In his life, E. M. Forster (1879—1970) published six novels: Where Angels Fear to Tread (1905), The Longest Journey (1907), A Room with a View (1908), Howards End (1910), A Passage to India (1924) and Maurice (1971). His critical works Aspects of the Novel, a collection of lectures delivered at Cambridge in 1927, contributes significantly to modern novel theory. The film adaption of his novels and other posthumous publication of letters, diaries and fragments of writings also help to elevate Forster's fame as a literary giant.
The importance of Forster in the history of English literature, even the world literature, is never over-exaggerated. The famous American literary critic Lionel Trilling comments in his book E. M. Forster that "E. M. Forster is for me the only living novelist who can be read again and again and who, after each reading, give me what few writers can give us after our first days of novel-reading, the sensation of having learned something" (3). The famous English literary critic John Sayre Martin wrote that Forster's novel "carries overtones richer and more suggestive than the literary significance of the elements that compose it" (143). Peter Childs furthers the complements and cherishes the greatest esteem for Passage: "Forster's early novels forge his reputation as one of the most thoughtful and capable novelists of the time, but it is probably only A Passage to India that stands as a masterpiece of twentieth-century fiction." (8)
The prominent 20th-century novelist E. M. Forster's A Passage to India (hereafter referred to as Passage except in quotations), subtly designed and meticulously written, produces a vivid epitome of the Indian society under the Raj. The novel Passage is a passage of success and glory from its publication in 1924 till now. It sold very well:
By the end of 1924, 18000 copies had been published in England, and no fewer than 34, 000 in America. [...] it is A Passage to India which is his most widely-known book: between a translation into Swedish in 1925 and one into Turkish in 1961 there have been sixteen translations, seven of these before 1939 [...] and there are more translations of A Passage to India than of all the other novels put together (Gardner 5-6).
It makes its subject on India, and sets against the backdrop of the British Raj in the 1920s. Sunil Kumar Sarker observes that, "If Edward Morgan Forster would have written nothing besides A Passage to India, even then, perhaps, he would have occupied the same distinguished place in the history of English literature that he enjoy" (167). Its popularity among readers is followed by waves of applauses: it is "certainly the best of E. M. Forster's novels" (Bradbury, E. M. Forster 132), "his major and right claim to a place in the history of twentieth-century fiction" (Wilde 10), since it is "powerful, original, and thought-provoking" (Ganguly 3). F. R. Leavis, an influential literary critic, calls it "a classic: not only a most significant document of our age, but a truly memorable work of literature" (Gilbert 132). Claude Summers claims that "A Passage to India integrates social comedy, biting satire, complex irony, and symbolism into a grand design mythic in scope and breathtaking philosophical seriousness" (236). In short, "It is unquestionably one of the great English novels, and the one novel of Forster's that fully justifies his reputation as a major twentieth-century novelist." (Martin 143)
Some critics avoid such impulsive and impressionist comments and explore the thematic and aesthetic values. In his chapter on the novel in E. M. Forster: The Perils of Humanism, F. C. Crews says that it seems to him "that Lionel Trilling comes closest to the truth when he says that A Passage to India, rather than telling us what is to be done, simply restates the familiar political and social dilemmas in the light of the total situation" (142). "A Passage to India, " L. P. Hartley writes, "is much more than a study of racial contrasts and disabilities. It is intensely personal and (if the phrases may be pardoned) intensely cosmic." (1048) Virginia Woolf admires it on the grounds that Forster has there "almost achieved the great feat of animating this compact boy of observation with a spiritual light" and sees it as a novel marching triumphantly and sadly "through the real life and politics of India, the intricacy of personal relations, the story itself, the muddle and mystery of life" (234). Sunil Kumar Sarker also holds that it is "no simple novel [...] anyone venturing upon a single decisive interpretation of it will only land himself in a muddled spot" (167).
Forster is "a writer hard to label", and Passage "a novel hard to categorize" (Suo 1-6). A writer can be elusive and a novel enigmatic, but the activity of literary interpretation is a process of rationality, though rationalism does not conquer all. For I. A. Richards, Forster is "on the whole the most puzzling figure in contemporary English letters" (Gardner 27); for Virginia Woolf, Forster is "in any case an author about whom there is considerable disagreements. There is something baffling and evasive in the very nature of his gifts" (Gardner 319-320); John Sayre Martin points out that Forster is a writer "who has puzzled, and perhaps continues to puzzle, discerning readers and critics" (1). Trilling, for instance, tries to pinpoint the three interwoven layers of themes: "the individual's search for achievement of self-realization; the attempt to harmonize different life-styles and schemes of values; the individual life as set against something larger than itself——a country, the universe, the human urge for continuance or expansion" (E. M. Forster: A Study 118), and all of them may be unified under one single heading——Forster's epigraph to Howards Ends: "only connect". This three-theme scheme is a grand umbrella categorization, covering the"self-realization", harmonization of values, and the "continuance and expansion" of individual to one's relationship with the world. A writer's ambition can be no bigger than this, which exhausts much academic libido and at the same time opens up an endless interpretative space.
1.1 Passage Criticism in the West
Passage is a popular and critical success and it is reviewed more extensively than any of its predecessors. This imbalance is metaphorized by Philip Gardner into "an inverted pyramid, with all the weight at the top" (Gardner 1), with fourteen critical studies which appeared between 1960 and 1970, only two books on Forster (James McConkey's and Rex Warner's) in the nineteen-fifties, and only one (Lionel Trilling's) in the nineteen-forties. Therefore, a critical survey on Passage is a terribly huge undertaking. In the following part, two classification methods are adopted: first of all, the early comments in 1924, which are the valuable "critical heritage", are reviewed chronologically; then the more recent works will be classified according to such categories as political and postcolonial criticism, the liberal-humanistic and biographical study, feminism, psychological criticism, aesthetic, technical, structural and linguistic analysis, etc.
1.1.1 The Early Comments in 1924
Philip Gardner's E. M. Forster: The Critical Heritage is a ground work for a collection of early Forsterian reviews with forty articles on Passage (and many for others as well), providing a panoramic picture from 1924 to the forties. "Such critical approaches, representative of shades on a spectrum ranging from intellect to intuition, from the social to the other-worldly, demonstrate how much Forster's novels had to offer to different people" (Gardner 35). The important articles will be summarized specifically as follows.
On 4 June 1924 Daily News published Rose Macaulay's article "Women in the East", which first of all sings highly of Forster's literary wits, then focuses on the "pathetic", "amusing" picture drawn of the Ruling Race in India: Mrs. Moore as "the most clear-sighted, sensitive, civilised and intellectually truthful person in her circle", and Adela as"a civilised girl". Generally it is a "patient, imaginative" realistic novel, "an ironic tragedy"but "a brilliant comedy of manners" with "a delightful entertainment" (Gardner 196-198).
On 14 June 1924 Outlook read a review by H. C. Harwood who enjoys this "remarkably good novel, his best, maybe", the subtle characterization and forcible descriptions. Most importantly, he believes politics gives the novel at least half of its value.
On 14 June 1924 Leonard Woolf published "Arch beyond Arch", an important essay on themes of Passage, on Nation & Athenaeum. He believes that there are arch beyond arch of themes which are "woven and interwoven into a most intricate pattern, against which, or in which, the men and women are shown to us pathetically, rather ridiculously, entangled". These themes, from the surface to the core, are two ladies travelling to see the "real" India; then friendship or failure of friendship; then the politics of Anglo-India and the nationalist India; then half mystery, half muddle in personal relations and life itself; then the terrible arch of "personal relations"; finally disillusionment.
