Esmond in India by Ruth Prawer Jhabvala

First published: 1958

Type of work: Social chronicle

Time of work: c. 1957

Locale: New Delhi, India

Principal Characters:

• Har Dayal, a rich government official
• Madhuri, his spoiled and assertive wife
• Shakuntala, their wayward teenage daughter
• Ram Nath, Har Dayal’s old friend, who is now relatively poor
• Lakshmi, Ram Nath’s wife
• Uma, Ram Nath’s sister, who was widowed in the struggle for independence
• Gulab, Ram Nath’s daughter
• Esmond Stillwood, the husband of Gulab and lover of Shakuntala

The Novel

Esmond in India is a novel of maneuver and misunderstanding. At its center is the traditional adulterous triangle of a man, Esmond Stillwood, and two women, his wife, Gulab, and the younger Shakuntala, with whom, late in the novel, he begins an affair. Yet in ironic reversal of novelistic convention, these romantic or sexual relationships are completely dwarfed in interest and importance by the subtler domestic struggles going on around them. Gulab never finds out about Shakuntala, and, though Gulab does leave Esmond and return to her family, this has nothing to do with her feelings about him, and everything to do with the long and vocal campaign conducted all through the novel by her Aunt Uma to get her, and especially her child Ravi, to come home to Indian food, Indian manners, and her Indian ties of blood. Similarly, Shakuntala’s family never find out about Esmond, or even suspect such a possibility, concerned as they are about making a prosperous marriage for her, which will above all defeat the feared and dangerous prospect of Shakuntala’s deciding to marry Gulab’s brother Narayan, a qualified doctor but one who shows no ambition toward using his qualifications to make money.

The real events in the novel, as one can see already, are almost hidden by a cloud of hopes, fears, and possibilities, few or none of which eventuate. The general anxiety which fills the novel is, moreover, generated and fueled by events in the past, both personal and political, which everyone remembers but no one is eager to mention. At the root of the whole confusion lies the changed relationship of Ram Nath and Har Dayal, the two fathers. Both were once of similar status, rich, Cambridge-educated, full of potential, with Ram Nath the elder and guiding spirit. This relationship, however, has, by the time of the novel, been reversed: Har Dayal is rich, Ram Nath relatively poor (though still supported by portions of his former property). The change seems to have been caused by Ram Nath’s greater efforts in the cause of independence, or Swaraj. He has been jailed by the British and has had a brother-in-law die on hunger strike. Yet, ironically, once Swaraj is achieved, Ram Nath, who might have expected a major post in the government for which he has fought, does not get it or, perhaps, refuses it-this matter is never made clear-while Har Dayal, who has stayed safely on the sidelines, rises to wealth and power. The two men remain friends, with Ram Nath polite but Har Dayal deferential, embarrassed, and even feeling guilty. Their wives and female relations think differently, however, resenting or despising each other.

The scene is therefore set for a major confrontation when Ram Nath’s wife, Lakshmi, decides (supported by her much more formidable sister-in-law Uma) that Shakuntala would make a good wife for her son Narayan when he emerges from his poor rural practice. Ram Nath’s family believe that they are socially equal and morally superior to Har Dayal’s. Har Dayal’s family (wife, son, and daughter-in-law combined) believe that there is no social equality at all, and their resentment is compounded by a tinge of uneasy guilt. The whole matter is exacerbated by the memory of an event some five years before, when the families were not so clearly heading in different directions and when an agreement to marry Har Dayal’s son Amrit to Ram Nath’s daughter Gulab was broken by Gulab’s marriage to the Englishman Esmond. One side sees this as a misfortune, to be repaired by a new marriage, the other as an unforgivable insult.

