with their begging bowls and beads, half naked or completely naked, in a very negative way:

On the whole they look a sturdy set of rascals to me – some of them heavily drugged, others randy as can be, all it seems to me with shrewd and greedy faces. But as they pass through the streets, . . . rapping their pilgrim staffs and shouting out the name of God as pedlars shout their wares, people come running out of their houses to lay offerings into the ready begging bowls ( Heat and Dust 63- 64).

The narrator implies that the holy men are trying to sell their God, just as the pedlars are trying to sell their wares, which is a degrading comparison for someone who is supposed to be holy and respected. She does not think much of them, and it is incomprehensible to her that people come running devoutly to give offerings, ready to believe anything the holy men shout. Trying to become such a holy man is the other young man, travelling with the pair, also English. He, too, came here after reading Hindu scriptures, as he explained to the narrator. Upon his arrival, he is not disappointed. He finds a guru, who initiates him into Hindu religion. With that he gives up his personal characteristics, his possessions and his name. The guru gives him a new name, Chidananda – Chid. Chid is the character that best represents a Westerner that goes through the cycle described by Jhabvala in “Myself in India”. He is another example of a Westerner who seeks happiness in the wrong place. In Jhabvala’s novel, he is bound to fail to survive in India. The cycle for Chid reads as follows: following the guru’s instructions, Chid sets off on a pilgrimage in high spirits. Although he has his prayer-beads and a begging bowl, collecting food this way is not enough; therefore, he has to write home for money ( Heat and Dust 23). Soon, he starts to experience the calamities that his new way of life brings: he develops dysentery and ring-worm, he is robbed and spends most of his time meditating. He simply cannot sleep under trees, as the guru instructs, but has to find shelter. It becomes obvious that the instructions of the guru do not work well in practice. Jhabvala mocks such ideas by showing how unrealistic they are. Then, about a month later, the narrator meets Chid again. She finds him in the royal tombs in Satipur, very ill. The narrator takes him into her care and lets him stay with her for a while. That Indians have a different attitude towards religion, is visible when the narrator describes how the people in town listen to Chid’s teachings and believe him. The narrator cannot understand that. As Jhabvala explains, an Indian can see God in a cow, a Westerner cannot (“Myself in India” 16). There are many other differences in Eastern and Western belief systems; it is unsurprising, then, that people, growing up in one or another system have trouble understanding each

other or even internalizing each other’s religions as their own. Chid is an example of this idea, as becomes clear when the plot develops. Despite all the trouble Chid faces, he still holds on to the idea of living the life of an Indian holy man. He again sets off on a pilgrimage, this time recommended to him by Maji, an old woman that lives in Satipur, and whom the narrator describes as wise and having special powers. Maji believes pilgrimages help people who are restless or unhappy to find peace of mind and fulfill their longings. It seems that she is right, because when Chid returns from the pilgrimage, he is completely changed. He wears pants and shoes and his hair starts to grow back:

From a Hindu ascetic he has become what I can only describe as a Christian boy. The transformation is more than outward. He has become very quiet – not only does he not talk in his former strain but he hardly talks at all. And he is ill again ( Heat and Dust 139).

Clearly, the pilgrimage helps Chid to realize one thing: he is not an Indian ascetic, but at best a Christian boy. We are not sure what the answer for Chid is, but at the end of the novel we know, that it is not to abandon the Western values or a belief system in which he was raised and that represents the basis of his identity. He reaches the third stage of Jhabvala’s cycle, where he cannot stand the smell of Indian food or the smells of India in general anymore. He has to go to the hospital. All he is waiting for now, is for his family to send him money for the plane ticket back home:

Chid takes no notice of his surroundings at all. In fact, he does his best to shut them out completely. Whenever I visit him, he is lying with his eyes tightly closed and sometimes tears trickle out of them. I have already written to his family to ask for a ticket home for him, and now we are both waiting for it to arrive and for his health to improve sufficiently for him to travel. Meanwhile he wants to know and see nothing; just lie there and wait ( Heat and Dust 157- 158).

Perhaps what also helps Chid is that the pilgrimage leads into the mountains, where the weather is cool and fresh, not like in the plains, where people have to endure heat. The summers that bring along dust storms have a symbolic meaning. The novel is titled Heat and Dust for a reason, for it is the climate that supports the protagonists in acting irrationally and succumbing to their desires; the heat is the symbol for desire and passion. The narrator describes the dust storms this way:

Dust storms have started blowing all day, all night. Hot winds whistle columns of dust out of the desert into the town; the air is choked with dust and so are all one’s senses. Leaves that were once green are now ashen, and they toss around as in a dervish dance. Everyone is restless, irritable, on the edge of something. It is impossible to sit, stand, lie, every position is uncomfortable; and one’s mind too is in turmoil. … It is as if all reason and common sense are being drained out of the air ( Heat and Dust 79-80).

The dust storms create a setting that is unbearable; the senses are choked, people are irritable, and the leaves dance in a dervish dance, which is an exotic description. It is hard to be cool, composed and reasonable; all reason is gone, drained out of the air. People act irrationally and on impulse in such circumstances. When Chid leaves the hot, dusty plains for the mountains with a cooler climate, it seems like his reason returns and he realizes that he is a Christian boy, not a Hindu priest. The plot and the climate of the novel are inextricably connected. The setting reflects the characters’ feelings and also causes them. Jhabvala illustrates in the novel how hard it is for the Western culture to prosper or even survive in the hot Indian climate. In the 1923 section of the book, Olivia often plays the piano during her solitary days, when her husband Douglas, a government official, is away on duty. However, she finds it more and more difficult to play. The problem is that Schuman just does not fit into the environment. When Harry, an Englishman who is staying at the palace as company for the Nawab and who becomes friends with Olivia, asks her to play for him, she says,

“It’s too hot to play. And have you heard the piano, what a state it’s in?” She banged a defective note again. “This is simply no climate for a piano and that’s all there is to it…” . . . But there was something more, and she tried to think what that could be. “Debussy,” she said. “Schuman. It’s so…unsuitable.” She laughed. ( Heat and Dust 128-129)

This paragraph illustrates how East and West are incompatible; the piano is a European instrument, just as Debussy and Schumann are European composers of classical music. To Olivia, they simply do not fit into an Eastern country with the hot climate and Eastern culture. The incompatibility is most clearly expressed in the next passage:

From the servants quarters came the sound of a voice chanting and a drum being beaten in accompaniment, both on one flat note and without pause in absolute monotony. “It’s like brain fever.” Harry said. . . . “I think it may be why I [Olivia] don’t play the piano much anymore. I mean, it doesn’t exactly harmonize, does it.” ( Heat and Dust 129)

In India, monotonous chanting goes hand in hand with the monotonous environment, and nothing here bears resemblance to Europe. Classical music has a structure; there are rules that it follows and it is clear, whereas Indian music is much more intuitive, and these again are two constructs that follow the pattern West/reason vs. East/intuition, feelings. India is a damaging force; with its climate and the landscape it destroys the attempts of Western culture to survive. The piano music is out of place, as are the English. Also, religion is a different concept for an Indian than it is for a European. G. Lowes Dickinson wrote in “An Essay on the Civilizations of India, China and Japan”,

An Englishman has no conception even of the meaning of a philosophic or religious problem. The notion that the material world could be a mere illusion is one that could never appeal to him as even intelligible. . . . His religion, when he

has one, is a transfigured morality, not a mysticism. He is practical, through and through, in spiritual as well as material things. Between him and the Indian the gulf is impassible (18-19).

