“English is the language of a people who have probably earned their reputation for perfidy and hypocrisy because their language itself is so flexible, so often light-headed with with statements which appear to mean one thing one year and quite a different thing the next.” Whenever I run into someone who has been to India, not just visited, but actually lived there. I'm always infinitely too curious and whenever anyone admits to being somewhere I haven't been; I grill them Ronald Merrick style (Investigating Police Officer from the novel), well without the caning. I can almost see their face contort as conflicting memories fight for prominence. They are horrified about the squalor, the waste of life, the ever present pressing masses of people, the diseases running amok, the crippling poverty, and the stench of death. Then their face relaxes and they talk about the drop to your knees unexpected beauty of the architecture, how wonderful the people are, and those amazing intangible things about living in India that makes them pine to go back. Those intangible things that get under their skin and won't let go of them. This book is full of the intangibles that make India a mysterious, dangerous, and yet romantic place. The Jewel in the Crown is set in 1942. This is after the great hey day of the British Empire in the 1920s when over a 1/5th of the world population rose in the morning under the British flag. The empire is crumbling and yet still the British government continued to dispatch earnest young men around the globe to shore up their interests in far flung kingdoms. It was an amazing feat using thousands to control millions. With the war pulling apart the world and Britain short on resources this the perfect point in history for India to press for independence. By 1947 Pakistan has been partitioned off and India has gained their independence. Ethel Manners expressed it best in the novel. "Such a marvelous opportunity wasted. I mean for us, by us. Indians feel it too, don't they? I mean, in spite of the proud chests and all the excitement of sitting down as free men at their own desks to work out a constitution. Won't that constitution be a sort of love-letter to the English-the kind an abandoned lover writes when the affair has ended in what passes at the time as civilized and dignified mutual recognition of incompatibility?" The plot of the novel is threaded through an event, one of those events that rocks the foundations of a community. Paul Scott starts the novel with the beginning of the aftermath and then spends the rest of the novel, through the various viewpoints of the principle characters, investigating and building a file of what everybody saw, experienced, overheard, and speculated about with regard to what actually happened to Daphne Manners. The victim is not cooperating because she has a secret that is more important to her than justice. Hari Kumar is her secret and she is willing to bear the pressure of her peers and is willing to be judged in the court of public opinion to keep any hope alive that she could someday have a life with Kumar. Daphne, as all women are, was struck by how handsome Hari is and finds him a curious specimen. A man that speaks English better than the native British and yet he is black. I was struck by the fact that Indians in the book were referred to as black. I guess that is a catch all phrase for those of our species that are not white. There are no browns or yellows or cocos or caramels. I guess to keep things simple, a person is only either black or white. The more Daphne interacts with Hari the more enamored she becomes. It was unacceptable for a black man to be with a white woman. This restrictive public behavior is what leads to the tragedy. Scott uses a host of characters to bring to life his vision of India. One scene in particular has and will haunt me for a long time. The image of a burning over turned car and the bludgeoned corpse of an Indian teacher and the British teacher Miss Crane sitting in the rain along side the road holding his unresponsive hand. This scene is a great example of Scott exploring the ripple effect of one event that leads to a tidal wave of more and more disastrous reaction. Sister Ludmila, the sister that was not a sister, but who exhibited all the characteristics of what we wish the church could be, is a witness to part of the events surrounding the tragedy. Scott has this great scene when and old and blind Ludmila is talking with GOD. "I'm sorry about your eyes, HE said, but there's nothing I can do unless you want a miracle. No, I said, no miracle, thank YOU. I shall get used to it and I expect YOU will help me. Anyway, when you've lived a long time and can hardly hobble about on sticks but spend most of the day in bed your eyes aren't much use. It would need three miracles, one for the eyes, one for the legs and one to take twenty years off my age. Three miracles for one old woman! What a waste! Besides, I said, miracles are to convince the unconvinced. What do YOU take me for? An unbeliever?" Paul Scott infused this novel with lush, beautifully written scenes that gives the reader a real feel for a lost time and place. "There is no breeze but the stillness of the leaves and branches is unnatural. As well as these areas of radiance the switches have turned on great inky pools of darkness. Sometimes the men and women you talk to, moving from group to group on the lawn, present themselves in silhouette; although the turn of a head may reveal a glint in a liquidly transparent eye and the movement of an arm the skeletal structure of a hand holding a glass that contains light and liquid in equal measure. In the darkness too, strangely static and as strangely suddenly galvanized, are the fireflies of the ends of cigarettes." I remember after the mini-series came out everybody was reading these tan colored paperbacks by a guy named Paul Scott. In an era when I was gobbling down any book I could get my hands on, even at times desperate enough to read one of my mother's bodice busters, I did not read Paul Scott. I'm kind of glad I didn't because this is a book that requires a more mature mind than what I was carrying around on my shoulders then. I probably wouldn't have appreciated Paul Scott if I had tried to read him as a teenager and I may never have had this amazing experience with this book. Without a doubt I will read the rest of the Raj Quartet and can even see myself venturing deeper into his body of work. A Young Paul ScottI hope more people rediscover Paul Scott as I have and bring him back from the dusty bins of used bookstores and give him a proper place in the British canon of writers to be read and cherished.