Sylvia Lynd, the famous English poet and novelist, published "A Great Novel at Last"on Time and Tide on 20 June 1924, who confirms the excellence of the novel with Forster's"beautiful fairness, perceptiveness and sense of the mystery of life". She guesses the moral of the book is the complete separateness between the East and the West, but it bears so rich implication that each reader may draw his own conclusion from it. But the certainty of it is that "friendship whether between nations or individuals can only be based on knowledge, and it is an enlargement of knowledge, not only of India, but of human motives, that Mr. Forster has made so superb a contribution" (Gardner 215-218).
The review by L. P. Hartley (28 June 1924, Spectator), the novelist, reveals the"racial contrasts" between the Anglo-Indians who "stand for much that Mr. Forster dislikes: insensitiveness, officialdom, stupidity, repressiveness, rudeness", while the Indians are "the children of Nature, affectionate, courteous, eager, irresponsible, wayward". However, the message of the novel is far more than these: "It is intensely personal and [...] intensely cosmic" (Gardner 225-226). To the final question: the English as a foreign ruling caste arrive at a working arrangement with the Indians? Forster's answer is definitely, "No".
John Middleton Murry's "Bo-oum or Ou-boum? " in Adelphi (ii, no. 2, July 1924) is an article with philosophical insight into the novel. First of all, he explains why Passage comes after a silence of fourteen years. Then he focuses on the echo of the Marabar caves. He praises that the "outward fiction" is "brilliant and dramatic and absorbing", but "the inward fiction" (Gardner 236 - 237) is even more enchanting with philosophical inquiry of the universe, eternity and infinity, which is what the echo symbolizes.
"C. W. G." review in Englishman (Calcutta) on 25 September 1924 classifies three types of fiction written about India by English novelists. The first type is "historical romance for the most part in the time of the Moguls". The second is the "romances and adventures of the British in this least romantic and most unadventurous environment, of Indian station life", which is the mainstay of popular fiction relating to India. The third class is "fiction coming into evidence concerned not with station life in an ethnological void, but with the contact of the British and Indian peoples", which always requires "psychological elaboration" and bears"some shade of political implication" (Gardner 270).
There are many more of other discussions. Ralph Wright (21 June 1924) insists that the subject of Passage is of "enormous difficulty", which deals with "race feeling" or "the violent reaction from what seems the intolerable race feeling of our fellows" (Gardner 221-222). J. B. Priestley's review in July 1924 London Mercury provides a wonderful character sketches. R. Ellis Roberts (July 1924) distinguishes three worlds in Passage: "the Anglo-Indian world; the world of cultured India; and the world——on which both these depend —the world of the old, primitive, uneducated Indian, a world very wise, very determined and very difficult" (Gardner 231). Edwin Muir's review in Nation (8 October 1924) holds that Forster's theme is "the antagonism, founded largely upon misapprehension, between a colony of Anglo-Indians in a little Indian town and the natives [...]. His picture of mutual misunderstanding is consummate" (Gardner 279).
In a letter to Martin Secker on 23 July 1924, D. H. Lawrence complains that "[I]t's good, but makes one wish a bomb would fall and end everything. Life is more interesting in its undercurrents than its obvious, and E. M. does see people, people and nothing but people: ad nauseam" (Gardner 235). In another letter to John Middleton Murry, Lawrence agrees that "Forster doesn't 'understand' his Hindu. And India is to him just negative: because he doesn't go down to the root to meet it" (Gardner 275). An unsigned review "A striking novel" on Statesman (Calcutta) points out the technical errors in Forster's account of the trial scene, calling it a "so reckless a use of his imagination" (Gardner 246). Interestingly, E. A. Horne, an Anglo-Indian who possesses qualifications for spending in Chandrapore itself for the last fourteen years, sent a letter to the editor of New Statesman, complaining of the unreality of the story, especially the Anglo-Indian part. He understands the reason of improbability and unreality is that "Mr. Forster went out to India to see, and to study, and to make friends of Indians. He did not go out to India to see Anglo-Indians" (Gardner 250). S. K. Ratcliffe, acting editor of the Statesman (Calcutta) from 1903 to 1906, agrees with E. A. Horne as to the unreality of the Anglo-Indian background, but he thinks he is wrong in his general conclusion. Forster's external are probably wrong. "But they are true in the essentials of character and attitude. And the tremendous import of A Passage to India for our people is this: for all its mistakes and misreadings, it presents a society, a relation, and a system, which are in the long run impossible" (Gardner 252-253).
In the section above, we take pains to summarize the most important Passage reviews in 1924, the year of its publication, for the reason that they are primeval resources, though personal, introductory, impressionistic, some even prosaic in style, from which flows the contemporary criticism. "Different readers, " John Beer insists, "faced with the same text, will read a very different novel" (Beer, Essays in Interpretation vii). But with the development of human knowledge, new questions are raised or old questions reappear in the new disguises and new perspectives of interpretation can be tried, generating a storm of criticism. "A Passage to India is [...] rich in interpretative possibilities" (Beer, Essays in Interpretation vii). It is like "an echoing chamber that resolutely resists definite statement yet continually reverberates with expansive meaning" (Summers 181). The range of focus has been extraordinarily wide: a social comedy or a religious novel, a traditional realist or a modernist novel, a statement of twentieth-century liberal hope or despair and nihilism, a humanistic discussion of interrelations or philosophical and religious inquiry of the universe or infinity, etc. Accordingly, the "passage" could be understood as a biographical one of Forster himself, a realistic one of the characters, a spiritual one of the readers, and many more.
1.1.2 Political and Postcolonial Perspectives
Ever since the publication of Passage, there emerge two principal readings: one is the liberal-humanistic type we have introduced, the other is a socio-political perspective. About the political orientation of Passage, Forster explains, "The book is not really about politics, though it is the political aspect of it that caught the general public and made it sell" (Colmer, E. M. Forster 156). However, comparatively most of the critics regard it as a political novel (King 52). Rebecca West observes in her review that "it is a political document of the first importance" (Gardner 254), and she herself has described the novel in a review as a "study of a certain problem of the British empire" (96). Peter Burra also believes that it is "a book which no student of the Indian question can disregard" (57).
Some readers feel that the novel realistically represents the social, historical and political situation in India under British Raj and it is a penetrating criticism of the colonial India. However, some complain about the truthfulness of the depiction of the real political situation and his overlook of larger political and ideological issues in the novel. Lionel Trilling says that"A Passage to India, rather than telling us what is to be done, simply restates the familiar political and social dilemmas in the light of the total situation" (Crews 142). In a famous article in 1954 Encounter, Nirad Chaudhuri condemns the novel for containing "noting of the conflict between Indian nationalists and the British Administration", for assuming that Indo-British relations are equivalent to a problem of personal behavior and can be tackled on a personal plane, for showing a "great imperial system at its worst, not as diabolically evil but as drab and asinine", and for depriving "our suffering under British rule" of "all dignity" (19-24).
