Summary: Chapter XXVI
Fielding reluctantly converses with Adela. She wants to
discuss her behavior, but he is unwilling until she mentions that
she has been ill. She says she has been ill with an echo since the
day of the trip to the Marabar Caves, or perhaps the day she heard
Godbole’s song. Fielding admits that he always suspected she was
ill, or perhaps hallucinatory. Adela cannot quite describe the vision
she had in court. Nonetheless, Fielding appreciates Adela’s meticulous
honesty, and he apologizes for his rudeness to Ronny.
Adela asks Fielding what Aziz thinks of her. Fielding
uncomfortably thinks about Aziz’s contempt for Adela’s ugliness.
They discuss the possibility that the guide, or someone else, attacked
Adela. Hamidullah arrives and is unhappy to see Fielding and Adela together.
Hamidullah expresses severe disapproval of Adela because of the
destruction she has carelessly brought upon Aziz. Hamidullah invites
Fielding to the Nawab Bahadur’s house for the victory celebration.
Adela prepares to depart, but Fielding invites her to remain at
the college while he stays with Aziz’s friends. Hamidullah, however,
is eager to be rid of Adela, for her emotionless demeanor repels him.
While the two men discuss what to do with Adela, Hamidullah
is relieved to notice Ronny pull up. Fielding meets Ronny outside
and learns that Mrs. Moore has died on the voyage back to England
and has been buried at sea. Fielding returns and sends Adela out.
He and Hamidullah agree not to tell Aziz about Mrs. Moore until the next
day. Adela returns, distraught at Mrs. Moore’s death, and asks to
remain at the college. At Fielding’s request, Adela brings Ronny
inside.
Hamidullah is unfriendly to Ronny. Fielding and Ronny
settle the details of Adela’s stay at the College, and then Fielding
and Hamidullah leave for the Nawab Bahadur’s celebration. On the way,
Fielding overhears Hamidullah saying that Adela should be fined
twenty thousand rupees. Fielding is distressed that Adela should
lose her money and probably her fiancé as well.
Summary: Chapter XXVII
“Is emotion a sack of potatoes, so much
the pound, to be measured out? Am I a machine?”
See Important Quotations Explained
Late that night, the celebrants at the victory party are
bedded down on the Nawab Bahadur’s roof. Fielding and Aziz have
a long talk. Aziz anticipates that Fielding will urge him not to
make Adela pay any reparations. But Aziz no longer wants the English
to admire him for his chivalry. Fielding explains that he himself
changed his mind and now believes that Adela acted bravely and will
suffer enough as it is. Aziz dismisses Adela because of her lack
of beauty. Fielding becomes angry with Aziz’s sexual snobbery.
Finally, Aziz says he will consult Mrs. Moore and do what
she suggests. Fielding points out that Aziz’s emotions are disproportionate:
it was Adela who saved him, while Mrs. Moore went away—yet Aziz
still loves Mrs. Moore and not Adela. Aziz rejects what he sees as
Fielding’s materialism, which measures love pound-by-pound. Fielding
explains to Aziz that Mrs. Moore has died, but Hamidullah, overhearing
their conversation, tells Aziz that Fielding is joking. Aziz takes
it as a joke.
Summary: Chapter XXVIII
In Chandrapore, a legend arises that Ronny killed his
mother for attempting to save Aziz’s life. Two different tombs are
reported to contain Mrs. Moore’s body, and townspeople leave offerings
at both tombs.
The English do not respond to the rumors. Ronny knows
that he was inconsiderate to his mother at the end, but he blames
her for the trouble she continues to make with the legend of her
death. Ronny hopes that troublesome Adela will leave India, too.
He has not yet broken off their engagement, hoping that she will
realize the marriage would ruin his career, and therefore back out
politely.
Summary: Chapter XXIX
Perhaps life is a mystery, not a muddle.
. . . Perhaps the hundred Indias which fuss and squabble so tiresomely are
one, and the universe they mirror is one.
See Important Quotations Explained
The lieutenant-governor arrives in Chandrapore to survey
the aftermath of the Marabar case. He congratulates Fielding for
his upstanding behavior before and during the trial. Adela continues
to stay at the college, and she and Fielding talk more frequently.
He helps her draft an apology to Aziz. The apology seems unsatisfactory:
though Adela is just, she does not truly love India and Indians.
Aziz and Fielding begin to quarrel about future plans
and about Adela’s reparation payment. Fielding resorts to a mention
of Mrs. Moore, and finally Aziz gives in and agrees to ask Adela
only to repay his legal costs. As Aziz has predicted, his generosity
wins him no prestige among the English, who will believe forever
that he committed the crime.