If agape is selfless love, a passion committed to the other, then that is how I felt at the end of The Jewel in the Crown.There are two stories here, one within the other. The inner story is of a young Englishwoman named Daphne who immerses herself in India and the flow of history during the volatile period of 1942. The larger story is of the relationship between the colonizer and its subject, both yearning for India's freedom, yet unable to get it done.In both cases, they are stories of the Siva cycle of destruction and rejuvenation (or creation), so entwined they not only can't be separated, but sometimes can't be told apart.A story this complex that treats time as spatial may be best understood graphically. More than anything, this story reminds me of a thangka, those stylized paintings of the East, especially India, that frequently tell a story.Perhaps Siva should occupy the center, I'm thinking with his second wife Parvati, who not so coincidentally to Scott's story is the daughter of the Englishwoman Daphne (more on her later). Parvati also is the brother of Vishnu, a deity of some significance in The Crown Jewel.A difficulty is their posture and gestures. All goddesses in Hinduism, or so I'm led to believe, derive from Parvati. So obviously she must be portrayed as powerful.But, also, in Scott's story, she is quite the accomplished singer of traditional Indian songs, bringing to mind the singer of the 19th century, the consort of MacGregor, moved into the house of women, displaced by the wife (required acquisition to be socially acceptable in the colonizer's social confines).The anonymous singer, of course, runs off with her dark-skinned lover, a story that repeats itself in the more recent story of Daphne and Hari/Harry.The problem with Siva's posture in the center of our thangka is that in Scott's story his dancing manifestation is cited. This is fine for our principal concern, the unity of the cyclic destruction and rejuvenation manifested in our larger story of colonizer and colonized, as well as the inner story of Daphne and Hari/Harry.But it is most difficult to incorporate the union of male and female aspects, or qualities, in that posture. So, I think we should remove Parvati from the center space, and place her in the union posture with Siva below and in front of Siva's placement.The Ganges River, flowing into the sea, dark in the foreground, completes the bottom-center foreground.On either side of the river are Daphne and Hari/Harry, thus completing the triangle (triangles are important in Scott's story, see pages 134 & 149, for instance) of Daphne, Hari/Harry, and the union of Siva and Parvati, which aptly describes the relationship between the historical and mythical figures.Daphne, in a posture of courage in search of wholeness (think Siva's destruction/rejuvenation), will be placed a foot in the waters, ready to give herself over to the flow, whatever may come, as there is no bridge capable of crossing (p.142).In the upper left corner, with a line connecting it to the central Siva, is MacGregor House "where there is always the promise of a story continuing instead of finishing" (p.461) and a place of trust, compromise, exploratory, noncommittal, learning, not accusatory (p.444). Opposite in the right upper corner is Bibighar Gardens, a place where something had gone horribly wrong, still alive, that can be set right, if only one knew how. By implication it is Indian, and universal (p.398). Bibighar is the former house of women, now in ruins, but nonetheless also an arbor to provide temporary shelter for the union of Daphne and Hari/Harry, but at the same time it is the place of the union between the destructive force and Daphne.Along either side of Siva's space, in the appropriate postures: Ludmila, who ferries the dead and understands, "For in this life, living, there is no dignity except perhaps laughter" (p.133). And Deputy Commissioner Robin White who understands "the moral drift of history" (p.342), and its matrix of "emotions," "ambitions," and "reactions." And his wife, who understood Daphne's motivations, and her sacrifice.In the upper center, between MacGregor House and Bibighar Lady Chatterjee, whose chattering reveals far more than idle gossip, and above Siva's center positioning is the sleeping, dreaming Vishnu, brother of Paravati.Finally, to the right and just below Hari/Harry is Parvati in her singing posture, with two attendants approaching bearing a palanquin. She sings:Oh, my father's servants, bring my palanquin.I am going to the land of my husband. All myCompanions are scattered. They have gone todifferent homes. Paul Scott
What do You think about The Jewel In The Crown (1998)?