Following Forster's death in 1970 and especially the publication and popularity of Edward Said's Orientalism in 1978, a book that suggests that the world is dominated by Western culture and ideas, the oriental societies are marginalized to different degrees, and Culture and Imperialism in 1994, after having first shifted from the "philosophical and poetic", the political discussion recurs, the temporary fad of formalist interpretations of the novel in the 1960s gives way to more direct historical, social and political readings in the next two decades.
From then on, the interpretations of Passage from a postcolonial perspective have been popular because of the strong influence of this literary theory. Most of the postcolonial readings notice the racial discrimination and conflicts embedded in the novel and assume the text's collusion with imperialism. Mohammad Shaheen's cross-cultural and postcolonial study"E. M. Forster and the Politics of Imperialism" is a typical example in this category. Jenny Sharpe argues in her article "The Unspeakable Limits of Rape" that Passage "contends with a discourse of power capable of reducing anti-colonial struggle to the pathological lust of dark-skinned men for white women" (42).
Postcolonial theories usually focus upon issues of racial and sexual politics and several articles combine feminist and postcolonial approaches. For example, in "Periphrasis, Power, and Rape in A Passage to India", Brenda Silver discusses the role of violence of rape in this novel, "locates the text at the intersection of racism, colonialism, and sexual inequality and sees in Aziz the feminized and colonized object" (Herz 41). Frances Restuccia attacks "those aspects of language and society that oppress women as well as construct empire" (Herz 41).
Contemporary postcolonial readings can be much more historicized than those of the fairly recent past. Yet certain topics remain: "the relationship between power and friendship and the interrogation of the capacity of language to represent these competing claims, these'conflicting urgencies' in the 'echoing, contradictory world'" (Herz 42). Especially after Forster's death in 1970, the discussion which has first shifted from the political to the metaphysical, now shifts back again and the essentially formalist interpretations of the novel in the 1960s giving way in the next two decades to more direct social and political concerns.
Among all the contemporary postcolonial critics on Forster and Passage, the most influential and representative figure is Benita Parry. In his Postcolonial Studies: A Materialist Critique (2004), he severely criticizes the discursive and textual tendency of present postcolonial studies. "With the arrival of modes where the analysis of the internal structures to texts, enunciations and sign systems had become detached from a concurrent examination of social and experiential circumstances, " Parry maintains, "the stage was set for the reign of theoretical tendencies which Edward Said has deplored for permitting intellectuals ' an astonishing sense of weightlessness with regard to the gravity of history'." (4) The peril of this current study is: "By deploying categories such as hybridity, mimicry, ambivalence [...] all of which laced colonized into colonising cultures, postcolonialism effectively became a reconciliatory rather than a critical, anti-colonialist category" (Postcolonial Studies 4).
Parry's Delusions and Discoveries: Studies on India in the British Imagination 1880-1930 (1972), which directly employs the postcolonial approach to interpret this novel, "provides essential contextual material for understanding the British presence in India and the fiction that derived from that encounter" (Herz 39). Interestingly, Parry carries out a"materialist critique" of postcolonial studies which constitutes a critique of the textualism that has dominated the field and proposes a historical and socio-material study.
Her article "Materiality and Mystification in A Passage to India" is a thorough and thought-provoking practice of her "materialist critique", surpassing its precedent postcolonial discussions on Passage. The focus of argument is the encounter of Western norm with the Indian differences, the conflict between their rational, logical epistemological and the mysterious "muddle" of India. The failure of rationality is best illustrated by the experiences of the caves. "On arriving at caves, the narrative encounters meanings, sensations and events that escape exegesis in its available language." (Parry, Postcolonial Studies 107) Parry also discusses "the sexualizing of race and the racializing of sexuality". Moreover, a detailed analysis of the characters helps to prove their perceptual failures. Benita Parry's discussion of its Orientalism in "The Politics of Representation in A Passage to India" is also an important document.
Jeremy Tambling's E. M. Forster (1995), a collection of critical essays, provides a comprehensive view of current interpretations of Passage. These papers widely discuss racial problems and the representation of different races.
1.1.3 Liberal-humanistic and Biographical Perspective
After the publication of Passage in 1924, the academia aroused a wave of liberal-humanistic and biographical study on the novel. Rose Macaulay, with her The Writings of E. M. Forster (1938), is the first who has analyzed Forster as a novelist of the liberal humanist tradition. Though Virginia Woolf greatly enjoys the new novel of Forster, she still thinks the novel "builds itself up, arch beyond arch, into something of strength, beauty, and also sadness" (Childs 8). In addition, she finds ambiguity in the novel, which is called"double vision" and taken as her key to the problem of Forster's fiction. The term implies both divided mind and fictional aims (Herz 36).
Though some critics see Passage as social comedy or novel of manners, in the early critical commentary, most agree that it is a penetrating criticism of Anglo-Indian colonial society, and the general aura around is dark and pessimistic. It casts doubt to the ability of the British and Indians to reconcile their differences, since the novel depicts the English and Indian communities which are fundamentally uncommunicative and incompatible. With the outbreak of the World War, most critics of this period reassess this novel in the light of immediate concerns. Therefore, they pay more attention to the pessimism of the novel.
The most influential critic of Forster's writings in the immediate post-war period is Lionel Trilling. It is his book E. M. Forster (1944) that lays the foundation for Forster's steadily rising reputation in the 1950s and 1960s. In the eyes of Trilling, "Forster is an exponent of moral realism, a stance of particular urgency in a world at war" (Herz 36). Although he, like most critics of that period, underlines the pessimism of its vision, and feels the "sense of separateness [that] broods over the book [...] [and] the cultural differences that keep Indian and Englishman apart" (Herz 36), he still believes that this novel is the most comfortable and even the most conventional of Forster's novels.
Moreover, Lionel Trilling reads the novel as about human predicaments, or human frustrations and troubles. It is seen as dealing with the complicated human relationships which are disappointing with so many misunderstandings, prejudices and even hatreds between the characters in imperial India. It means that the novel is to be read as dealing with human encounters with spiritual forces, with separation and unity, with the difficulties of friendship and understanding between men.
As some of the critics point out, the keynote of the novel is separation. "The theme of separateness, of fences and barriers, " Trilling concludes, "is [...] hugely expanded and everywhere dominant." (E. M. Forster 114) In all, despite all the pessimistic elements discerned in Passage, Trilling still sees Forster as a great spokesman for those liberal virtues of decency, tolerance and the principled private life for which America and Britain had fought fascism between 1939 and 1945. On the other hand, Trilling believes that Forster is always at odds with liberalism, even though he has the moral and liberal intent: "For all his long commitment to the doctrine of liberalism, Forster is at war with the liberal imagination." (E. M. Forster 8)
Another key word for Forster is personal relations, which is what he believes and cherishes all through his life. The word "connection" is centered upon the connection between sex and sex, race and race, culture and culture, even human and human. It can be seen that the word has a broad range of meaning. In The Novels of E. M. Forster, Virginia Woolf points out that "[h]is concern is with the private life; his message is addressed to the soul [...]. This belief that it is the private life that matters, that it is the soul that is eternal, runs through all his writing" (Wilde 46). Personal relations, expressed in another way, are the famous Forsterian motto "only connect" in Howards End (1910) uttered by the central character Margaret:
Only connect! That was the whole of her sermon. Only connect the prose and the passion, and both will be exalted, and human love will be seen at its highest. Live in fragments no longer. Only connect, and the beast and the monk, robbed of the isolation that is life to either, will die. (Forster, Howards End 183)
Critics of this field believe that Forster is looking for a harmonious human relationship in the novel. J. S. Herz and R. K. Martin insist in their E. M. Forster: Centenary Revaluations (1982) that the book is about "the search of the human race for a more lasting home" (134), which is a place full of harmonious and happy personal interrelationships.
