Author | Paul Scott |
---|---|
Country | United Kingdom |
Language | English |
Genre | Historical novel |
Publisher | Heinemann |
Publication date | July 1966 |
Media type | Print (Hardback & Paperback) |
Pages | 464 p. |
ISBN | 0-434-68105-9 |
OCLC | 13833684 |
Followed by | The Day of the Scorpion |
The Jewel in the Crown is a 1966 novel by Paul Scott that begins his Raj Quartet . The four-volume novel sequence of the Quartet is set during the final days of the British Raj in India during the Second World War. The novel is written in the form of interviews and reports of conversations or research and other portions are in the form of letters (epistolary form) or diary entries. The novel focuses on the triangle of an English woman, an Indian man, and a British police superintendent, setting up the events of subsequent novels in the series. It is considered Scott's "major work." The title itself, which is also an expression for something most valuable, refers to the fact that India was considered to be the most valuable possession of the British Empire. The plot has direct similarities to the novel A Passage to India by E.M. Forster published in 1924.
Much of the novel is written in the form of interviews and reports of conversations and research from the point of view of a narrator. Other portions are in the form of letters from one character to another or entries in their diaries. Still others take the form of reports from an omniscient observer.
The story is set in 1942 in Mayapore, a fictional city in an unnamed province of British India. The province, which is located in northern India, shares characteristics with Punjab and the United Provinces. The names of places and people suggest a connection to Bengal, for example Mayapore is similar to Mayapur in West Bengal; however, the physical characteristics place the setting in north-central India, rather than in northeast India. The province has an agricultural plain and, in the north, a mountainous region. Dibrapur is a smaller town about 75 miles away.
Mayapore, although not the capital of the province, is a relatively large city, with a significant British presence in the cantonment area, where native Indians are not permitted to live. Across the rail lines lies the “black town,” where the native population resides. There is also a Eurasian Quarter, the residence of the mixed-race (Anglo-Indian) population of the city.
Daphne Manners, who has lost her immediate family in England, comes to India to live with her only remaining family member, Lady Manners. Lady Manners sends her to Mayapore to stay with her Indian friend, Lady Chatterjee.
While staying with Lady Chatterjee, whom she calls "Auntie Lili," Daphne meets Hari Kumar. He is an Indian who was brought up in England and educated at Chillingborough, a public school that Daphne's own brother attended. Hari speaks only English, but his father's financial collapse and suicide obliged Hari to return to India. Daphne learns to despise the attitudes of the English in India and also grows to love Hari.
Subsequent to Kumar's arrest and Daphne's association with him, the local police superintendent, Ronald Merrick, becomes infatuated with Daphne. Merrick, of lower-middle-class English origin, is resentful of the privileged English "public school" class and contemptuous of Indians. Hari thus represents everything that Merrick hates.
After Daphne and Hari make love in a public park, the Bibighar Gardens, they are attacked by a mob of rioters who by chance witnessed their lovemaking. Hari is beaten and Daphne is raped repeatedly. Knowing that Hari will be implicated in her rape, Daphne swears him to silence regarding his presence at the scene. But she does not count on the instincts of Ronald Merrick, who, upon learning of the rape, immediately takes Hari into custody and engages in a lengthy and sadistic interrogation that includes sexual humiliation. Merrick also arrests a group of educated young Indians, including some of Hari's colleagues at the Mayapore Gazette.
Daphne steadfastly refuses to support the prosecution of Hari and the others for rape. She insists that her attackers were peasants and included at least one Muslim (although she was blindfolded, she could tell he was circumcised) and could not be young, educated Hindus like Hari and his acquaintances who have been taken into custody. The inquest is frustrated when Daphne threatens to testify that, for all she knows, her attackers could have been Englishmen.
Hari puzzles the authorities by refusing to say anything, even in his own defence (he has been sworn to secrecy by Daphne, and he honours that pledge to the letter). Because the authorities cannot successfully prosecute him for rape, they instead imprison him under a wartime law as a suspected revolutionary. And Daphne's refusal to aid a prosecution for rape leads to her being reviled and ostracized by the British community of Mayapore and of British India as a whole, where her case has become a cause célèbre.
