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 Podpisani-a Andreja Grča rojen-a 12. 07. 1982 študent-ka Filozofske fakultete Univerze v Mariboru, smer angleški jezik in zgodovina, izjavljam, da je diplomsko delo z naslovom East and West in R. P. Jhabvala’s Heat and Dust pri mentorju-ici prof. dr. Michelle Gadpaille, avtorsko delo. V diplomskem delu so uporabljeni viri in literatura korektno navedeni; teksti niso prepisani brez navedbe avtorjev. Kraj, Maribor Datum, 11. 08. 2013 __________________________________ (podpis študenta-ke) 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. 1 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 2 “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”

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