After the war, with the publication of his Collected Short Stories in 1947, Two Cheers for Democracy in 1951 and The Hills of Devi in 1953, Forster gradually became the focus of greater critical attention. This reaction to his works grows in importance in the 1950s. Rex Warner argues that "undeveloped heart" of the middle-class, which is revealed in Two Cheers for Democracy, is one of the major themes of Passage. They are narrow-minded, hypocritical, unimaginative, repressive and philistine. He used his novel as a means to attack the weakness of these people.
For some critics, a biographical discussion of the confusing relationship between the characters of Aziz and Fielding, which reflects Forster's relationship with his Indian Friend Syed Ross Masood, and influence of Forster's two personal "passages" to India on this novel, always attracts their attention. Since Forster's death in 1970 there has been no waning of interest. The publication of a vivid biography, an edition of his letters, a major critical edition of his works and other academic and critical aids has given fresh impetus to the reassessment of his contribution. Among these are P. N. Furbank's massive E. M. Forster: A Life (1977—1978), John Colmer's E. M. Forster: The Personal Voice (1975), which can be taken as the representative trends in Forster criticism of that period, and Malcolm Bradbury's Macmillan casebook on the novel (1970), which collects much useful material including extracts from the interview Forster gave in 1952. John Colmer renders a systematic discussion in "Promise and Withdrawal in A Passage to India", stressing the contradictions in the British ruling class, in the tradition of British imperialism and between the British and Indian people. Edwin Thumboo stresses in "E. M. Forster's A Passage to India: From Caves to Court" the dynamic and changing aspects of the relationships charted in the novel.
1.1.4 Feminist Perspective
Researches on Passage were expanded in research scopes from the perspective of feminism since the 1970s. Under the scrutiny of feminism, the novel is connected with terms such as female identity, equality and marriage in academic articles. Some feminist critics try to investigate women's representation of the Orientalist text and the effect of this representation on producing different or complicit narratives of colonial relations. Gaytri Chakravorty Spivak and Chandra Talpade Mohanty's works are the most notable examples in this regard. Anne McClintock's Imperial Leather: Race, Gender and Sexuality in the Colonial Contest (1995) also works hard to incorporate women's experiences within colonial discourse.
Bonnie Finkelstein's Forster's Women: Eternal Differences (1975) is the first to raise feminist issues on Passage in a continuous way. She argues for Forster's intellectual sympathy with feminism and regards Fielding's marriage as aligning him with Mrs. Moore as a redemptive force. However, Elaine Showalter in an article named "A Passage to India as'Marriage Fiction': Forster's Sexual Politics" (1977) observes that Forster seems distrustful of marriage as an enforced tradition in which women become victims, particularly when they are subject to other repressions such as purdah and debates that the marriage is a betrayal both of Aziz and of the idea of interracial love as a solution to international conflicts. John Sayre Martin points out that Forster is a writer "who has puzzled, and perhaps continues to puzzle, discerning readers and critics" (1).
Meanwhile, a growing body of works attempt to deal with gender politics in colonial discourses from the perspectives of Queer theory and the different feminist schools turn to different gender and colonial politics. Joseph Bristow's Empire Boys: Adventure in a Man's World, and Effeminate England: Homoerotic Writing after 1885 analyzes the construction of masculinity in the literature of empire. Some critics begin to notice that Forster's handling of men's relationship in this novel has much to do with concealing its possible homoerotic origins. Queer Forster (1997) by Robert K. Martin is a collection of these criticisms. Benita Parry thinks that "the book's sexual and gender representations are implicated in colonial discourse, and are determinant in the novel's version of a colonial relationship" (Postcolonial Studies 163). Jenny Sharpe discovers the racial significance of rape in the novel and requires that it be read "according to the narrative demands of the Mutiny reports", where"'a discourse of rape' was used in the management of anti-colonial rebellion" (221-243). In Brenda Silver's understanding, the novel's use of sexuality within a discourse of power makes it possible to understand that to be rapable is ' a social position ' cutting across"biological and racial lines" (88). In discussing the novel's attempt to transform colonial sexuality into 'a homoeroticization of race', Sara Suleri argues that this transformation of an imperial erotic revises "the colonialist-as-heterosexual-paradigm", presenting instead an alternative colonial model in which "the most urgent cross-cultural invitations occur between male and male, with racial difference serving as a substitute for gender" (139). More generally, Parminder Bakshi in the article "Homosexuality and Orientalism: Edward Carpenter's Journey to the East" places the novel within a narrative mode of an Orientalism filled with homoerotic desire. In The Ruling Passion: British Colonial Allegory and the Paradox of Homosexual Desire, Christopher Lane believes that Forster transposes the problem of homosexuality onto race and colonialism, the shift in locale from England to colonial India alleviating his difficulty in writing about same-sex relationships at home. Joseph Bristow feels that for Forster "the desire for connection" between colonial rulers and subaltern peoples is"indissociable from fantasies of dominative violence" (140).
1.1.5 Psychological Perspective
Psychology is also an important branch of Passage study both at home and abroad. Since the 1960s, under the influence of the development of psychological criticism and archetypal criticism, some critics began to interpret Passage based on these two terms. Among all the psychological reading on the novel, Wilfred Stone's The Cave and the Mountain (1966) is one of the most outstanding books. It borrows Jungian archetype theory and treats the caves as part of the collective unconsciousness. This Jungian analysis takes as its controversial premise that the novels are "dramatic installments in the story of [Forster's] struggle for selfhood" (Stone, The Cave and the Mountain 212). In his article "The Caves of A Passage to India", Stone uses Freudian notion of unconscious to interpret the mystery of the caves and the echo. He suggests the readers turn to psychology instead of religion for an explanation of the caves and their echoes. "In Hindu mythology, " Stone believes, "the caves represent the 'womb of the universe', from which, by some miracle of androgynous fertilisation, emanated all the forms of created life. [...] There are many varieties of the myth, but basic to them all is the identification of caves with some primordial, prehistoric nothingness from which life emerged." ("The Caves of A Passage to India" 20) The equivalent notion for Freud is"unconscious", which locates below the conscious mind as the storehouse of all that is repressed by the "superego" or neglected by the conscious mind. The panic that Adela and Mrs. Moore experience is "the unconscious breaking into the conscious mind, and for one not accustomed to such visitations it can seem——as it did for Adela——like a rape of the personality"; while for Mrs. Moore, it is "a virtual abdication of the moral sense" (Stone, "The Caves of A Passage to India" 21 - 22). Furthermore, the caves represent the unconscious in two senses: "the repressed elements in the individual life and the survivals in modern man of the pre-historic and the pre-human, those elements that Freud termed the id". This is the state of "nothing", a condition of no distinction, which for a logical and reasonable mind like that of Adela, is "terrifying", because "to lower one's guard before the primal forces of the unconscious is, to one trained in repression, nothing less than an abdication of all culture and a return to something like savagery". Consequently, the caves become the "echo chamber" and those echoes are "emanations from the unconscious of mankind" (22).
