Consolidated Vision

Consolidated Vision
cconomy, the historiography of non-European regions, and
idized subjects like Orientalism, exoticism, and mass psy-
Thc actual interpretative consequences of this slow and steady
of attitude and reference articuiated by the novel are
. I shall specify four. The first is that, in literary history,
unusual organic continuity can be seen between the earlier
rrarives that are normally not considered to have much to do
-t empire and the later ones expliciúy about it. Kipling and
Gúrad are prepared for by Austen and Thackeray, Defoe, Scotr,
rd Dickens; they are also interestingly connecred with their con-
F 'pnraries like Hardy and James, regularly supposed to be only
oincidenrally associated with the overseas exhibits presented by
Òcir rarher more peculiar novelistic counrerparts. But both the
brmal characteristics and the contents of all these novelists'works
Ldong ro rhe same cuhural formation, the differences being rhose
o{ rnflection, emphasis, stress.
Second, the strucrure of attitude and reference raises the whole
grsrion of power. Today's critic cannot and should not suddenly
3n'e a novel legislative or direct political aurhoriry: we musr
oonrlnue ro remember that novels participate in, are part of,
conrribute ro an exrremely slow, infinitesimal politics that clarifies,
rtrnforces, perhaps even occasionally advances perceptions and
emrudes about England and the world. It is striking that never,
h rhe novel, is that world beyond seen except as subordinare
end dominated, the English presence viewed as regulative and
rcrmarive. Part of the extraordinary novelty of Aziz's triai in A
Pass.zge to India is that Forster admits that 'the flimsy framework
of rhe court'23 cannot be sustained because it is a 'fantasy'
that
compromises British power (real) with impartial justice for Indians
unreal). Therefore he readily (even with a sort of frusrated
rmparience) dissolves the scene into India's 'complexity', which
nrenn'-four years before in Kipling's Kim was jusr as present. The
main difference berween the rwo is that the impinging disturbance
oi resisring natives had been thrust on Forster's awareness. Forster
could not ignore somerhing that Kipling easily incorporared (as
s'hen he rendered even rhe famous'Mutiny'of 1857 as mere
s'ar-rvardness, not as a serious Indian objection to British rule).
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