What Dickinson is saying is that the basic views of the world are so different between the two cultures that they can never come together. Indian life is completely impregnated with religion, whereas religion for Westerners is more a moral guideline that may or may not dictate one’s life. The problem here is also that the Westerner, approaches the question of the religion and life, on the whole, from the perspective of reason. In their book Theories of Development, Richard Peet and Elaine Hartwick mention the French philosopher Michel Foucault and his criticism of “reason”. Said’s work, too, is influenced by his ideas. Foucault claims that reason is a construct that is culturally specific to Europeans. By approaching everything with reason, all forms of experience and understanding are regulated and classified. Also, the humanistic ideas, such as freedom, autonomy and human rights, brought by the European Enlightenment, are the ideological bases that every “normal” modern human being should desire (Peet and Hartwick 204). By approaching other peoples and cultures in this way, the Europeans speak for them with the conviction that everyone desires to see the world from this/European perspective of reason. Besides the problem of religious differences, Dickinson also sees the problem in the English being unable or rather unwilling to culturally assimilate. They carry to India all their habits and ways of life, he says. They keep sending their children to be educated in England and raised on English ideals and attitudes to life. Their centre remains England, not India. This, of course, is understandable, for values, habits and ideals all constitute what an Englishman defines as himself; they make up his soul. The same is true for Indians, their habits and ideals. Also, this behaviour is an attempt of cultural survival for the English in India (19). The paragraph that best illustrates this is the paragraph, where the English enjoy their dinner on a very hot night, confidently sharing each-other’s thoughts on India. Nevertheless, though it is a hot night and the climate completely different from

the European, they do not forget their cultural customs and wear dinner jackets. (Heat and Dust 90). Dickinson then goes on to explain that if the English and Indians remained separate, there would be no difficulties, but the English need to “modify” India in order to be able to govern it completely. That is why they implement an educational system to teach Indians English ideas (21). This is the perfect way to introduce their victorious history, their mastery of literature and their great thinkers and scientists. Of course, by showing the Indians how victorious their “superiors” are, this would make the Indians feel inferior. Also, it would open their eyes to their “inadequacies”, be it in their culture, government, etc. This is a typical orientalising trait and also what Said speaks of in his book: a governing race’s need to create the Other (in this case the Indian) and give him negative connotations, like barbarism, primitivism and stupidity, in order to make itself – as the linear opposition, the reflection – appear civilized, clever and victorious. By convincing the Indians that their race is inferior to the English and that they need the English to govern them as they are not capable of governing themselves, they would give consent. That is exactly what happens. The English are a small camp of conquerors among millions of conquered, but they are successful because they can justify the conquest and subsequent rule by giving the Indians all the bad attributes and thus gain their consent. The consequences of this are visible in the modern part of the book. The Indians might have rebelled and gained their freedom from the British Raj, but the British educational system has left a mark in the minds of the Indian educated classes. They still strive to become like the English, as they remain aware of the “inadequacies” of their culture, so they send their children to be educated in England to create new generations of Westernized Indians. One such Indian is Inder Lal. When he asks the narrator why she has come to India, she answers that it is to find a “simpler and more natural way of life” ( Heat and Dust 95). Inder Lal feels this to be a mockery and feels ashamed before her because of his living conditions. He also feels ashamed of his “unscientific mind and ignorance of the modern world” ( Heat and Dust 95-96), and he understands why someone like the narrator would laugh at him. He himself feels like laughing when he looks around,

notices the conditions in which people live and that they have superstitious minds. He feels that he has to apologize for himself and other Indians for being uneducated and poor. He was brought up in this kind of thinking: Westerners are advanced and educated, so Indians should strive to become like them. The same problem exists for the Nawab in the 1920’s part of the book. He is well aware of this consent and it makes him angry. After a difficult altercation with Major Minnies, he directs his anger at Harry and tells Olivia:

“Now he [Harry] is playing the Englishman with me. So cool and composed and quiet and never losing his temper. He is playing Major Minnies with me. How different from these terrible orientals. … Because we are very stupid people with feelings that we let others trample on and hurt to their hearts content. English people are so lucky – they have no feelings at all.” ( Heat and Dust 144-145)

The Nawab is angry at the Indians and also at himself, because he feels he has no option but to endure the English. Cronin describes the relationship of the Indian princes and the British as “feudal”. The princes pledged their loyalty to the British crown and in return, they retained the sovereignty within their lands. However, even within their states, the British interests were protected by a “political agent” (Major Minnies in the novel), whose role stretched between that of “an adviser” and that of “a watchdog”. After 1920, Indian princes and the British were faced with a common enemy in the form of the Indian Congress party, which “saw no place in an independent India for the princely states”. Cronin then explains that their status forced the British to show the Indian princes greater respect. The Nawab is a proud Indian ruler, who would rather show his enemies directly what he thinks of them, like his ancestor Amanullah Khan, whom he greatly admires. He also thinks that the English have no feelings at all. Dickinson explains in his book that, because the English in India are a minority, they constantly need to maintain the feeling of superiority. All the English in India have to live with that idea in their minds: the Nawab notices it in Major Minnies; whenever Olivia describes her husband Douglas, she describes him as a perfect example of a proper Englishman.

However, in post-colonialist manner, Jhabvala makes these characters appear ridiculous in their arrogance and self-assurance. At the dinner party in the Nawab’s palace, she describes them through Olivia’s eyes as boring; “Major Minnies and Mr. Crawford [were] puffy and florid, with voices that droned on and on confident of being listened to though everything they were saying was, Olivia thought, as boring as themselves” (Heat and Dust 16). Then she adds irony when she illustrates how the Nawab pretends to be amused by Major Minnies’s story about a Hindu money lender that was trying to outwit him, and does not even notice that he is being made fun of. It is even funnier because he thinks of himself as a clever and intelligent Englishman. The Nawab’s reaction to the story is so exaggerated that it is at once obvious to the reader that he is putting on a show. Only Olivia notices how dishonest the Nawab is, and that makes the Major appear ridiculous. Major Minnies thinks that he is intelligent, but in his vanity he does not notice the mockery. In a similar way, Jhabvala ridicules Dr. Saunders towards the end of the book, when he comes to see Harry who is having health problems. First, Dr. Saunders uses many technical terms in the conversation to appear scientific, and the Nawab listens to him with exaggerated courtesy, which Olivia immediately recognizes as his way of expressing contempt. Dr. Saunders, however, does not notice anything. Then he goes even further in a self-assured manner and starts to express his opinion of India and Indians:

“It’s the only way to deal with them, Nawab Sahib. It’s no use arguing with them, they’re not amenable to reason. They haven’t got it here, you see, up here, the way we have.” “Exactly, Doctor. You have hit the – what is it, Harry?” “Nail on the head.” “Quite right. The nail on the head.” The Nawab nodded gravely. (Heat and Dust 121)

The Englishman is arrogant and completely self-confident that his opinion is the universal truth. This is a post-colonial moment, when colonialist convictions are being ridiculed and through that, devalued.

As we can see, the Nawab is not fond of the English. He makes fun of them because he resents them. He feels that they treat him like a child. This is true. One evening, the English residents of the Civil Lines discuss past incidents, with which they or their ancestors had to deal with in India:

The others, however, told their anecdotes with no moral comment whatsoever, even though they had to recount some hair-raising events. And not only did they keep completely cool, but they even had that little smile of tolerance, of affection, even enjoyment that Olivia was beginning to know well: like good parents, they all loved India whatever mischief she might be up to. ( Heat and Dust 58)

The English maintain a completely detached position, a distance towards the “hair-raising” events; they remain calm and composed rulers. They also give the impression that they know there is no point teaching Indians morality; Indians will never change and will forever remain primitive. So, like good fathers, the English watch over their children and resolve their problems. By being present in India, the British put themselves in a difficult position, where they cannot appear human or admit to having feelings. They need to appear cold and all-knowing. They are, of course, only human, and with her irony, Jhabvala exposes this humanity. The unique position of the British lends the opportunity for her irony and satire. Of course, the British are out of place, struggling on a small island in a sea of Indians, people who are culturally alien to them. It is an unnatural position; their compatriots in England do not need to scatter prejudice or put on a show, because their environment is not threatening to them. This is a clear message from Jhabvala: India is no place for the British, and out of their presence nothing but tension and hatred is born; there is no place for friendship. When the British talk about the Nawab, they call him “that boy” ( Heat and Dust 91), as if he were a schoolboy. They feel superior, because they are a part of the governing race. The Nawab resents that. He is a ruler, part of an Indian royal family - the elite, and the English are commoners to him. He, on the other hand, feels superior to them. He hates the English because they restrain his power. Because he cannot be hostile towards them, he tries to get what he wants by