James McConkey appreciates Wilfred Stone's analysis, but he is not "wholly satisfied with the statement about proportion or the Jungian emphasis", even though "Jung provides a method of building a bridge between seen and unseen [...] and Forster, though apparently he did not read Jung, does stress in the final novel as never before the crucial role of the unconscious powers" (487-488). McConkey believes that love is the central task to Passage and that is partially the reason why the critics turn to the unconscious mind. Furthermore, McConkey judges that reason has already led the Westerns to the "spiritual impasses" but he doubts if Jung "carries us quite to an awareness of love which can only come when all else is renounced, including reason" (488). In fact, McConkey's The Novels of E. M. Forster reveals why he does not quite appreciate psychological orientation of Passage criticism. As one premise of his argument, he adopts G. Lowes Dickinson's term of "double vision", a sense of "this world, and a world or worlds behind" (McConkey 1971: 3). Therefore, his focus is on how "the transcendent realm consistently affects and colors the physical realm"and on the "dissociation between the character and his universe, between the individual in a seemingly chaotic, temporal world and the unifying, eternal reality" (1971: 3). His perspective is transcendental, philosophical and religious, expanding to the void world and universe, rather than probing into the human psyche, the world within.
John Colmer, though not purely a psychological critic, also provides some insights to the understanding of Passage in this respect in his monograph E. M. Forster: The Personal Voice (1975). In the section concerning Passage, Colmer analyzes the tripartite structure of the novel, the dialogue and voice, and especially the "subtle characterization", in which the psychological analysis is carried out. The epitome is, of course, the cave experience. Even early from the rude behavior of Ronny is Adela fully conscious of the faults of her fiancé: "self-complacency", "censoriousness", "lack of subtlety", etc. Consequently, Adela decides that they will not get married. However, the following "animal thrill" that happens between them in the Nawab Bahadur's car draws them back out of some awakening of their dormant physical desire. Adela is a sensitive, but rational and logical Western girl and has always been suppressing the irrational phenomena:
In her conscious mind Aziz comes to represent India; in her unconscious he becomes associated with the unknown that she represses. All the fears, frustrations and disappointments that she connects with an abstraction, India, become attached to a person: hence her delusion that Aziz has attacked her in the cave. (Colmer, E. M. Forster 162)
David W. Elliott's MA dissertation, "A Psychological Literary Critique from a Jungian Perspective of E. M. Forster's A Passage to India" (2005), is one of the most often quoted documents, which adopts the Jungian analytical psychology, especially the notion of collective unconscious and explores the psychological implications of the text in relation to the novel's characters. The dissertation is rich with materials including the psychological analysis of the characters, the biological records related to Forster, particularly his homosexuality, an interpretation of Marabar caves experience and the echo. Different from other critics, Elliott identifies Mrs. Moore as the "effective protagonist" of the literary text, which is "the character that can best be defined as the primary carrier of the author's unconscious personality" (13). Furthermore, he adopts the archetypal images Jung terms "anima /animus" at a deeper level of the unconscious as the analytical tool. The whole paper evolves around the centrality of the Marabar caves in the novel. As for Adela, it is via the caves that she achieves her growth into personhood; and it is also via the caves that Mrs. Moore realizes her growth toward wholeness.
Another study of Passage with Jungian collective unconscious and symbolism is a PhD dissertation "An Archetypal Analysis of E. M. Forster's Fiction" (2004) by Cumhur Yilmaz Madran of Middle East Technical University, Turkey. Madran's analysis focuses on Forster's use of myth, mythical images and archetypal patterns in his works. The analytical tool is archetypal criticism, dealing with different primordial symbols and images emanating from a collective conscious. This study argues that "Forster progresses from fantasy to prophecy. Depending on this progress, Forster's archetypes evolve. This investigation familiarises the reader with how mythical motifs and archetypes enable the author to communicate his vision of reality, which is essentially timeless" (Ⅴ).
Alison Sainsbury's "'Not Yet ... Not There': Breaking the Bonds of Marriage in E. M. Forster's A Passage to India" is not a psychological criticism in the strict sense; however, it stresses the central role of the marriage between Adela and Ronny in the whole story on the basis of the feminization of India, with an subtle adoption of Freudian theory of symbolism. Lionel Trilling compares the Marabar caves to "the womb and a promise of life". Sainsbury follows Lionel Trilling's characterization of the caves as "wombs": "a circular chamber" is reached via a "tunnel" which is "dark", for "very little light penetrates down the entrance tunnel into the circular chamber" (64-65); it is part of a female body with "fists, fingers, knees——and reproductive capacity".（注：Alison Sainsbury points out that besides Trilling, some other critics also see the novel as "primarily spiritual intent" and the caves as central, including Jo Ann Moran, "E. M. Forster's A Passage to India: What Really Happened in the Cave", Modern Fiction Studies 34 (1988): 596-604; or V. A. Shahane, "Mrs. Moore's Experience in the Marabar Caves: A Zen Buddhist Reading", Twentieth Century Literature 31 (1985): 279-286.）Sainsbury believes that the geographical structure in place of political one, the spirituality over politics, or the displacement of historical relations onto the mystical one "escape the limitations imposed on friendships by political relationships", therefore, "British rule in the historical world governed by historical relations is left unchallenged" (71).
1.1.6 Aesthetic, Technical, Structural and Linguistic Perspectives
Besides the liberal-humanistic, political, postcolonial, feminist analysis, the later study of Passage has taken into account the emergent critical trends and begun to notice the narrative techniques used in it as well including the rhythm, symbols, ironies, space and sequence, structure, etc.
The first important post-war technical reading of Forster's Passage was E. K. Brown's Rhythm in the Novel (1950), which analyzes Forster's artistic features. "His study relied heavily on Forster's Aspects of the Novel in its methodology, treating A Passage to India as a prophetic novel with particular emphasis given to the rhythmic interweaving of its themes" (Herz 37). Brown classifies Forster into the group of modernist writers who expresses his ideas more through repetitions, images and analogies than characters or plot itself. This symbolizes the critical turn to the writing techniques of Passage. One year later, Reuben A. Brown's "The Twilight of the Double Vision: Symbol and Irony in A Passage to India" (1951) discusses the main symbols in the novel: Mosque, Caves and Temple.
Barbara Rosecrance's Forster's Narrative Vision (1982) narrowly focuses on voice and points of view in narrative terms and develops her argument around a controlling narrative voice that is more pervasive in Passage than in Forster's earlier novels. Barbara Rosecrance also published A Passage to India: The Dominant Voice from a similar perspective. A book that deals with the same issue with Rosecrance is Bette London's The Appropriated Voice:Narrative Authority in Conrad, Foster, and Woolf (1990), which discovers that rather than using an omniscient narrator with a distinctive voice, Forster creates a voice that, in London's reading, "takes its timbre whatever voice it is near" (London 86). Barbara Hardy stresses"the symbolist nature of Forster's aesthetic" (Prakash 7). Other articles touching upon related issues are Reuben Brown's "The Twilight of the Double Vision: Symbol and Irony in A Passage to India", Batt Londan's "The Unique Voice of Conrad, Forster and Woolf 's Narrative Authority". Judith Scherer Herz's "A Passage to India: Nation and Narration", which focuses the critical point on the narration and language of this novel, and Lakshmi Prakash's "Symbolism in the Novels of E. M. Forster", which analyzes the use of symbolism in Forster's novels.