Susan and I were discussing this book. This is how I explained my three stars to her:I got up at 4 this morning to write the review which I was thinking about as I lay in bed........then I ended up doing other stuff. I am so terribly busy at the moment.The book does an excellent job of depicting how Indians and the British looked at each other at the time of Partition. Nevertheless, from the very beginning you know pretty much who did what and even why. The book discusses the same events over and over again showing how the different characters saw these same events. It is interesting to see how the views diverge, however it IS repetitive.I would have liked to have felt some empathy for at least a few of the characters. Although accurately rendered, the words of the British military figures really exasperated me. British mannerisms have a tendency to annoy me. So even if the story accurately portrays the characters I did not enjoy it.The audiobook narration was stupendous. Sam Dastor was able to sound like a woman , a man, a British person or an Indian. I checked several times b/c I could not believe there was just one narrator.I am not one to love a mystery and I am not one who loves British mannerisms. You get a lot of both in this book. Good book, but not a good fit for ME.What the book does best is perfectly describe how the Indians and British viewed each other, the feelings that prevailed in the 30s and 40s when Partition occurred. You actually get very little history, but you do get the atmosphere of the times.The above explains why I gave the book three stars. I liked it but not more. That isn't to say it isn't a very well written book. Oh yeah, as you are told right smack in the beginning, this is a book about a rape. The question that is discussed over and over is who did it, who was accused and why each character behaved as they did.
—Chrissie
Paul Scott’s The Jewel In The Crown is the first of his tetralogy of novels on British India. These really were the last days of the Raj. And the jewel in Empress Victoria’s crown was India, itself. Without it Britain may have remained a colonial power rather than an imperial one. Status was all.But Paul Scott’s book is no jingoistic celebration of empire. On the contrary it lays bare the pretensions, the racism and above all the class divisions that characterise the society that Britain exported to its colony. And, in the final analysis, while India embarked upon an unsatisfactory, divided independence, the British – certainly those directly involved, but perhaps the rest of us as well – remained trapped within their cocoon of often inappropriate and certainly blind presumptions. While India might challenge caste via development and prosperity, the British remain trapped in the class divisions that their own early economic success created.Central to the story embedded in The Jewel In The Crown is the relationship between Daphne Manners and Hari Kumar. In 1942 Daphne is already a victim of war. She has lost all her family and has been driving an ambulance in the blitz. Her uncle, now deceased, happened to be a high ranking official in the British Raj so, by way of respite, she travels to her aunt in India to pick up the pieces of her life. She soon moves on to Mayapore where she does nursing in the hospital and also volunteers at the Sanctuary, a hospice for those found dying on the street.Hari Kumar is the lynchpin in the tale’s structure. An only child, he was raised in Britain from the age of two and was about to finish school – Chillingborough no less, a prestigious public school – when his bankrupt father committed suicide. His mother had died in childbirth, so he was left both alone and penniless in England, the place he called home. An aunt in India was his only hope. So he is also in Mayapore trying to find a way of making some sort of living. He speaks no “Indian”, has an accent that to all but the English upper classes sounds like a put-down, has black skin over white identity, and so is accepted by no-one. Except the rather idealistic – perhaps naive – Daphne Manners, that is. And by the way, if you are not English, you need to know that in Britain a public school refers to a wholly private, privileged institution. Have we changed at all?Daphne and Hari become friends. But where can they meet? Clubs, restaurants and even workplaces enforce racial segregation. Even Lady Chatterjee, widow of Sir Nello, knighted by the English king, and with whom Daphne lodges, cannot get into such places, so Hari has no chance. But if Daphne goes local, she incurs the wrath and ridicule of her class and race-conscious compatriots who see their own status threatened if questioned. Add to that the complication of timing, since the couple’s romance coincides with the 1942 Quit India campaign and the arrest and imprisonment without trial of Congress leaders and then protest riots.The real strength of The Jewel In The Crown, however, is Paul Scott’s insistence that we should see events from different perspectives. Not only do we hear Hari’s and Daphne’s account, but we also have the voice of the military, that of the civil administration and that of an Indian activist. But it is always from outside, sometimes from afar, that we are presented with the attitudes and actions of the policeman, Ronald Merrick. It is his actions that are crucial to the book’s success. He is no upper class military type, no public schoolboy. He is an ambitious, self-made man with competence and a desire for achievement as his badge. He potenjtially is meritocracy personified.And so through the lives and actions of these characters, against a backdrop of war and colonial turmoil, Paul Scott creates a rich tapestry of comment on social class, ethnicity and politics. It is a truly remarkable book and its observations, despite the unfamiliarity of the language to contemporary readers, are still relevant in today’s Britain, but are perhaps no more than an historical relic in today’ s India.
—Philip
I originally read this when the PBS Masterpiece version appeared in 1984; I remember we couldn't keep it on the shelves in the library! It remains a fabulous story of race and class, elegantly written, character centered, told in a circuitous manner from multiple perspectives. The prose is absolutely seductive, filled with beautifully detailed landscapes and vivid character portraits. But the story is driven by class and racial differences, which may be why it still resonates today. The discussion of Anglo-Indian relationships and politics, starting in 1942 in this volume of the Raj Quartet, will fill in any gaps in your education. This volume is a tragedy--the tragedy of a cross-cultural romance and of a legal system that can find a crime that will stick to prosecute those that might be guilty.
—Joyce