charming them. He does that by trying to be liked by them. Therefore, the Nawab’s palace is furnished with European furniture and he has a store room that is full of European things ( Heat and Dust 86), although he never uses them - they are useless in India. He also owns a house in the mountains that Harry describes as “a Swiss chalet with a dash of Gothic cathedral” ( Heat and Dust 74), and drives European cars ( Heat and Dust 41). All this is in vain, because in the eyes of the British, he will forever remain “the Other”; he simply is not born British. Naturally, he has to be treated this way; if the British admitted that he were capable of ruling by himself, this would mean that their own presence is superfluous. So, there is no room for the Nawab’s ambition. His resentment makes him bitter; thus, he acts in ways that make the lives of the English district officers more difficult and unpleasant. Throughout the novel, the Nawab is linked to the dacoits that rob villages in his state and create uprisings at the yearly festival, called the Husband’s Wedding Day. The English know that the Nawab is giving the dacoits protection and then splitting the booty with them because he is supposed to have financial issues. When Olivia asks Mrs. Minnies about it, she replies that it is “always difficult to know what is going on” (Heat and Dust 32) and is reluctant to say more. Harry, too, tells Olivia that “low-class ruffians” are coming to see the Nawab in the palace but at the same time closes his eyes to it and claims that he doesn’t know what is going on ( Heat and Dust 71-72). It seems that everyone knows what is going on, but are turning a blind eye to it, because of the political situation, described by Cronin. Mahatma Gandhi poses a threat and the British – like it or not – need the Indian princes on their side. This situation ensues because of the English presence in India. As Major Minnies says at one point ( Heat and Dust 149), when the Nawab becomes frustrated, he always talks of his ancestor, Amanullah Khan. The Nawab describes Amanullah Khan to Olivia as a “freebooter, riding around the country with his own band of desperadoes to find what pickings they could in the free-for-all between Moghuls, Afghans, Mahrattas, and the East India Company” (Heat and Dust 45). India is no longer a “free-for-all” country. This country now has firm borders laid down by the English that exactly define whose is what, leaving the

Nawab “trapped” in his state of Khatm which is nothing but a flat, barren land. From this arrangement stem the Nawab’s financial problems, leaving him with no choice but to seek other sources of money, like making arrangements with the dacoits. What he also admires about his ancestor is his pride and ruthlessness. The Nawab tells Olivia about Amanullah Khan who kills a prince and his whole party because he was insulted by him and explains that “ ‘Amanullah Khan was not the man to sit quiet when insulted. Not like me.’ When she [Olivia] began to protest, he said ‘I have to, what can I do. I am helpless.’”(Heat and Dust 136). The Nawab’s frustrations are obvious from this and the following passage; he feels helpless against the English:

“Then you feel it would be better not to have anything but to fight your enemies in this way than to have them secretly plotting against you and whispering slanders? I think it is very much better!” he cried, suddenly very upset. ( Heat and Dust 136)

Of course, the Nawab knows that he is a menace to the English and the latter passage illustrates that Douglas is convinced that he is the “worst type of Indian you can have” (Heat and Dust 148), an Indian who is educated, intelligent, and knows how to use these qualities to rebel against English rule by causing uprisings through which he challenges their superiority. The English have a patient understanding toward Indians who they think do not threaten them; they are treating them like children. However, when someone like the Nawab becomes disobedient, English patience ends. Giving dacoits protection is not the only way in which the Nawab takes revenge on the English. It is also by keeping Harry under his influence. Harry is the Nawab’s guest and stays with him in the palace. He has been there for three years when Olivia first meets him. However, he is the kind of Englishman the other Englishmen in the district would rather not see among them. He is everything a proper Englishman is not: when he is first mentioned, he is described as “plump and balding” ( Heat and Dust 15). The Nawab calls him “an improper Englishman” and thinks he “is flabby in his body” (Heat and Dust 43). Also, Harry is a homosexual and looks at his days at Eton with displeasure. He was often

made fun of, probably because of his homosexuality, and he was eager to leave. Then the Nawab came to England and took him to exotic India. Finally, Harry had someone who was friendly to him. But as it turns out, this friendship extended only so far as was useful to Nawab in his plans with the English. Harry knows that, but he prefers to deceive himself, something that is typical of Jhabvala’s characters. When Olivia asks him whether the Nawab is involved with the dacoits, he turns the blind eye:

“Goodness knows. As far as I‘m concerned, he’s always right and they’re wrong. I hate them. They’re the sort of people who’ve made life hell for me ever since I can remember. At school and everywhere. Well, as long as they stick to bullying me – but when I see them doing it to him – and here – no that’s unbearable. …” ( Heat and Dust 161)

This passage shows us how unhappy Harry was in England. He would not be that susceptible to the Nawab if he had not been tortured by his fellow Englishmen in the past. Also, Harry may have had an incorrect, orientalized image of India, picturing it as an exotic land where he will be able to live out his sexuality. Harry resents the English for acting like bullies in a country where he believes they have no business being, but he hates it even more because he believes they make the Nawab act the way he does. In these moments, Harry is repeatedly confronted with the facts about the Nawab that he would rather not see. For these frustrations override everything else with the Nawab. Harry is suffering in the palace, since the Nawab returns neither his love nor the friendship. In other words, the Nawab is only using Harry to provoke the English. He can do that because he possesses power over Harry, because Harry is sexually interested in him. It is not an honest relationship, but power abuse. Even if some Indians and Europeans appear to be friends, Jhabvala makes it clear that such friendships are always abused, as long as one side is the ruler and the other are the ruled. The following passage illustrates how the Nawab is using Harry to provoke the English. He talks about Harry to Olivia and Douglas:

“But don’t you see, Mr. and Mrs. Rivers, he is like a child that doesn’t know what it wants! We others have to decide everything for him. Just see,” he said, “it is I who have to tell him get dressed, Harry, this is not the way to stand before a lady, go and get ready, comb your hair nicely.” ( Heat and Dust 78)

Suddenly an Indian has to tell an Englishman what to do, and the Englishman is the child that needs guiding, does not know his manners in front of a lady and so on. From Douglas’ angry reaction, the Nawab knows he hit exactly where it hurts most: English pride. This is important, because the English as the colonizers want to present themselves as flawless and perfect in the eyes of the colonized in order to make the natives look imperfect and abandon their own “wrong” beliefs for the English “right” beliefs. This principle is now symbolically under attack by the Nawab. Both the Nawab and Harry are threatening to the English. As Cronin suggests in his essay “The Hill of Devi and Heat and Dust ”, “the fantastic and the eccentric are lovable only so long as they are not threatening.” This is also a post-colonial moment, because with Harry, Jhabvala created a character with “oriental” characteristics; in orientalist discourse, native men are often described as effeminate and weak. Harry could be compared to the hijras, the homosexual male dancers, dressed as women. It is with the ironic character of Harry that Jhabvala mocks the English and their rule because she represents them as human beings who are even more ridiculed because they try to hide their humanity. The relationship between the Nawab and the English is representative of the problems that ensue when East meets West, especially when one is trying to rule the other. The English in India have a paranoid feeling that they have no choice but to present themselves as perfect and almost inhuman in the eyes of the Indians, to degrade the Indians every step of the way and scatter prejudice, so that the Indians constantly feel inferior. Their rule is constantly under threat by millions of subjugated people who are kept in line only because they are convinced that they are incapable of ruling themselves and those who rule them are all knowing and more intelligent. Were that belief to be destroyed and the English degraded, their rule would become unjustified.