Some critics pay more attention to its images and symbols in the novel. Frederic McDowell's E. M. Forster (1969) discusses the ironic comedy in the novel, and also refers to images and symbols and to the possibility of a Hindu synthesis. Furthermore, in his The Achievement of E. M. Forster (1962), John Beer places Forster in a romantic and symbolist tradition, emphasizing the importance of Mrs. Moore. Glen O. Allen's "Structure, Symbol and Theme in E. M. Forster's A Passage to India" (1955) makes an attempt to explore the Hindu theme and identify the symbolic three parts of the novel with the Hindu attitude to life and doctrine of salvation. Frank Kermode's "The One Orderly Product (E. M. Forster)" (1962) also makes discussion on the significance of symbol in Passage.
Some critics pay attention to the narrative techniques employed in the novel. In "The Communal Ritual and the Dying God in A Passage to India", Ellin Horowitz recognizes the significant pattern of the narrative configuration of the novel: the three parts of this novel correspond to the three seasons of an Indian year, which in turn correspond to three religions in the world and reflect a cyclical structure: death-rebirth. In her critical essay "Confabulation in A Passage to India" (1987) in Criticism, Francesca Kazan deals with the dynamic relationship between space and sequence.
Another influential method is to adopt stylistics which studies language in literature. The best representative is R. A. Buck who studies Passage and Forster's other novels by employing linguistic theories, in particular politeness theory, to uncover racial conflicts.
Finally, some critical articles carry out structural analysis. Prakah Lakshmi's study of Forster, for instance, mentions the concepts of pattern and rhythm. Claude Summers also refers to rhythm, and Rukun Advani discusses rhythm and pattern in some details. In the chapter of "Forster's View of the Novel", Advani believes that "the notion that musical rhythm is something spiritual which transcends an aesthetic pattern is important for an understanding of 'pattern' and 'rhythm' in Aspects of the Novel" (12).
All the studies of the application of the techniques in the novel as illustrated above, such as rhythm, image, symbolism, space and sequence, structure, etc. arrive at the similar conclusion that these techniques elevate Passage to a higher aesthetic realm.
1.1.7 Other Perspectives
Jeremy Tambling's E. M. Forster: Contemporary Critical Essays (1995), a collection of critical essays, is the representative of modern achievement on Passage providing a comprehensive view of current interpretations of the novel.
Recently, with the critics' increasing interest in cultural geography, they begin to apply the theory to study the landscapes in literary works. The representative is Mike Crang and his Cultural Geography, which discusses the literary landscapes, the landscapes in the literary works. Therefore, cultural geography theory equips readers with a new approach of literary criticism, exploring the cultural meaning of places which embody ideological, cultural and political values, concerns and meanings. Crang holds that "[L]iterary landscape is a combination of literature and landscape. Literature offers way of looking at the world that shows a range of landscape of taste, experience and knowledge, social product" (134). With this new criticalcritics begin to study the cultural meaning of place in Passage.
Similarly, Todd Kuchta discusses the fall of the English imperialism in terms of the metropolitan life represented by the living surroundings of the English colonizers in the novel. In "Sight and Knowledge Disconnected: The Epistemology of the Visual and the Ideological Gaze in the Novel of E. M. Forster", Gail Fincham believes that the attempts both to draw back into a personal and private space, like Mrs. Moore's "cave of my own", or to open up a space of equality and reciprocity, like the polo field or Fielding's bungalow, are doomed to be temporary in Passage. In "The Architecture of Identity: E. M. Forster and the Use of Space", Amardeep Singh observes in "Reorienting Forster: Intimacy and Islamic Space" that the mosque is a semiprivate courtyard exuding democratic spirit that offers privacy and personal freedom. Peter S. Hill talks about the interconnection between place and identity in Forster's novels, pointing out that in Passage there are quite a few places where questions of culture, identity, and space appear, almost focusing on the general theme of India being formless while Europe is clear and orderly from an imperial gaze. In "Looking at E. M. Forster's Use of Nature in A Passage to India", Andrew Gilbert analyzes the cultural differences between the East and the West through Forster's use of nature in Passage.
1.2 Passage Criticism in China
Forsterian studies in China began in the 1980s with the translation of Aspects of the Novel and readers began to touch upon such literary terms as "round characters" and "flat characters". Later on, the translation of Where the Angel Fears to Tread by Chinese scholars Lin Lin and Xue Limin inaugurated a systematic introduction and research of the master in 1988. An essay entitled "The Twelve Years of Domestic Forsterian Studies" by Wang Guilian analyzes the 108 articles on Forster published from 1996 to 2007 and reveals the general trend and focuses of research. Wang argues that during the twelve years Forsterian studies in China became more and more popular: 3 articles per annum from 1996 to 2003 and 20 from 2004 to 2006. However, most of the journals published only one of the concerned articles, while two published more than three. Furthermore, there are 91 contributors for the 108 articles, among whom 13 published more than two and the time of publication focused on these recent two or three years. This means that scholars begin to pay more and more attention to Forster and his novels, but relatively few of them are persistently carrying out their Forsterian studies. The following table illustrates the areas of research, themes and its distribution.
The conclusion she draws is that, first of all, the scope of research is limited, focusing on an individual novel; secondly, there lacks a steady research team, for only three scholars published more than 5 concerning articles and only one monograph on Forster was published till 2005; thirdly, there lacks in-depth studies with the repetition of the plot or others' ideas. Recently, more and more new perspectives are introduced, like postcolonialism, ecology, feminism, etc., but the problem of superficiality remains; finally, the introduction of the current achievement abroad into China is not sufficient. So far as the novel of Passage is concerned, 15% of all the papers explore Forster's colonial mind and 13% discuss the notion of "connection" from the liberal perspective. Some others turn to symbolism, feminism and ecological thought in the novel (Wang 149). In the following years from 2008 till 2011, according to CNKI 25 articles, 35 MA dissertations and one PhD dissertation on Passage have been produced, which shows that the popularity of the novel among Chinese scholars are not fading.
Passage studies in China are usually carried out in the following forms: monographs or PhD dissertations, MA dissertations and journal contribution as discussed above. So far, there are five books or PhD dissertations published. The monographs are An Intertextual Reading of E. M. Forster's Novels (2002) by Li Jianbo, The Evolution of Cultural Identities: Studies on Forster's Novels and Thoughts (2003) by Tao Jiajun, A Narrative Interpretation of A Passage to India from Postmodern Perspective (2010) by Suo Yuhuan, and the PhD dissertations are English Writing on India: Taking the English Writers from 19th Century onwards (2006) by Yin Xinan and A Study of A Passage to India from the Perspective of Cultural Traveling Theory (2011) by Yang Shengming.
In An Intertextual Reading of E. M. Forster's Novels, Li Jianbo utilizes theories of intertexuality, which Li thinks "offer a great help in the analysis of E. M. Forster's novels [...]. To have a better understanding of Forster's novels, it is advisable to utilize the'structured network' built on intertexuality. The 'structured network' in my intertextual reading takes the forms of a reference frame of two axes, one horizontal, the other vertical" (1). Furthermore, Li also notices the political nature of Passage. "The intra-intertextual feature of A Passage to India again, " He maintains, "points to a self-regarding nature of the novel, though a novel mainly and ostentatiously about world politics" (3).