Unknown to Hari, Daphne is pregnant; the child's paternity is impossible to determine, but she considers the child to be Hari's. She returns to her aunt, Lady Manners, to give birth, but a pre-existing medical condition results in her death. Lady Manners takes the child, Parvati, to Kashmir. Parvati's physical resemblance to Hari satisfies Lady Manners and Lady Chatterjee that Hari was her biological father.
A 1966 book review in Kirkus Reviews called the novel "a slow-moving one, filled with a tremendous number of ideas, views, speculations imposed in an attempt to convey the contradictions between not only England and India, but within India itself, a cosmos in which there are many circles within circles, mystical, social, political." The review summarized, "It is certainly Paul Scott's major work and it has already been established that he is a thoughtful and tasteful writer, even though he has never achieved the readership some of his books have deserved and many of the reviewers have indicated." [1] In a 2017 article in The New York Times , Isaac Chotiner called Scott's achievement "was to tell this story largely from the British point of view, and to do so not merely without illusions, but with astonishing acuity and grace." [2]
Parvati, Uma or Gauri is the Hindu goddess of power, energy, nourishment, harmony, love, beauty, devotion, and motherhood. In her complete form, she is a physical representation of Mahadevi, also known as Adi Shakti, the primordial power behind the creation of the universe, the creator and destroyer. She is one of the central deities of the goddess-oriented sect called Shaktism, and the chief goddess in Shaivism. Along with Lakshmi and Saraswati, she forms the Tridevi.
The Jewel in the Crown is a 1984 British television serial about the final days of the British Raj in India during and after World War II, based upon the Raj Quartet novels (1965–1975) by British author Paul Scott. Granada Television produced the series for the ITV network.
Bankim Chandra Chatterjee CIE was an Indian novelist, poet, Essayist and journalist. He was the author of the 1882 Bengali language novel Anandamath, which is one of the landmarks of modern Bengali and Indian literature. He was the composer of Vande Mataram, written in highly sanskritized Bengali, personifying Bengal as a mother goddess and inspiring activists during the Indian Independence Movement. Chattopadhayay wrote fourteen novels and many serious, serio-comic, satirical, scientific and critical treatises in Bengali. He is known as Sahitya Samrat in Bengali.
Paul Mark Scott was an English novelist best known for his tetralogy The Raj Quartet. In the last years of his life, his novel Staying On won the Booker Prize (1977). The series of books was dramatised by Granada Television during the 1980s and won Scott the public and critical acclaim that he had not received during his lifetime.
Susan Wooldridge is a British actress. She won the BAFTA Award for Best Actress in a Supporting Role for Hope and Glory (1987). Her television credits include Jewel in the Crown, (1984), All Quiet on the Preston Front (1994–95), and Twenty Thousand Streets Under the Sky (2005).
The Raj Quartet is a four-volume novel sequence, written by Paul Scott, about the concluding years of the British Raj in India. The series was written during the period 1965–75. The Times called it "one of the most important landmarks of post-war fiction."
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The Day of the Scorpion is a 1968 novel by Paul Scott, the second in his Raj Quartet. It is set in India during World War II as the influence of the British erodes. The novel focuses on old Raj family, the Laytons, the aftermath of the Mayapore incident focused on in The Jewel in the Crown, the Indian politician Mohammed Ali Kasim, and events in the princely state of Mirat.
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The Towers of Silence is the 1971 novel by Paul Scott that continues his Raj Quartet. It gets its title from the Parsi Towers of Silence where the bodies of the dead are left to be picked clean by vultures. The novel is set in the British Raj of 1940s India. It follows on from the storyline in The Day of the Scorpion.
A Division of the Spoils is the 1975 novel by Paul Scott. It is the fourth and final book of his Raj Quartet. The novel is set in the British Raj. It follows on from the storyline in The Jewel in the Crown, The Day of the Scorpion, and The Towers of Silence. Many of the events are retellings from different points of view of events that happened in the previous novels.
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Grahan is a 2001 film directed by Shashilal K. Nair, starring Jackie Shroff, Manisha Koirala and Raghuvaran. The film follows the story of Parvati, a rape victim who quests for justice, and learns that it is not such a simple task.
Nishchaiy is a 1992 Indian Hindi-language film directed by Esmayeel Shroff and released in 1992. The film stars Vinod Khanna, Salman Khan, Karisma Kapoor.
Maud Diver was an English author in British India who wrote novels, short stories, biographies and journalistic pieces primarily on Indian topics and Englishmen in India.
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