Jhabvala gives other examples of how this paranoia can govern the racist attitude towards the Indians, for example in the character of Mrs. Saunders. Her baby dies in India and, as a result, she has never regained her health. She spends most days in bed, battling depression. Mrs Saunders constantly feels that she does not belong in India. She has the paranoid feeling that her Indian servants are trying to be intimate with her. One day, Olivia finds her out of bed. Mrs. Saunders explains,

“It’s no good to let them see you in bed…the servants,” she explained, lowering her voice and with a look towards the door. “I want to be in bed. It’s where I ought to be. But you don’t know what goes on in their heads.” (Heat and Dust 119)

She also hears a story about an English lady in India and shares it with Olivia with the intention of warning her about Indians’ nature:

“Her dhobi ,” Mrs. Saunders whispered, leaning closer to Olivia. “He was ironing her undies and it must have been too much for him. They’re very excitable, it’s their constitution. I’ve heard their spicy food’s got something to do with it – I wouldn’t know if there’s any truth in that but of this I’m sure Mrs. Rivers: they’ve got only one thought in their heads and that’s to you-know- what with a white woman. ( Heat and Dust 119)

A dhobi is a person in India that washes clothes. The manner in which Mrs. Saunders talks about Indians shows the lowest common denominator of orientalist thinking. According to her, the “natives” or “the Others” are very sexual, excitable, as if this were a trait shared by a whole race. Also, Mrs. Saunders seems to believe that all Indians want to be intimate with a white woman in order to mate with the white race that would give their children “good” genes. Such orientalist prejudice can be attributed to the fact that Mrs. Saunders, being part of a cultural minority, constantly feels as if her own culture is under threat and feels the need to hold on to it and elevate it in order to survive in India. It is clear that she too is at the point where she abhors the idea of having to live in

India. When one of her Indian servants makes her angry because he walks into the room with shoes on, Olivia describes her complaint:

She gave examples of their thieving, drinking, and other bad habits. She told Olivia about the filth in which they lived inside their quarters – but of course what could one expect, everything was like that, everywhere the same – the whole town, the lanes and bazaars, and had Olivia looked inside one of their heathen temples? ( Heat and Dust 28)

In this passage we can also sense how paranoia and fear trigger Mrs. Saunders’ prejudice. She feels threatened by the Indians, so she is degrading them. She is not sure of the attitude she is supposed to take toward them, so she tries to make order in her head and reassure herself by putting them all into one group: the Orientals, with every imaginable negative attribute. The English are also quick to judge suttee. This is an Indian custom, an old tradition that stems from the Hindu religion and which the English outlawed in 1829. A widow could throw herself onto her husband’s funeral pyre as an act of love and committment, and the act was not considered suicide but a noble death, a sign of respect and love. Sometimes a woman was forced to commit suttee by her relatives, so the husband’s family did not have to support the widow. The same thing happens under Douglas’ charge. When the English of the Civil Lines discuss it, they are unanimous in their thought that in the end this act is suicide. Olivia, however, is bothered by the way they pass judgment without a doubt in their mind that theirs is the right opinion:

She had no desire to re-comment widow-burning but it was everyone else being so sure – tolerant and smiling but sure – that made her want to take another stand. “But in theory it is really, isn’t it, a noble idea. In theory,” she pleaded. . . . “It’s savagery,” Dr. Saunders declared. “Like everything else in this country, plain savagery and barbarism.” ( Heat and Dust 59)

Their stand remains firm; their view remains black and white; they are right and the Indians are wrong; they are noble and the Indians savage, barbaric. The binarism stands firm: the East and West divided, standing opposite each other, one there – inferior - to reflect the other, to make the other appear superior. Their tolerance and smiles, again, are arrogant and they again speak for the Oriental. They make themselves judges over others in terms of western morality and ideals. Olivia is trying to offer another point of view, which is that suttee can be seen as a noble idea, as an act of devotion. Still, the English remain deaf to any other point of view. In their eyes, suttee is savage and barbaric. Olivia’s point of view is different, but nevertheless just as one-sided as that of her English compatriots. Her view is romantic: she wants to believe that suttee is an ultimate proof of undying love and nothing else. As Gerwin Strobl suggests in The Challenge of Cross-Cultural Interpretation in the Anglo-Indian Novel , her romantic vision leaves no room for a more realistic aspect of “suttee”: that of “one-less-mouth-to-feed” (245). Olivia goes even further when she claims that she would do the same if she lost Douglas: “I’d want to. I mean, I just wouldn’t want to go on living. I’d be grateful for such a custom” (Heat and Dust 60). Jayne L. Brazier claims in her essay “Heat and Dust, by Ruth Prawer Jhabvala” that Olivia is like a child that feels the need to rebel and oppose her patronizing fellows from the Civil Lines. Indeed, her claim is triggered by a need to object to the self-assured Englishmen, her exaggeration is naïve, and we cannot help but see in Olivia a young Englishwoman who spent her youth reading and hearing romantic stories about the East, thus returning us to the clichés of orientalism. It undermines her credibility as an objective storyteller and also serves to contrast and lend more credibility to the narrator in the modern part of the novel. What the narrator, then, reports, is more objective and believable for the reader. In this position of hegemony, ironically, the English fail to see through the dissatisfaction and anger that is growing among subjugated people. The English arrogantly dismiss the possibility of India’s independence and Indians’ ability to overthrow their rule without much consideration, so sure are they of themselves. As Dickinson explains, the educated Indian class starts to discover the heritage of

their own traditions; their self-consciousness and the feeling of nationality starts to grow as well (25). Also, for the first time in history, India has a common language, spoken by the educated class. That there is something going on regarding the independence movement is mentioned in the novel, but here again, Jhabvala mocks the English because they are so sure of themselves that they do not take it seriously and quickly dismiss Gandhi as unimportant. Olivia and Douglas discuss their children’s future in the Indian Civil Service and Olivia expresses doubt:

“Supposing things change – I mean, what with Mr. Gandhi and these people” - but she trailed off, seeing Douglas smile behind her in the mirror. He had no doubts at all. He said “They’ll need us a while longer,” with easy amused assurance. ( Heat and Dust 89)

Douglas is convinced that nothing can shake the English rule. Because Jhabvala’s Englishmen act in an arrogant manner and underestimate the Indians’ ability to stand up to them and eventually overthrow their rule, their conduct makes them appear comic and unwise. She is subtly implementing ideas that suggest an imminent and constant threat: “At its further end, huddled against the wall, were the servants’ quarters exuding muffled but incessant sounds.” (Heat and Dust 90)

4. The relationship between men and women in the Indian setting

By dividing the novel into two parallel stories, Jhabvala is able to explore and present the consequences of colonialism in India. She does that by comparing the relationships between Western women and Eastern men today and in the time of the Raj, and also by presenting Indian characters that struggle with colonial heritage. Even though not all of them were part of the colonial past, they all struggle with its consequences. The two central women of the novel, Olivia and the narrator experience India fifty years apart, but their stories are similar and at the same time different just like these women’s characters and the setting.

Laurie Sucher points out in her essay “Demon-Lovers and Holy Mothers: Heat and Dust” that around the relationship, or rather the love triangle between Olivia, her husband Douglas and the Nawab, Jhabvala develops another theme and that is the danger of sexual passion (98). Olivia is a young, naïve woman who has been brought by her husband to a place where certain rules have to be obeyed or one can soon become the victim of unknown dangers. Her fellow Englishmen from the Civil Lines make and strictly follow the rules. Even the name of the quarters signifies that the English minority locks itself up behind the lines where “civility” exists, and beyond these rigid lines lies the hostile, unpredictable and dangerous India. Olivia is warned to stay within these lines, where everyday life remains the same as in England and is governed by familiar western culture and traditions. Olivia, however, does not like this world, because it is boring and predictable to her. She is a young, beautiful woman, who consciously or unconsciously seeks adventure, for she comes to India with exciting expectations about the exotic country that is to be her home. She is thus the perfect target for the young Indian prince –the Nawab, who is dark, mysterious and exciting – a typical “oriental” man. With his guru-like charisma and magnetism, he pulls Olivia to him. What dangers lie ahead for her and what dark destiny awaits her is wonderfully woven into the story at the beginning of the novel, when Olivia and Douglas take a stroll around an English graveyard and visit the grave of Saunders’ baby. Olivia breaks down and cries:

“Oh Douglas,” she said, “what if we have a baby?”; and then she cried. “Yes and what if it should die!” . . . “I’ll have complications. I’ll die. The baby and I both.” When he tried to protest, she insisted: “No, if we stay here, we’ll die. I know it. You’ll see.” ( Heat and Dust 25-26)

It is frightening how accurately Olivia foresees the future for herself, as if she can sense it but does not exactly know what it means. As the story develops, a baby does die – she has an abortion. She dies as well, even if in a symbolic way; she could have had a nice life with a husband who loves her beyond everything else, but dangerous passion ruins her and sends her into exile.

