The second volume in The Raj Quartet, this novel resumes the story of Britain’s last days of colonial control over the territory that became India and Pakistan.
Where the first volume, The Jewel in the Crown, had opened with a rape, in the second volume of the quartet the dominant image is that of ritual suicide by self-immolation; repeatedly, fire plays a role in the events of the story, echoing the scene of an Englishwoman’s suicide by suttee, or ritual immolation, in the first volume. The British Raj is essentially trapped in a similarly suicidal ring of fire.
The focus of the story shifts to the Layton family, composed mostly of women who are the dependents of Colonel Layton, a prisoner of war in Germany. Mrs. Mabel Layton manages to endure her situation with infusions of strong drink, and her younger daughter, Susan, married early in the novel to the doomed Teddie Bingham, is emotionally unstable beneath an exterior veneer of cheerfulness. To the elder daughter, Sarah, falls the duty of managing the family.
Ronald Merrick, a police superintendent in the first volume who is now a military intelligence officer, enters the family’s life when he serves as Teddie’s best man. The Laytons are puzzled that Merrick is hated by the Indians, not knowing of his unjust treatment of Hari Kumar. Merrick likes Sarah and works to impress her. But Sarah is another version of the Englishwoman who is sympathetic to the Indian cause of independence; she lacks Merrick’s scorn or Teddie’s condescension to the Indians they govern.
The fire image recurs when Merrick tries unsuccessfully to rescue Teddie. Indian soldiers who have joined the Japanese resist Teddie’s efforts to return them to the British side, and in the flaming struggle Teddie dies and Merrick is badly wounded. In this action, Merrick shows himself capable of heroism, but his cruelty to Hari outweighs this characteristic. He loses an arm and, at Susan’s bidding, Sarah visits him in the hospital in Calcutta.
There, he talks about a painting of Queen Victoria receiving tokens of allegiance from her Indian subjects. The painting is another connection to the first volume: It is entitled “The Jewel in Her Crown,” and it belonged to Miss Crane, the suttee suicide, in The Jewel in the Crown.
The paternalistic attitudes of the British toward the Indians are apparent in the painting, but if the Raj is a family composed of British parents and Indian children, it is a dysfunctional family at best. Sarah is the character who best understands that the Raj is in its last days, even though many in charge do not comprehend this simple fact.
The Laytons’ story continues in the third volume of the series, The Towers of Silence.
Bibliography
Childs, Peter. Paul Scott’s Raj Quartet: History and Division. Victoria, B.C.: University of Victoria, 1998.
Rao, K. Bhaskara. Paul Scott. Twayne’s English Author, 285. Boston: Twayne Publishers, 1980.
Weinbaum, Francine S. Paul Scott: A Critical Study. Austin, Texas: University of Texas Press, 1992.
Categories: British Literature, Diaspora Criticism, Literature, Novel Analysis
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