Summary: Chapter IV
Mr. Turton invites several Indian gentlemen to the proposed
Bridge Party at the club. The Indians are surprised by the invitation.
Mahmoud Ali suspects that the lieutenant general has ordered Turton
to hold the party. The Nawab Bahadur, one of the most important Indian
landowners in the area, announces that he appreciates the invitation
and will attend. Some accuse the Nawab Bahadur of cheapening himself,
but most Indians highly respect him and decide to attend also.
The narrator describes the room in which the Indian gentlemen meet.
Outside remain the lowlier Indians who received no invitation. The
narrator describes Mr. Grayford and Mr. Sorley, missionaries on
the outskirts of the city. Mr. Sorley feels that all men go to heaven,
but not lowly wasps, bacteria, or mud, because something must be
excluded to leave enough for those who are included. Mr. Sorley’s
Hindu friends disagree, however, as they feel that God includes
every living thing.
Summary: Chapter V
At the Bridge Party, the Indian guests stand idly at one
side of the tennis lawn while the English stand at the other. The
clear segregation dismays Adela Quested and Mrs. Moore. Ronny and
Mrs. Turton disdainfully discuss the Indians’ clothing, which mixes
Eastern and Western styles. Several Englishwomen arrive and discuss
the earlier production of Cousin Kate. Mrs. Moore
is surprised to note how intolerant and conventional Ronny’s opinions
have become.
Mr. Turton arrives, cynically noting to himself that each
guest has come for a self-serving reason. Reluctantly, Mrs. Turton
takes Adela and Mrs. Moore to visit a group of Indian ladies. Mrs.
Turton addresses the Indian women in crude Urdu, and then asks Mrs. Moore
and Adela if they are satisfied. One of the Indian women speaks,
and Mrs. Turton is surprised to learn that the women know English.
Mrs. Moore and Adela unsuccessfully try to draw the Indian women
out into more substantial conversation. Mrs. Moore asks one of them,
Mrs. Bhattacharya, if she and Adela can visit her at home. Mrs.
Bhattacharya agrees to host the Englishwomen the upcoming Thursday,
and her husband promises to send his carriage for them.
Mr. Fielding, who is also at the party, socializes freely
with the Indians and even eats on the Indian side of the lawn. He
is pleased to learn that Adela and Mrs. Moore have been friendly
to the Indians. Fielding locates Adela and invites her and Mrs.
Moore to tea. Adela complains about how rude the English are acting
toward their guests, but Fielding suspects her complaints are intellectual,
not emotional. Adela mentions Dr. Aziz, and Fielding promises to
invite the doctor to tea as well.
That evening, Adela and Ronny dine with the McBrydes and Miss
Derek. The dinner consists of standard English fare. During the
meal, Adela begins to dread the prospect of a drab married life among
the insensitive English. She fears she will never get to know the
true spirit of India.
After Adela goes to bed, Ronny asks his mother about Adela. Mrs.
Moore explains that Adela feels that the English are unpleasant
to the Indians. Ronny is dismissive, explaining that the English are
in India to keep the peace, not to be pleasant. Mrs. Moore disagrees,
saying it is the duty of the English to be pleasant
to Indians, as God demands love for all men. Mrs. Moore instantly
regrets mentioning God; ever since she has arrived in India, her
God has seemed less powerful than ever before.
Summary: Chapter VI
The morning after Aziz’s encounter with Mrs. Moore, Major
Callendar scolds the doctor for failing to report promptly to his
summons, and he does not ask for Aziz’s side of the story.
Aziz and a colleague, Dr. Panna Lal, decide to attend
the Bridge Party together. However, the party falls on the anniversary
of Aziz’s wife’s death, so he decides not to attend. Aziz mourns
his loving wife for part of the day and then borrows Hamidullah’s
pony to practice polo on the town green. An English soldier is also
practicing polo, and he and Aziz play together briefly as comrades.
Dr. Lal, returning from the Bridge Party, runs into Aziz.
Lal reports that Aziz’s absence was noticed, and he insists on knowing why
Aziz did not attend. Aziz, considering Lal ill mannered to ask such
a question, reacts defiantly. By the time Aziz reaches home, though,
he has begun to worry that the English will punish him for not attending.
His mood improves when he opens Fielding’s invitation to tea. Aziz
is pleased that Fielding has politely ignored the fact that Aziz
forgot to respond to an invitation to tea at Fielding’s last month.
Analysis: Chapters IV–VI
The wildly unsuccessful Bridge Party stands as the clear
focus of this portion of the novel. Though the event is meant to
be a time of orchestrated interaction, a “bridge” between the two
cultures, the only result is heightened suspicion on both sides.