At first, the relationship between Olivia and Douglas appears to be what the English would consider right in all the imaginable ways: he is a junior officer, an idealist, who wants to serve his country and do his ancestors justice. He is a perfect, “proper” Englishman, the kind that is a role model to others. This is also why Olivia falls in love with him, and we learn that “She [Olivia] had always loved his eyes. They were completely clear and unflinching – the eyes of a boy who read adventure stories and had dedicated himself to live up to their code of courage and honor” (Heat and Dust 40). Olivia as his companion and wife is a beautiful, young Englishwoman. They are a perfect English couple, who will raise perfect, successful children, and who will then carry on the tradition of being model English patriots, serving their country. We soon learn that this is not the case and that their marriage is far from perfect. She is also sensitive to the arrogant attitude of the English towards the Indians, but only in as far as her romantic vision of India reaches. In her inability to understand the world around her and politics that govern the relationships, she only wants everybody to get along and be friends. She does not want to be associated with the attitude of the Civil Lines, but no matter how much she tries to deny it or change it, she is still viewed as one of these British rulers by any Indian. This frustrates her from another perspective. She does not want to be a typical memsahib, be only an accessory to her husband in a world that is ruled by males. She asks questions that touch on political matters and when other memsahibs tell her to turn away, she does not want to. Of course, this stems from her interest in the Nawab and does not reach further. However, the problem is that men treat her like a woman, a young and ignorant one for that matter, and who is, in their opinion, not owed an explanation about the world she only recently became a part of. It is not her place to understand, she will not understand even if it was explained to her. She is only to know what her duties are and not ask question about politics, because men are here to handle that. This kind of attitude is typical of a society ruled by men. If she understood the dynamic of the relationship between Indians and the British, she may not have had to learn about the world around her the hard way.

At first, Olivia’s quarrels and irritability with Douglas can be blamed on the climate – the heat is to blame. However, it soon becomes clear that what bothers Olivia is that Douglas shares the opinion of other Englishmen and is even starting to look more and more like them. The qualities that first drew her to him and made her fall in love with him are now the things that she dislikes most. India starts to change him, so that he resembles more and more his English counterparts in India - in looks and opinion. It brings out the things in him that she does not like; “It struck her that his face had become heavier, even somewhat puffy, making him look more like other Englishmen in India. She pushed that thought aside: it was unbearable” (Heat and Dust 116). Olivia starts to realize that the British in India are different from the British in England. It is due to their position as a ruling minority, making them prejudicial and arrogant. Because Douglas slowly starts to look and behave like other Englishmen, and also starts to pick up their habits, like smoking a pipe, Olivia is afraid that she, too, will start to resemble other boring old memsahibs. This thought is unbearable to her. There is also another problem between Olivia and Douglas, and that is that she cannot get pregnant. At first, Olivia clings to the belief that they will be “the founders of a beautiful line” ( Heat and Dust 105), but now things do not go as planned. We are told that “She had always loved him for these qualities – for his imperturbability, his English solidness and strength; his manliness. But now she suddenly thought: what manliness? He can’t even get me pregnant” (Heat and Dust 116). In the light of that, it is getting harder for her to deny the passion that she feels for the Nawab. She knows that the feelings she has are wrong, so there is a struggle inside her between what she wants and feels and what she ought to want and feel. She is convinced that a baby would solve all her problems; it would fix her marriage and she would be able to channel the love from the Nawab to the child (Heat and Dust 107). Furthermore, her compatriots constantly warn her about the Nawab being a dangerous man. She refuses to believe that, and here, another of Jhabvala’s favourite themes is developed: the tragicomedy of self-deception. Throughout the novel, Olivia is repeatedly informed about the Nawab’s bad conduct: that he is supporting the dacoits, that he is deliberately making trouble, and that he has an

insane wife, whose mental state is owed to the Nawab’s character. However, Jhabvala’s warnings are subtle and never revealed completely, leaving the reader and Olivia to wonder whether it is all true. Yet the imagery reveals the danger: when Douglas and Olivia have dinner with Major Minnies one night, they start to talk about the Nawab. Major Minnies is outraged by his behaviour, and “He was silent in order to collect himself. He was genuinely outraged. The others too were silent. A bird woke up in a tree and gave a shriek. Perhaps it had been dreaming of a snake, or perhaps there really was a snake” (Heat and Dust 92). Again there is only a suggestion of the presence of a snake: it might be real or it might be imaginary. The image of the snake as the Nawab is pointing at Olivia as the bird: it is a wake-up call for her. Doubt stirs in her and she wonders whether she is wrong about him and whether he is a bad man. In the end, self-deception gets the best of her: at the end of this chapter Olivia feels “strange”, yet still she finds herself looking in the direction of the Nawab’s palace:

She looked beyond the little tableau in her garden of the three Englishmen in dinner jackets blowing smoke from their cigars while the servants hovered around them with decanters: she had a moonlight view of the Saunders’ house, then the spire of the little church and the graves in the cemetery, and beyond that the flat landscape she knew so well, those miles of dun earth that led to Khatm. (Heat and Dust 93-94)

It is these conflicting feelings that cause her irritability, not the hot climate. It is only easier and self-deceptive to blame it on the heat. She looks at the world she belongs to, the Civil Lines: the Saunders’s house, the church, the graveyards, and then she looks in the direction of the palace. It represents an escape route for her - from the life of a boring old memsahib. Escaping into the arms of a young prince would save her from this fate and from the duties she does not want to perform. Strobl, too, points out that Olivia is far from seeing the objective truth about the world around her. This is discernable from her constant rejection of the warnings about the Nawab that are laid in front of her. She cannot, or perhaps will

not change her romantic view of the world (244-245). The more negative things she hears about the Nawab, the more she abandons rational thought and deceives herself, even when she sees the Nawab talking to the dacoits ( Heat and Dust 132- 133). She wants an eastern romantic love story for herself: to be saved by an Indian prince and live happily ever after. We can make out Jhabvala’s irony: if only Olivia chose to approach the new world around her with a bit of reason, if only she opened her eyes to reality, she could have been saved from her fate. But like Harry, she successfully deceives herself. Symbolic of the mystery that surrounds the Nawab is his palace: it is full of intricate passageways and corridors. The first time Olivia visits the palace, is when the Nawab gives a dinner party for the English. She gets lost in the intricate corridors. Sucher mentions that “Beth Crawford knows that one does not venture into ‘oriental privacies’, dark regions that are outside her ken” (Heat and Dust 104). Olivia already oversteps. Nawab at once takes an interest in Olivia at the dinner party:

His eyes often rested on her, and she let him study her while pretending not to notice. She liked it – as she had liked the way he had looked at her when she had first come in. His eyes had lit up – he checked himself immediately, but she had seen it and realized that here at last was one person in India to be interested in her the way she was used to. ( Heat and Dust 17)

We can make out right away that Olivia is a vain young woman who is used to attention. She is also already getting bored in India. The young prince’s interest in her is exactly what she needs: it is exciting and refreshing. Strobl explains that Olivia is not as much interested in understanding the world around her, as she is in experiencing it (244). She thinks that the Nawab is romantically interested in her, but as the story develops it becomes clear that his primary intentions with Olivia are political in nature. Sucher agrees , when she writes that the Nawab’s “reasons for wanting Olivia … were mostly political” (104). The following passage in which the Nawab talks about the English, illustrates that.

“All are the same,” the Nawab said suddenly and decisively.