In this extremely complex social setting, it is not surprising that almost all the characters contrive to misunderstand one another. Shakuntala’s youthful idealism, very soon identified by the reader as naive and shallow, is taken by Ram Nath as an echo of his own earlier feelings; he concludes that she might be a good match for his genuinely idealistic son. Successive interviews between Uma and Har Dayal’s wife, Madhuri, and between Lakshmi and Madhuri leave Ram Nath’s side quite unaware of Madhuri’s inflexible hostility. Meanwhile, Shakuntala is understood by her embarrassed father to be totally rejecting the Narayan idea, but by her anxious sister-in-law Indira to be seriously considering it. The reader understands that, in the first conversation, Shakuntala is talking in veiled fashion about her love for Esmond, while in the second, she is trying to irritate a pompous snob. Such perceptions, however, are never shared. Esmond in India embodies a central paradox, representative in a way of “the human condition” generally: Its characters are enmeshed in a web of close relationships yet never succeed in understanding one another on a one-to-one basis.

The Characters

The reader of Esmond in India understands its events much better than the characters do. Associated with this relative superiority of knowledge is a markedly low level of sympathy. Few, if any, of the characters seem attractive; all are much more easily characterized by faults than by virtues. Most of Har Dayal’s family appear snobbish to the point of hypocrisy. Their social position depends on Har Dayal’s standing as an interpreter of culture and the arts, and all the children have been expensively educated. Yet none of them seems to have retained even a mild interest in his or her studies. In an early scene, Shakuntala picks up an artistic magazine entitled Advance and riffles through its pages, thinking that she must ask “Daddyji” to tell her which articles to read when she has time. That, however, is as far as her interest goes. Her brother and sister-in-law are more frankly uninterested in anything except money, and even her father is exposed as a mere speechmaker and committee member, with no substance behind his words.

On the other side, Ram Nath’s family seem more physically repellent. Gulab, in particular, though famous as a beauty, radiates idleness and gluttony. Here, however, a cultural element enters. To Esmond (and very probably to any Western reader), Gulab’s smotheringly close relationship with her son Ravi, full of ardent kisses and embraces, seems downright unhealthy, as does her continuous appetite for scented oil, sugared milk with rose essence, cream-cheese curry, food fried in clarified butter, and the rest of a lovingly described Indian diet. At the same time, though, Esmond’s careful lunches, close self-control, and especially the concealed aggression of his speech, are all presented from an Indian viewpoint, coming over as cold, finicky, often ridiculous. One can see why Uma should want to take Gulab and Ravi away from this bloodless man and simultaneously why Esmond should want to flee to England, find another wife, and hope for a less sticky and cloying environment. “To know all is to forgive all,” runs the old adage, and the reader certainly knows much about Ruth Prawer Jhabvala’s characters by the end. Forgiveness, however, is less encouraged by the novel than cool evaluation, tinged by regret or pity.

Critical Context

A novel such as Esmond in India could probably not have been written by a native-born Indian. Its attitude toward independence, recorded barely ten years after that achievement, is too disillusioned. It is difficult, meanwhile, to imagine an English author writing with such neutrality about the way English people are perceived. Jhabvala, however, is almost a perfect example of an “outsider” author, having been born in Germany, of Jewish parents, having emigrated to England before World War II, and having emigrated again to India in early maturity as the wife (perhaps significantly again) of a Parsi, belonging to another religious minority. Jhabvala is accordingly in touch with many cultures but committed to none.

Her awareness of cultural oppositions in space and time was to bring her the Booker Prize for Fiction for Heat and Dust (1975). The main achievement of Esmond in India, however-her third novel, written some twenty years before-lies in its combination of deep cultural relativism in subject with close adherence to tradition in form. Esmond in India is a classic example of the wryly amused “storm in a teacup” novel, so strikingly pioneered by Jane Austen. Jhabvala follows Austen’s technique, manner, tone, and even, to some extent, her moral attitude. Yet all has been transported, miraculously, to far different skies and customs.

Bibliography

Gooneratne, Yasmine. Silence, Exile and Cunning: The Fiction of Ruth Prawer Jhabvala, 1983.

Shahane, Vasant A. Ruth Prawer Jhabvala, 1976.

Williams, Haydn M. The Fiction of Ruth Prawer Jhabvala, 1973.

Williams, Haydn M. “Strangers in a Backward Place: Modern India in the Fiction of Ruth Prawer Jhabvala,” in Journal of Commonwealth Literature. VI (1971), pp. 53-64.