Ambivalent Representations of India in E.M. Forster's A Passage to India

In this paper I tackle the delicate issue of the representations of India in E.M. Forster’s A Passage to India. The ideological readings of the novel have often raised debates with literary critics demonstrating either Forster’s complacence to his dominating race or his remarkable progressive faith to level differences when the colonial mission was still on the agenda. The freshness of my analysis lies not in the choice of an unexplored field of study of course, but in avoiding to make an either/or choice between these two ideological affiliations, and rather to evaluate their seemingly ambiguous co-existence and overlapping, as also the presence of two distinct narrating voices in the novel confirms. Focal points to my theory are an examination of all those referents generally associated to India, with a particular care to the Marabar Caves, Aziz and Godbole as well as a scrutiny of how (Indian) animals are generally observed by both Indian and British characters in the novel.