Olivia had a shock – did he mean her too? Was she included? She looked at his face and was frightened by the feelings she saw so plainly expressed there: and it seemed to her that she could not bear to be included in these feelings, that she would do anything not to be. ( Heat and Dust 122)

Olivia becomes afraid for the Nawab’s affection for her. Although the Nawab later convinces her otherwise, it is clear that there is no genuine inclination and that the primary – if any - intentions with her are not of a romantic nature. In his mind she still belongs to the Anglo-Indians that make his life difficult and she is rather the means to an end, and that is to take revenge on them. With the help of rich imagery and symbolism, Jhabvala knits a rope of seduction, tightening it around Olivia. The setting plays an important role. When the Nawab takes Olivia out for a picnic, the way with the car leads through a flat, desolate landscape, the heat is pressing and the dust is everywhere. Olivia abandons reason for feelings and with the heat inviting one to do so, this is even easier. Soon, she feels that she is completely in the Nawab’s power. He makes her walk up a steep, narrow path and does not say a word. Olivia starts feeling unsure, uncomfortable: “she still got scratched by thorns and also some insects were biting her; her straw hat had slipped to one side and she was very hot and near to tears. … The Nawab led the way, spotless in his white ducks and white-and-tan shoes” (Heat and Dust 42). The Nawab plays a cunning game: he brings Olivia into his own territory, makes her feel unattractive when he makes her walk up a steep path in oppressive heat. Also, he does not say a word, so that Olivia starts to grow insecure. Then he ends her misery by bringing her to a shady grove. The grove is described as “a shady grove around a small stone shrine. It was cool and green here; there was even the sound of water…. The ground had been spread with carpets and cushions on which Olivia was invited to recline” (Heat and Dust 42- 43). Jhabvala presents first the image of a hostile landscape and climate and then contrasts it with relief: the coolness of water and shade, the greenery and the carpets. In this way she contrasts Olivia’s feelings when she is first tormented and then presented with relief, when she can rest in a cool grove. She also contrasts the Nawab’s silence on the road, cunningly there to plant doubt in Olivia, with his charm when they arrive at the grove: “’It’s lovely here,’ Olivia said, feeling

terribly relieved: not only because she was cooler and more comfortable but because he was being nice again” (Heat and Dust 43). The Nawab puts Olivia through what seems like hell and brings her to what seems like heaven on Earth. Then he tells her exotic stories about his ancestor Amanulah Khan who was a great warrior in the Nawab’s eyes. The shrine was built in his ancestor’s honour and is now known as Baba Firdaus’ shrine. The Nawab shows Olivia a cool spring, talks of miracles, and makes her feel special by saying that she is different from other boring Anglo-Indians. Jhabvala finishes the scene with a game in which the Nawab wins:

For a moment she thought that, as an act of courtesy, he was going to let her win; but quite suddenly – he heard the music stop before she did – he flung himself on the one remaining cushion. He had won! He laughed out loud and threw up both his arms in triumph. He was really tremendously pleased (Heat and Dust 47).

The Nawab is not so much pleased with the victory in the game with the cushions, but more with the victory over Olivia; he senses that his game has borne fruits, that he won her over and was now wrapping her around his finger. This is a point where there is no way back for Olivia, for the Nawab has her in his possession. She cannot say no to him anymore (as Harry points out, “one does not say no to such a person” ( Heat and Dust 34)). From here on it is easy for the Nawab to make Olivia surrender to him completely. Later in the story, the Nawab brings Olivia back to Baba Firdaus’ shrine, which, according to a Hindu belief, helps barren women have children if they tie a string there on the Husband’s Wedding Day. It is on Husband’s Wedding Day that Olivia succumbs to her passion for the Indian prince and becomes pregnant. After that, Olivia is doomed, because of a racist prejudice which governs the society of Anglo-Indians that mixing with the Indians is unacceptable. There is a term “going native” that stems from orientalist rhetoric and can help explain the harsh treatment of Olivia by other Anglo-Indians. It denotes the colonizer’s fear of being absorbed into native life and customs, as well as fear of the colonizer’s race degeneracy, stemming from inter-racial sex (Ashcroft, Griffiths

and Tiffin 115). As Olivia is afraid that the child might be the Nawab’s and have dark hair and brown eyes (Douglas, of course, has blue eyes and fair hair), she has an abortion with the help of Indian midwives who insert a twig into her. She is found out by Dr. Saunders and the scandal breaks out:

In his time Dr. Saunders had extracted many such twigs from women brought to him with so-called miscarriages. Afterwards he confronted the guilty women and threw them out of the hospital. Sometimes he slapped them – he had strong ideas about morality and how to uphold it. But even he admitted that certain allowances might be made for these native women born in ignorance and dirt. There was no such extenuating circumstance for Olivia. ( Heat and Dust 169)

Olivia has “gone native”; she crosses the line of the Civil Lines, as well as cultural lines and now she is banished forever. Her society is unforgiving when it comes to such “immoral” behaviour, because the rulers must stay separated from the ruled. The paragraph also illustrates how Dr. Saunders is convinced that his opinion on miscarriage is right, how he considers it a principle to be against it. Furthermore, he takes it upon himself to judge and punish the women who do not know better until an Englishman teaches them about it. After this incident, Olivia runs to the palace and never returns. The Nawab buys a cottage in the Himalayas for her, where she spends the rest of her life. Jhabvala does not reveal the rest of Olivia’s story, and the ending remains open to interpretation. Was Olivia happy or not? Olivia’s fate might be seen from one perspective as doom, as a condemnation to solitude and unhappiness. She might have traded one prison for another. Her future in the Civil Lines could have been a satisfying one; Olivia has a husband who loves her with all his heart. He is strongly contrasted to the Nawab in the following paragraph, in which Olivia breaks down and cries after a walk with her husband through the cemetery: “She looked into his face – she could just make it out in the gathering darkness, glimmering above her like the angel” (108). Douglas is protective, loving and devoted; he is good for her - like an angel. He fits with the Anglo-Indian society well, when Olivia does not.

If we take another perspective and explore what other options Olivia has, we can imagine that her life would not turn out any happier. She would play the role of a memsahib, continuing to despise herself and her fellow Englishmen. Jhabvala thus presents the difficult position of western women in India at the time of the Raj. The Anglo-Indian society is rigid, the rules are to be obeyed and there is not to be any deviation in what is considered moral, exemplary conduct in all aspects of life. Each person has their own role to play, set out for him/her. Their personal desires are put aside and dismissed as unimportant. The memsahibs live in the world where men rule and their obligations are to be good wives to their husbands, give children and raise them into upstanding Englishmen and Englishwomen. Also, they are to make social calls with the Indian royalties and contribute to a seemingly good relationship between the English and the Indians. Olivia fails to understand the world around her and was not prepared for it, when she came to India. Thus, the affair is an escape route from a destiny that she now begins to grasp and that she dreads. As for Douglas, he is ridiculed and outwitted by an Indian. It is ironic and comic when in this context we think of the scene where Douglas speaks to the local rich men. He appears to have the situation completely under control. With an arrogant attitude he treats them like children. When he talks about them to Olivia, he says:

“As if I didn’t now what they’re all up to.” “What?” Olivia asked. “Their usual tricks. They’re full of them. They think they’re frightfully cunning but really they’re like children.” . . . She said “They look like very grown-up men to me.” He laughed: “Don’t they? It’s very misleading. But once you know them – and they know that you know – well, you can have a good time with them. Just as long as you’re not fooled. It’s rather fun really. ( Heat and Dust 37- 38)

The problem that is visible in this paragraph are the parallels that can be drawn between Douglas’ perception of Indians and the narrator’s description of Indian holy men’s appearance: they seem to have “shrewd and greedy” faces (Heat and Dust 63). Douglas’ orientalist rhetoric is fed by his own need to come

to terms with his behavior in India and justify his presence, and can be at least understood, although not justified. Less so the narrator’s judgmental perception of Indians fifty years later. It is the same and it is fed by orientalist discourse in the texts that stem from the time of the Raj. She perceives the holy men in the same manner as Douglas does in the 1920’s part of the novel when he talks to the Indians. This is illustrative of how orientalist rhetoric helps maintain prejudicial perception of Westerners about East. The problem is that the binary perception of East and West remains and helps maintain the gulf between the two. In her book The Rhetoric of English India, Sara Suleri suggests that explaining the East-West encounter by repeatedly using binary classifications is not the answer. We should avoid dichotomies like “us” and “other”, “colonizer” and “colonized”, “domination” and “subordination”, and instead look at how one feeds and influences the other, and how a new nation emerged from the transactions of the colonial encounter. What is also visible from this paragraph is that Douglas thinks himself clever and having the Indians all figured out. Then, an Indian makes a fool of him without Douglas even noticing it; Jhabvala subtly suggests that the Nawab makes sure to keep Douglas busy with his duties. For example, when he has a picnic planned with Olivia, there is a stabbing incident that keeps Douglas occupied longer than usual ( Heat and Dust 48). Again, Jhabvala makes fun of the English arrogance in a post-colonial manner; Douglas is so sure of himself that he never manages to see through the Nawab’s intentions. Actually, he is so preoccupied with his work that he does not even come to ask Olivia about her day. He obviously assumes that she sits at home all day, playing the piano or reading, waiting for his return. Sucher writes that Olivia’s conduct was so outrageous that two generations were reluctant to speak of it (103). It is not until the letters come into the narrator’s possession that she learns of the scandalous conduct of her grandfathers’ first wife. Because Olivia’s destiny is wrapped in mystery, the narrator is determined to explore and understand her actions better. With this intention she goes to India to experience what Olivia experienced. She meets Inder Lal, her tenant, and has an affair with him. She becomes pregnant on Husband Wedding Day and decides to stay in India. The story runs parallel to

Olivia’s: the narrator too has an affair with a married Indian, whose wife has psychological problems, she befriends an Englishman (Chid), as Olivia befriended Harry, she becomes pregnant with her Indian lover and considers an abortion, as does Olivia. She, too, decides to stay in India and in the end goes to Himalayas. However, there are some major differences, like the social and cultural circumstances in which their stories occur and the outcome of their pregnancy - the narrator decides to keep the baby. Also, their respective personal characters are almost opposite. Gerwin Strobl quotes Richard Cronin on Forster, but in the following paragraph, I cannot but recognize Olivia.