Zhang Zhongzai, a well-known Chinese scholar on English literature, thinks highly of Tao's work on Forster and holds that his The Evolution of Cultural Identities interprets the evolution of cultural identities in Forsterian art from the perspective of cultural criticism; he never follows the traditional norms of criticism, tries to reveal the culture and thoughts embodied in his novels at a deeper dialectical level, and finally discusses the relationship between the implicit political consciousness in the Forsterian liberal-humanistic connection and cultural hegemony held by the English middle-class and imperialists (Tao, "Preface" 1). Tao insists that, firstly, literature can never surpass a specific cultural background; secondly, a close reading tradition should be respected; thirdly, on the premise that Neo-Marxism (especially the cultural critical theories of Gramsci and Williams) is followed, Tao's research also borrows other critical theories to analyze the evolution of cultural identity, critiquing the limitations of Forsterian liberal-humanism; fourthly, his research covers such three levels as the liberal-humanistic tradition, postmodern and postcolonial critique, and the essentialist stance of relativism; finally, the notion of "evolution" is permeated through the whole research, indicating the power exchange embodied in cultural identity. The mixed cultural identity of Aziz and his postcolonial racial-national consciousness in the case of Passage is a focus of Tao.
A Narrative Interpretation of A Passage to India from Postmodern Perspective contributes a new method to Passage research. Suo Yuhuan explains in the Introduction that, "this book attempts to analyze and interpret A Passage to India by associating narrative techniques with politics, culture, religion and ethics, the modern context of narrative production with the postmodern context of narrative interpretation, narrative as a literary product with narrative as asocial construction" (6).
With a broad literary horizon and from a perspective of comparative literature, Yin Xinan analyzes nearly all the important writers on India in the 19th century in his English Writing on India: Taking the English Writers from 19th Century Onwards, including Forster's Passage in one section of Chapter Two. First of all, Yin adopts Greenberg's classification of English writing on India (1880—1960) into three periods: the period of confidence (1880—1910), the period of suspicion (1910—1935), to which Passage belongs, and the period of depression (1935—1960). Yin believes that the novel is a Forster's inner passage to India; he conducts a panoramic analysis including the history, the politics, the character features. Conspicuously, the author analyzes the significance of the caves from philosophical and religious perspectives, believing that the caves represent "Sunya" or "ether" (72).
In A Study of A Passage to India from the Perspective of Cultural Traveling Theory, Yang Shengming takes an analysis of the sources of the works which reflects a traveling theme, gives the definition of such related concepts as "tour" and "travel", and traces the relationship between the traveling theme and the Bible. The thesis also analyzes different characters like Mrs. Moore as a pessimistic traveler, Miss Quested as a positive modern tourist, and Forster's spiritual "passage" etc.
The second category is MA dissertations. According to CNKI database, from 2000 till 2011, there are about 60 MA dissertations on Passage, which also cover a variety of topics, including humanism, intercultural and interracial connection and communication (13), postcolonialism (16), feminism (4), aesthetics, symbolism and narrative techniques (8), identity (2), class (2), mystery and echo (2) and many others, such as psychology, ecology, religion, Bakhtinian dialogism, homosexuality, etc. (12). Strongly influenced by the western Forsterian studies, these MA dissertations are generally more disciplinary than innovative.
So far as this thesis is much concerned, there are two MA dissertations worth mentioning. One is Liu Lei's MA dissertation, "The Conflict Between Microscopic Social Relationships and Macroscopic Social Relationships——A New Perspective upon A Passage to India" (2008). The other is written by Guo Lin with the title of "Status Anxiety in A Passage to India". They will be discussed in details in Chapter 2.
1.3 Theoretical Framework of the Book
1.3.1 Origin
This book originates from, on the one hand, an urgent demand of the increasingly prevalent internalization of literature, and on the other, the awkwardly numbered branches of psychological criticism available to turn to in literary studies. In the history of literature, the internalization tendency of modern works is well acknowledged and the psychologization of part of literary criticism is consequently required; therefore, psychological criticism has become an indispensible weapon for the understanding and interpretation of literature. Theoretically speaking, the Western mainstream bourgeois psychology which enjoys a history of more than a century could possibly have been a warehouse of rich material for literary study; however, in the history of Western literary theory only the branch of Freudian psychoanalysis, through Jungian analytical psychology down to Lacanian psychoanalysis is available. This branch, though highly influential, has its apparent limitations. Firstly, it is featured with master-apprentice relation in person or inheritance relation in theory. Secondly, it is unfortunately stripped of its connection to reality. Thirdly, it notoriously attempts to represent the psychology of de-historicized individuals chiefly with an eye to the able-bodied middle-class white males (Billig 19). What makes the situation even critical is the textualization and discoursalization trend of literary theory (including psychological branch), which originates from Structuralism in accordance with the linguistic turn around the 1960s and from Poststructuralism in the 1970s. Here arises the question: Where is the "Universe"within Harold Bloom's four elements of literature? Why does the real material world disappear from interpretive activities? How can we retrieve the practical human world and make it endowed again with value and meaning?
Fortunately, the poststructuralist Michel Foucault shows us how power functions in discourse. Moreover, during the 1970s and 1980s, the "Cultural Turn" sweeps the academia and brings with it a shift in emphasis toward value and away from a positivist epistemology; Edward Said endeavors to deconstruct the text-centrism of poststructuralism and reestablishes the priority of materiality, history and most importantly, politics; Social Constructionism flourishes and Marxism revives. The list can go on, but all in all, the "universe" recurs and contextualization, historicalization and politicalization is being de-marginalized and highlighted.
So far as psychology is concerned, its grafting with politics, society, history and culture is revolutionary. Critical psychology, which is the focus of this book, is constructed on the basis of the critique of traditional Western Psychology which attaches sole importance to scientificity and objectivism with positivist and quantitative methods. Obviously, the contribution of Scientific Psychology to human knowledge is conspicuous; however, an individual psyche can be classified into the biological level (lower level) and humanistic level (higher level). The discoveries of the Stimulus-Response (S-R) Model out of the test white mice are suitable for human beings, not vice versa on the human cultural and political relationship level. Furthermore, the objective of positivist and quantitative methods in the name of scientificity and objectivism is simply "universalism", which, as a kind of "grand narrative", strictly controls the experimental conditions and causation relationship, and at the same time wipes out the essential differences of subjects' sexes, races, classes, etc. Consequently, any deviations from the ideal results are willingly taken as exceptions by the experimenters.
On critiquing such a pseudoscience emerges Critical Psychology in the 1960s whose forefather is Klaus Holzkamp, the critical psychologist on whom this book is founded. Critical Psychology severely attacks the Western mainstream bourgeois psychology, arguing that the pseudoscientificity aims to maintain the status quo both of knowledge and the rule of the patriarchal bourgeois white androcentrism. Freudianism, for example, advocates that physiology determines fate and in essence its undercurrent is biological determinism, pansexualism, patriarchy and middle-class white male superiority, which, no wonder, is vociferously criticized by both women and third-world people.