Ronny visits Adela at the college and breaks off their
engagement. Adela and Fielding talk afterward. Adela sadly repents
for all the trouble she has caused everyone. She admits, though,
that she and Ronny should not have thought about marriage in the
first place. Like old friends, Fielding and Adela talk about the
difficulties of love. Fielding questions Adela about the incident
in the cave one final time. Indifferently, she accepts that it was
the guide who assaulted her. She explains that only Mrs. Moore knew
for sure, perhaps by telepathy. Fielding and Adela continue to chat,
but their practicality and friendliness are slightly plagued by
a sense of something indefinable and infinite in the universe.
Adela takes a ship home to England. She decides on the
way to look up Mrs. Moore’s two other children, Ralph and Stella,
when she arrives.
Analysis: Chapters XXVI–XXIX
In Fielding and Adela’s conversations after the trial,
Forster focuses not on conjecture about what might have happened
to Adela in the cave, but rather on the uneasiness of two unspiritual
people with a mysterious and otherworldly event. Fielding and Adela’s
discussions of Marabar and Adela’s testimony at the trial raise
ideas of ghosts and visions with which both are uncomfortable. The
two begin to sense that “life is a mystery, not a muddle,” in Forster’s words.
To fend off these uncomfortable ideas, the two find solace in scientific
words like “hallucination,” or in the possibility that another culprit,
such as Aziz’s guide, was responsible for a real, physical attack.
Forster presents the conversations between Fielding and Adela as
fluctuations between a spiritual recognition of something infinite
and eternal and a comforting return to the familiarity of traditional
English rationalism.
The announcement of Mrs. Moore’s death further troubles
this sense of English rationalism, particularly for Adela. Adela
is struck by the realization that Mrs. Moore died at just about
the time when the Indians in the courtroom crowd began chanting
her name. This simultaneity further associates Mrs. Moore with mystical
power and suggests that her spirit is present in the courtroom—a
sense that Aziz confirms. Additionally, the fact that Mrs. Moore
is buried at sea further implies that she is not of either world,
India or England, but permanently occupies a liminal space between
them. Though Forster presents the cult of Mrs. Moore that emerges
in Chandrapore as silly and superstitious, he nevertheless implies
that the woman’s spirit represents significant mystical power.
Though Adela bravely resists the encouragement of the
English contingent when she pronounces Aziz innocent, Aziz, Hamidullah, and
many other Indians continue to hold a grudge against her—a grudge
that reinforces a dichotomy between Indian values and English values.
The Indians hold a grudge not because of Adela’s responsibility
for Aziz’s downfall, but because her rescue of Aziz is so emotionless.
The Indians sense no kindness or love behind Adela’s action, so
they suspect it is an insincere trick. Again, Forster sets up a
dichotomy between the English focus on literal honesty and the Indian
focus on the emotions lying behind actions or words. The Indians’
resistance to Adela mirrors their resistance to the British Empire
as a whole, which similarly administers justice without sincere
compassion or kindness.
Though Forster’s critique of the British Empire has hitherto
been the same critique the Indians themselves make—that the Empire lacks
imaginative compassion—his critique begins to shift after Adela’s
trial. Fielding, who generally serves as the mouthpiece for Forster
in the novel, begins to feel wary of the Indian attention to imaginative
compassion over all else. Fielding believes that Aziz’s preoccupation
with kindness blinds him to the fact that Adela has taken more action
on his behalf than Mrs. Moore ever did. Aziz resents the implication
that his emotions should be perfectly measured, as he feels that
this view does not account for his nonliteral, nonlinguistic idea
of love. Fielding, however, increasingly suspects that imagination
betrays those who depend on it to the exclusion of all else. If
Forster has shown in Part I of A Passage to India that
most English suffer from a lack of imagination and compassion, he
shows toward the end of Part II that too much imagination and compassion
has the potential to lead the Indians astray.
Perhaps the clearest example of imagination leading Indians astray
in these chapters is the initial rift between Fielding and Aziz. When
Fielding accompanies Adela back to the college directly after the
trial, Aziz feels that Fielding has abandoned him. We know, however,
that Fielding has perfectly good reason to fear for Adela’s safety,
and that he has no intention whatsoever of neglecting Aziz. Aziz
gets carried away in his somewhat self-pitying sense of Fielding’s
betrayal, and the relationship between the two men begins to break
apart.
Fielding, for his part, becomes increasingly disillusioned
with his Indian friends in general. He feels that Aziz, Hamidullah,
and others are unnecessarily cruel in seeking incredible sums of
monetary compensation from Adela. Fielding is also surprised by
Hamidullah’s nastiness to both Adela and Ronny. Indeed, in these
chapters, -Forster’s satire on English behavior gives way somewhat
to a sense of disappointment with Indian behavior. The Indians,
in reaction to their victory at the trial, become aggressive, start
to complain of new, nonexistent mistreatments, and even resort to
petty lawlessness. The English virtually vanish from the novel,
as Forster’s critique—though never satiric—turns toward the Indians
instead.
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