He and his fellow-Kingsmen Darling and Ackerley, went there … predisposed to find in another country what they could not find in Britain, somewhere where understanding took second place to affection, judgment was subordinate to sympathy, and people were bound to one another not by political and economic interdependence but by bonds of love. (229)

The ideals, described in the paragraph are not the very reason Olivia came to India, but she is the type of person who sees the world through such romantic lens and approaches India in the same way. By creating two opposite characters of Olivia and the narrator, Jhabvala is able to offer two completely different views on India. By presenting colonial India through Olivia’s naïve view of the world, she puts a veil of mystery, magic and romance over it – all oriental attributes, given to the Orient and the Orientals. By using, on the other hand, the narrator’s detached, rational view that sounds almost like a report, she removes this veil, so that the country loses all its orientalist attributes. This is a post-colonial moment, when Jhabvala shows how the orientalist rhetoric and Anglo-Indian prejudice feed the misunderstandings between East and West. The social and cultural differences are visible in the fact that the narrator is in India alone and as an independent female researcher. She comes to India at the time when sexual taboos have already been broken and the roles of men and women are not rigidly defined anymore. As Sucher points out, with time passed, so have the “Edwardian values of the Anglo-Indians” (101). Also, the narrator seems to be detached from everything and everyone she meets: she is an objective

observer; therefore nothing seems to surprise or shock her as deeply as to bring any extreme emotions to the surface. It seems that what is believed about India and the strong effect it has on the Westerners, does not apply to her. Her diary is a report, not an emotional outpouring, like Olivia’s letters. Even the affair with Inder Lal seems to be a rationally considered conduct, as if it is only a part of a research and serves only to aid her to understand Olivia better. The narrator avoids any extremes: spiritual devotion, the danger of passion. It seems like Jhabvala has found a type of character that, in her opinion, can survive in India: moderate, detached, on a mission, yet susceptible to the problems of modern India: hunger, disease, and illiteracy. This way, the narrator can find her path, embrace it and avoid ruin. Sucher suggests that this is because the narrator is here with a purpose; she never looses the focus and never forgets why she is in India, namely to unveil Olivia’s fate (134). Everything she does is seen through this lens. When she becomes pregnant, she finds another purpose in her life, and that is taking care of her child. That is why she can survive in a strong place like India: she has a strong purpose that is a natural and realistic one, not a spiritual or religious quest. In keeping the baby, the narrator fixes what she perhaps sees as Olivia’s mistake of having an abortion. Symbolically, love wins over old prejudices. The narrator can also take the liberty of sleeping casually with whom she will and participate in local customs and ceremonies. In other words, she can “go native”, whereas Olivia could not do that without being punished for it. It is true that the narrator did not enter the affair as passionately as did Olivia, but society did not punish her for as it did Olivia. The social circumstances have changed. The English do not feel the need to distance themselves culturally and physically from Indians, because they are not a ruling minority that feels the need to do so in order to survive as a ruler. What is even more, it is the narrator that seduces her Indian lover, not the other way around. She can also go for a walk around the bazaar and freely converse with the Indians, whereas the Anglo-Indians of the 1920s never left the orderly Civil Lines. The narrator writes that “by this time we had reached the lake. (This is about as far as Olivia would have got if she ever ventured to this side: because beyond this point the Indian part of the town began,

the crowded lanes and bazaar where I now live.)” (Heat and Dust 50). Now the English live with the Indians and talk to each other, not because it required of them as a part of an official etiquette, but because they want to. Another difference between the two stories is that Inder Lal is not a dark, mysterious, oriental figure like the Nawab. He is a clerk with a careworn expression, uninteresting at first, and the narrator is even taller than him ( Heat and Dust 50); the Indian has lost the orientalist mysticism. This is partly because inter- racial sex is not considered wrong anymore, and partly because Inder Lal is more disclosed to the reader than the Nawab. We learn more about him, about his mother, his work, wishes, thoughts, etc. We also learn a lot about his wife Ritu and their marriage, whereas everything about the marriage of the Nawab and Sandy – their 1920s counterparts – is nothing but an indefinite rumor. Indian marriage is a theme that Jhabvala also touches on in her earlier novels. Like many Indian marriages, Ritu’s and Inder Lal’s marriage was arranged by their parents, so it is not a marriage of love. As Sucher explains, the daughter in an Indian family is a burden, because of “the dowry system”. The daughter is usually married into her husband’s household, where her mother-in- law rules and the women in her husband’s family are jealous of her (130). Inder Lal, too, does not appreciate his wife and sees her only as his responsibility. He cannot even make up his mind whether she is pretty. He tells the narrator that she is not very intelligent and not well educated. She has been chosen on account of a good family background (Heat and Dust 49). It is not a happy marriage and Ritu suffers under it a lot. She is physically and mentally declining. One night, the narrator can hear her scream, as if she were in physical pain. Chid explains to the narrator that this is “’her treatment,’ he said. He went on to explain that she might be possessed by an evil spirit which had to be driven out by applying a red-hot iron to various parts of her body, such as her arms or the soles of her feet” (Heat and Dust 81). Her relatives try to treat her by burning her body with a hot iron, because she is thought to be possessed. Sucher says that this is a habit that “crosses gender lines” and is “entrenched in the West as well”, of attributing magical evil powers to women and blaming them for everything (116). It is evident, Sucher explains,

that the reason for Ritu’s fits is her entrapment in an unhappy marriage and they can be understood as outbursts of despair (131). With this, Jhabvala criticizes the tradition of fixed marriages and tries to point out how they affect and destroy people’s lives. Inder Lal, too, is not very happy and feels the burden of the marriage. He is 25 or 26, according to the narrator, but seems older (Heat and Dust 50). When the narrator compliments him on being a good husband and father, he replies:

“What can I do?” was his odd reply. I think what he was saying was that he has no alternative but to be a good husband and father: having been thrown into that stage of life, whether he likes it or not. And on the whole, I think he doesn’t. (141)

The paragraph illustrates how Inder Lal had no choice, but to marry a bride that was chosen for him by his mother. They are miserable, both entrapped in an unhappy marriage and both suffering under the burden of social obligation. Jhabvala is very critical of that, as well as of the position Indian women hold in traditional Indian society. Ritu’s situation is without prospect and is strongly contrasted with the narrator’s freedom. Her main obligation is to bear children, whereas the narrator has no such pressing obligations. Ritu is mostly closed up in the house, while the narrator can wander freely as she pleases. She can even decide not to marry or have any children. When looked at closely, we see changes that occurred in India in the span of fifty years, but the position of Indian women has remained the same. The marriage of Ritu and Inder Lal runs parallel to the marriage of the Nawab and Sandy. She, too, is mentally unwell and does not live with her husband. The Indian lovers of both heroines have mad wives and because of that, they both clear the way for the narrator and Olivia: Ritu goes on a pilgrimage and Sandy does not live with the Nawab.