Indians such as Mahmoud Ali suspect that Turton is throwing the
party not in good faith, but on orders from a superior. Turton himself
suspects that the Indians attend only for self-serving reasons.
The party remains segregated, with the English hosts regarding their
guests as one large group that can be split down only into Indian
“types,” not into individuals.
Though the Bridge Party clearly furthers our idea that
the English as a whole act condescendingly toward the Indians, Forster
also uses the party to examine the minute differences among English
attitudes. Mrs. Turton, for instance, represents the attitude of
most Englishwomen in India: she is flatly bigoted and rude, regarding
herself as superior to all Indians in seemingly every respect. The Englishmen
at the party, however, appear less malicious in their attitudes.
Mr. Turton and Ronny Heaslop are representative of this type: through
their work they have come to know some Indians as individuals, and
though somewhat condescending, they are far less overtly malicious
than the Englishwomen.
Cyril Fielding, who made a brief appearance in Chapter
III, appears here to be the model of successful interaction between
the English and Indians. Unlike the other English, Fielding does
not recognize racial distinctions between himself and the native
population. Instead, he interacts with Indians on an individual-to-individual
basis. Moreover, he senses that he has found like-minded souls in
Adela Quested and Mrs. Moore. Of the two, Fielding is more closely
akin to Mrs. Moore than Adela: Fielding and Mrs. Moore are unself-conscious
in their friendship with Indians, whereas Adela consciously and
actively seeks out this cross-cultural friendship as an interesting
and enriching experience.
Forster fleshes out the character of Adela Quested significantly
in these chapters. As part of this effort, the author uses Fielding
as a sort of moral barometer, a character whose judgments we can
trust. In this regard, we can see Fielding’s judgment of Adela—that
she appears to object to the English treatment of the Indians on
an intellectual, rather than emotional level—as Forster’s own judgment. Adela,
perhaps because of this intellectual, unemotional curiosity about
Indian culture, conducts her interactions in India in a negative sense
rather than a positive one—attempting to not act
like the other English rather than attempting to actively identify
with Indians. Adela always acts as an individual, rejecting the
herd mentality of the other couples at the English club. While the
other English try to re-create England in India through meals of
sardines and plays like Cousin Kate, Adela hopes
to experience the “real India,” the “spirit” of India. Yet we sense
that Adela’s idea of this “real India” is vague and somewhat romanticized,
especially when compared to Mrs. Moore’s genuine interaction with
Aziz or Fielding’s enthusiastic willingness to partake in Indian
culture.
The primary Indian protagonist, Aziz, develops in these
chapters as significantly distinct from English expectations of
Indian character. While the English pride themselves on dividing
the Indian character into “types” with identifiable characteristics,
Aziz appears to be a man of indefinable flux. Forster distinguishes
Aziz’s various guises—outcast, poet, medical student, religious
worshiper—and his ability to slip easily among them without warning.
Aziz’s whims fluctuate in a way similar to his overall character.
In Chapter VI we see Aziz shift from mood to mood in the space of
minutes: first he wants to attend the Bridge Party, then he is disgusted
with the party, then he despairingly mourns his dead wife, then
he seeks companionship and exercise. Ironically, one of Aziz’s only
constant qualities is a characteristically English quality:
an insistence upon good breeding and polite manners. This quality
makes Aziz slightly prejudiced—it leads him to reject his friendship
with Dr. Lal—yet it also allows him to disregard racial boundaries,
as when he feels automatically affectionate toward Fielding because
of the Englishman’s politeness.
Furthermore, Forster uses these chapters to begin to develop
one of the major ideas he explores in A Passage to India—the
inclusiveness of the Hindu religion, especially as compared to Christianity. Forster
portrays Hinduism as a religion that encompasses all, that sees
God in everything, even the smallest bacterium. He specifically
aligns Mrs. Moore with Hinduism in the earlier scene from Chapter III
in which she treats a small wasp kindly. The image of the wasp reappears
in Chapter IV as the wasp that the Hindus assume will be part of
heaven—a point on which the Christian missionaries Mr. Grayford
and Mr. Sorley disagree. Mrs. Moore is a Christian, but in Chapter
VI we see that she has begun to call her Christianity into question
during her stay in India. Whereas God earlier was the greatest thought
in Mrs. Moore’s head, now the woman appears to sense something beyond
that thought, perhaps the more inclusive and all-encompassing worldview
of Hinduism.
payment page
