The Role Of Woman In Colonial Context

As one of the finest British novelist in literature, E. M. Forster creates six novels and many criticisms. His works are admired for their believable characters that serve as representation of abstract ideas. He is mostly remembered for his masterpiece A Passage to India, which is considered among the finest achievements in the twentieth century fiction.This novel was completed after his two trips in India from 1912 to 1913 and 1921 to 1922. During this period, British colonial dominance in India came to its last struggling phase. Indian social problems had become more acute: political agitation and even rioting indicated the strength of the demand for independence.Since the publication of this novel in 1924, the diversity of its themes has always been the focus of critics-it has been considered to be a book of political conflicts, a book of Eastern mysteries, a book of cultural differences, and a book of human relationship. These perspectives, woven together through various forms -satires, contrast, imagery, symbolism, make the novel rich, colorful, striking and successful.As a novel about British Raj, A Passage to India also attracts more attention from colonial and post-colonial critics, however, criticism on women in the novel is very little or limited. With A passage to India as a colonial text, this thesis mainly focuses on women as pawn in colonial and patriarchal context from the perspective of gender and racial politics. This thesis consists of six parts. A brief introduction first offers Forster's life and his status in the history of literature, as well as the present criticism on A Passage to India.Chapter one focuses on women's inferior status in colonial context. In long patriarchal society, male is defined as the first sex and women the second one, yet colonialism intensifies women's marginalized status rather than improve it. The further division of public and private space confines both white and black women in their private space of home. At the same time, men try to suppress their voice and exclude them from the main discourse of the whole novel. Moreover, in the Oriental discourse of Self/Other, the analogy between race and gender—colonial women Adela and colonized men Aziz, further accelerates women's disappearance.Chapter two analyzes the significance of the figure of women in construction of gender and colonial dominance from three aspects. Though women are prevented from directly participating in politics, the matters of love and marriage are subordinated to imperial service of the maintenance and extension of British power. Women's issues such as Indian sati and women's education also offer pretexts of colonialism. All the Indian and English women in A Passage to India are evaluated by sexuality. They are only victims in the connection between men of different races.Chapter three is mainly concerned with the most important scene in the novel—the rape case. In fact, Forster's employment of rape has a historical background, especially the fear of 1857 Mutiny. Colonialists regard the violence on white women as a revolt for colonial domination. Thus the positioning of white women as sex victims of black males allowed English men to beat this challenge to colonial rule legally by casting themselves in the role of righteous avengers and chivalric protectors. As for the nationalists, the white men who rape black women are the objects of revenge, because women's veiling and harem is also the signifier of indigenous culture. Being deprived of political power, black men see rape of white women as a way of anti-colonialism.Chapter four discusses the white feminists and black women. The similar condition of black and white women does not bring them into an alliance; instead, white women are pawns and players in maintaining and reinforcing imperialism. English women's obvious contempt for their black sisters in the novel and their historical furious opposition to the Illbert Bill which the novel alludes to in the Adela's case shows the white women's inner racial discrimination. Even those feminists with the hope of saving and civilizing their Indian sisters are running the risk of regarding black women as a site to consolidate their self-identity.In the novel A Passage to India, The role of woman in colonial context should be analyzed in racial and gender politics. Race, sexuality and gender are so interweaved that marginalized colonial and colonized women are reduced to the vitims of two patriarchies, as well as the tool of colonialism and nationalism. However, the representation of women in the novel is in different hierarchy, for black women become the Other again in white feminism.