5. Women in India

The position of women in India is a theme that Jhabvala explores in many of her works, and is also an important theme in Heat and Dust. Both, Indian women and the memsahibs have a disadvantageous position in their respective societies and are oppressed in different ways. Some of Jhabvala’s women characters serve as examples of how a society can destroy women, while other serve to illustrate how women can be strong, learn how to adapt well, and how to survive. This way Jhabvala shows us the impossible position that Indian women hold in the society, but at the same time celebrates the power and strength that is within them and gives hope. The memsahibs, being part of a ruling minority that struggles to maintain the upper hand in India, must play their roles in a world that is ruled by men. In this world, there is not much space for women’s wishes and desires. The English men are the rulers and their wives are there to make this task easier for them. They are to present themselves as examples of perfect wives in a perfect marriage. They are to raise children into outstanding Englishmen and women and play their part in politics only by paying polite visits to the Begum and her ladies. By doing this they help maintain good relationship with important people, like the royal family. Olivia, however, does not understand this. The old memsahibs seem boring to her, but in her naivety and lack of experience, she does not understand that their conduct, like their racial prejudice, is part of a survival strategy. Mrs. Crawford, comments that they (the other memsahibs) “must seem like a couple of tough old hens to you [Olivia]” (Heat and Dust 33). Indeed, they are not really free to befriend anyone they wish or go where they wish. As Olivia starts to grasp this, she realizes that this is not a life she wants and tries to escape it by having an affair with the Nawab. At the same time, the memsahibs are strong; they have found their small pleasures in going to Simla during the hot periods and enjoy each other’s company. They are strong because they take this life upon them with all their limitations, they adapt and survive. The position of western women in 1970s changes along with the political situation. The narrator is never part of a ruling minority, so there are no rigid rules

of conduct that she needs to follow. Like Olivia, she is eager to experience the world around her and she can do that more easily without being punished for it, because the political and social changes in the West free her and make her an equal to men. The changes are also symbolically visible in her constitution. She has a flat chest, she is taller than her Indian lover and the children run after her, calling her hijra - an implication that she resembles a man. The freedom that western women enjoy is alien to Indian women, and Jhabvala is critical of that when she puts them into opposition to the narrator. Even today, women like Ritu are forced by their families to marry young and without love. By illustrating Ritu’s suffering, Jhabvala criticizes the institution of arranged Indian marriage. Furthermore, she is also critical of the society turning a blind eye to the suffering of these women in the name of tradition and social rules. Her bad mental health is ascribed to evil spirits or demons possessing her, and she is further exposed to physical suffering by applying hot iron to her body, a ritual that is supposed to drive away the demons. When Jhabvala introduces the character of Maji and the happy widows, who no longer suffer under the burden of marriage, we can detect Jhabvala’s criticism: the reason for Ritu’s suffering are not demons, but her definite social position. She is also “accused” by Inder Lal of not being intelligent, but she was never educated and it was never expected of her to be intelligent. She also never speaks for herself in the book. This is an orientalist moment: the oriental women have no voice at all. Therefore we never learn if Ritu is, in fact, really unintelligent or if it is just her social position that is preventing her from developing her potential. We also never learn why she has these screaming fits. Sandy, as well, has no voice. Both Sandy and Ritu are orientalized women, serving only the purpose of the plot. They echo another mad wife and that is the Creole wife of Rochester in Charlotte Brönte’s Jane Eyre . Jhabvala is trying to give her voice, to consider that her madness may be stemming from the same reasons as Ritu’s and Sandy’s and in this way directs the reader to contrapuntal reading that Said suggests in Orientalism. This is a suggestion to read Jane Eyre from a new perspective: Rochester’s wife is considered dangerous and violent, and she is an evil figure who sets the house on fire. By comparing her situation to

the situation of other women in the East, Jhabvala gives her voice: she invites us to consider her part of the story, understand that she, too, may be in despair. Because the situation of Indian women has not changed in the span of approximately fifty years, like it has for the western women - the example of that being the narrator - this fact can be perceived as a strong critique of the rigid Indian society. Indian women, who become widows, find themselves in an impossible position. Such is also the situation of a beggar woman, named Leelavati. When she dies in the arms of Maji and in the presence of the narrator, the latter tells the story:

She [Maji] continued to stroke the old woman’s face, not only with tenderness, but with a sort of pride too; yes really as if she were proud of her for having done something special. She began to tell me about the old woman’s life: how she had been left a widow and had been driven out of her father-in-law’s house. Next her parents and brother had died in a smallpox epidemic, leaving her homeless and destitute. Then what could she do, Maji said: having been literally thrown on to the world to beg a living from it. ( Heat and Dust 114)

The paragraph is illustrative enough of the impossible position Indian women can find themselves in and the strong dependence on their husband. If women were educated, they could take care of themselves if they ever met the same fate as Leelavati, but all that is important, when women are being chosen as wives, is the social position of their family. This way, Leelavati could not do anything but become a beggar. Maji is proud that she continued her struggle and survived for so long, doing the best that she could. However, Jhabvala remains positive, and Maji and the widows are the characters that illustrate that. Maji is an independent woman. She is a midwife and uses the acquired knowledge to support herself and her family, she is even said to have special powers. In her own way, she is a powerful woman: she is able to help with giving birth – making new life possible, she is able to advise Chid and Ritu, and she gives the impression like she knows the secrets to life. The widows, one of them being Inder Lal’s mother, are independent and happy too. The narrator has a feeling like this is the best part of their life; they laugh a lot and socialize.

Inder Lal’s mother is described by the narrator as “…strong and healthy and full of feminine vigour” ( Heat and Dust 54). Then she contrasts these widows with their daughters-in-law and says that “they gossip and joke and giggle like schoolgirls: very different from their daughters-in-law who are sometimes seen shuffling behind them, heavily veiled and silent and with the downcast eyes of prisoners under guard” (Heat and Dust 54). From this paragraph we can better understand Ritu and Sandy and understand the connection between their social position and their mental problems. The comparison of the young women with prisoners is also suggestive. The widows are, positive characters, because they do not commit suttee, but instead find the courage and their own way to survive. Yet, as Sucher points out, even though suttee is disappearing, the dowry system still makes women’s position in Indian society a difficult one (129).

6. Conclusion

In the 1920s part of Heat and Dust , the friendship between the British and the Indians is impossible because of the fact that the first rule the others. Because the British are a minority that feels threatened in a foreign land, they feel the need to maintain good relationships with Indians and appear perfect in their eyes. Indians, like the Nawab, on the other hand, feel the resentment against the British. All of the relationships are imbued with this fact, and out of it true friendships can never be born. Even in the modern part of the book, the Westerners still have trouble living in India. Every Western character has met his downfall here, except for those that are there for a purpose. We are also not presented with even one honest friendship or a functioning relationship between a Western and an Indian. The narrator, for example, is using Inder Lal only for research purposes; there is no honest affection without an agenda. Inder Lal, also, is using the narrator for the purpose of practicing his English. At the same time he is ashamed of what he believes are the inadequacies of his country and his backward countrymen. Even though the English and the Indians are no longer in formal unequal positions, the

cultural differences remain. There is also a legacy of colonialism, which remains in the heads of the Indians, and that is that the Europeans and their culture are what they should strive to imitate. These relationships mirror Jhabvala’s belief that Easterners and Westerners can not be friends even when the relationship between them is no longer that of the ruler and the ruled. Jhabvala also uses orientalistic rhetoric. This rhetoric is described by Said in his book Orientalism. However, by adding irony, she mocks it in a post- colonialist manner. The clever, perfect British rulers, then, appear silly and are no longer perfect, but rather blind in their egotism. The same is true for Westerners like Chid, in the modern part of the book; the orientalistic image they had about India is far from reality and leads them to ruin. India is represented as a place that is hard to live in for people that were born here, and almost impossible to live in for people that are not used to it from the birth on. Jhabvala’s India is far from the orientalist image of a place where love, spirituality and holy figures can be found. It is rather a place where one can remain only if one has a strong purpose, a strong mind and a strong character. What remains, then, from colonialism and orientalist rhetoric is the idea in the heads of – in this case – Indians that the Westerner’s way of life, his morals and ideals are to be imitated, because they are the right ones. In the novel, ironically, these Westerners keep returning to India, lost in their way, looking for some purpose, and trying to learn from people-“the others”, whose religion, ideals and way of life was, in opposition to theirs, perceived as wrong and false. This ironic idea classifies the novel as a post-colonial text.

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