1.3.2 Aim
From the above-mentioned critical survey, on the one hand, we clearly see different "aspects of the novel" since its publication till now; on the other hand, through the meticulous collection, classification and analysis of the existing documents, the immanent weakness of certain literary theories or analytical methods adopted by the critics and it opens up new space for a future interpretation. Roughly, all the strands of Passage criticism fall into two opposite camps: nonscientific and scientific. Generally speaking, political and postcolonial criticism, the liberal-humanistic and biographical study, and feminist study belong to the former, while psychological criticism, aesthetic, technical, structural and linguistic analysis belong to the latter. So far as the present research is concerned, the existing psychological studies are dominated by Freudian and Jungian approaches (with two MA dissertations using Existentialist Psychology and Topological Psychology respectively as added pleasure), which also boast of the scientificity of their methodologies.
This book, on the basis of the critique of the psychological criticism (including Freudian and Jungian psychoanalytical criticism, with a passing mention of Existentialist Psychology and Topological Psychology) on Passage, aims to problemize the current Psychoanalysis and Analytical Psychology as the dominant literary analytical tools and extend the critique onto Western mainstream bourgeois psychologies; consequently to establish critical psychology (especially Klaus Holzkamp's German Critical Psychology), which gives priority to politics, as a substitutive literary theory and naturally psychopolitical reading, which intends to realize the trinity of psychology, politics and texts, as its methodology; and finally to make the theory and methodology contextualized and put them into concrete analysis of Passage from such perspectives as race and gender.
1.3.3 Argument
The argument in this book is that the ahistorical, asocial, acultural and apolitical Freudian and Jungian interpretations of the sample literary text of Passage fail to explore the"real" material world neither of the Indians nor of the Anglo-Indians, fail to notice the power and violence functioning either visibly or invisibly within the interrelationships among the main characters, and fail to survive the traps of universality and grand narratives of the traditional Western mainstream bourgeois psychologies; while critical psychology, which is based on a dialectical and historical materialism, as a new paradigm with its essential psychopolitical reading method probes the textual surface of Passage from both racial and feminist perspectives into the psyche of the main characters, showing that, on the one hand, all the characters are psychologically tinged with politics, and on the other hand, in different forms, they reinforce their rule or resist the hegemony in a psychological way, which proves that critical psychology is a well-established new paradigm of literary theory and psychopolitical reading is an effective method of literary analysis.
1.3.4 Methodology
Critical psychology champions politics. First of all, at the disciplinary level, it is vehemently critical of Western psychology as illustrated above. Secondly, at the theoretical level, Holzkamp carries out a categorial revolution, creating such fundamental categories as"meaning structure" "subjective ground for action" "action potence" "restrictive action potence" and "general action potence", etc. Thirdly, at the political level, Holzkamp believes that people under the regime of capitalist society can change and improve their subjective quality of life beyond the "allowed" limits, regardless of the conflict with the powers and the threat to the existing level of action potence. It is just where the revolutionary significance lies.
The disadvantages and advantages of the critical psychology for its grafting with literary theory coexist. As for the disadvantages, first of all, critical psychology has widely varied and become an umbrella term; secondly, as a pure psychological branch, it is more political and critical than practical and constructive for concrete analysis of literary texts. The solution to the former is, for the present research, to focus on Claus Holzkamp, the founding father of critical psychology, and his theory; for the latter, is to contextualize his theory from two perspectives of race and gender and thus extend the theory to a postcolonial critical psychology and critical feminist psychology; furthermore, under the guidance of critical psychology, the holy trinity of psychology, politics and literary text requires a brand-new methodology——psychopolitical reading, which to critical psychology is like close reading to New Criticism.
Vicky Lebeau discusses Frantz Fanon in terms of "psychopolitics", which, according to Derek Hook, builds on McCulloch's conceptualization. Here a literary adaption and transformation of the notion of "psychopolitics" into "psychopolitical reading" is possible, which prescribes the interpretive activity as "a to- and fro- movement, whereby the political is continually brought into the register of the psychological, and the psychological into the political". To be more specific, this two-way movement is "a means of stressing on the one hand the political nature of the psychological and on the other hand emphasizing how power is conducted psychologically" (Hook, A Critical Psychology of the Postcolonial 17). This idea provides us with "a useful frame work to understand the implicit ' psychology of critique' ..." Such a politicization can take at least three related forms:
Firstly, it may refer to the critical process whereby we place a series of ostensibly private psychological concerns within the register of the political. We are thereby able to show up the extent to which human psychology is intimately linked to, conditioned by, the socio-political and historical forces of its situation ... Secondly, such a politicization may refer to the critical process whereby psychological concepts, explanations and even modes of experience are employed to describe and illustrate the workings of power ... The critical hope here is that by being able to analyse the political in such a way, one might be able to think strategically about how best to intervene within the "psychic life of colonial power". Lastly, extending this idea, one might suggest that we can put certain forms of psychology to actual political work, that we can use both the concepts and understandings of psychology, and the actual terms of psychological experience, as a means of consolidating resistances to power. (Hook, A Critical Psychology of the Postcolonial 18)
Then why E. M. Forster's Passage, and only this Passage, comes into the horizon of the present research? The importance and significance of Passage is never over-exaggerated, because it is not only Forster's "best-known and most widely read novel" (Lionel Trilling), but also one under the scrutiny of a wide range of literary theories——it is a real touchstone. Criticism of masterpiece invariably reflects prevailing critical fashions. Moreover, in order to make the theory illustration and interpretation practice more focused, this book chooses Passage as the sample text, just like F. Scott Fitzgerald's The Great Gatsby for Louis Tyson's Critical Theory Today.
A psychopolitical reading of Passage reveals the "epistemological violence" of Adela Quested, which is one of the main causes of her mental collapse in the Marabar caves. Furthermore, the same reading from the perspective of race witnesses the rise of Aziz's "black consciousness" and the development of his "psychology of resistance". A psychopolitical reading from the female voices illustrates how Adela single-handedly deconstructs the well-woven plan of conquest by her Anglo-Indian compatriots. These readings show the anatomies of Passage by the two-way method of psychopolitical reading.
1.3.5 Structure
This book consists of five Chapters.
Chapter 1, the Introduction, provides a detailed literature view of Passage from different perspectives from both home and abroad, including political and postcolonial criticism, the liberal-humanistic and biographical study, feminism, psychological criticism, aesthetic, technical, structural and linguistic analysis, etc. After a summary of the critical survey, this part introduces the topic, and illustrates the book's origin, aim, argument, methods and structure.
Chapter 2 begins with a critique of some of the existing psychological criticism of Passage and then extends the critique to psychoanalysis as a whole and finally to the traditional Western mainstream psychology.
Chapter 3 introduces critical psychology and the status quo and transforms this branch of psychology, especially Claus Holzkamp's theory, into a new paradigm for literary theory. Furthermore, psychopolitical reading as a method of literary criticism follows the illustration of critical psychology as a theory. The relation between them is like close reading to New Criticism, unconscious study to Freudianism, and archetype to Jungian Analytical Psychology. At the end of the chapter, a sample analysis of Adela's "epistemological violence" is provided.
Chapter 4 provides two sample analyses from both the perspectives of race and gender, practicing critical psychology theory and psychopolitical reading, discussing Passage from the perspective of postcolonial critical psychology and critical feminist psychology, for the reason that critical psychology as a literary theory rather than just a branch of psychology requires the contextualization of analysis.
The last part is Chapter 5 Conclusion, which summarizes critical psychology and psychopolitical reading as a new paradigm for literary theory and an analytical tool and points out the space of the further theoretical development.