Alam Friedman describes the theme of personal relations in Forster’s novel as a Marriage of True Minds’ (the phrase in borrowed from Shakespeare’s famous poem). He says, “A marriage of true minds is held out like a promise always a little out of each.
The obstacles of circumstances, the trials of good faith, the emotional separation which threaten to destroy a final consummation the growing crucialness to the novel’s moral resolution of whether they will or will not be united at the end all this and much more makes of their friendship the structural and ritual equivalent to the marriage of hero and heroine in the traditional novel.
At first the marriage of Adela Quested and Ronny Haslop, which Mrs Moore has come to India to aid and abet, seems to play the usual structural role, which the issue of marriage regularly plays in organizing events and meanings. But the considerable moral issue it raises gradually subsides into the background as the wider moral issues surrounding the marriage of two minds come to the foreground.”
Then there are themes evil of love and human separation. In fact, all the themes are closely connected. Forster himself considered personal relationship (especially as he saw in India) a big problem, and Forster’s own commentary on the Fielding-Adela relationship cannot be ignored – “a friendliness as of dwarfs shaking hands was in the air.
Both man and woman were at the height of their powers – sensible, honest, even subtle. They spoke the same language and held some opinions, and the variety of age and sex did not divide them. Yet they were dissatisfied. When they agreed, I want to go on living a bit,’or, ‘I don’t believed in God,’the words were followed by a curious backwash as though the universe had displaced itself to fill up a tiny void, or though they had seen their own gestures from an immense height – dwarfs talking shaking hands and assuring each-other that they stood on the same footing of insight.”
Aziz-Fielding Relationship :
Aziz represents the oriental, Fielding the Western. But try hard to come closer and develop a real friendship, but they fail as neither the earth nor the sky wanted it. Aziz is a highly emotional man, but Fielding is a rational human being. Thus, they represent two separate cultures that refused to come closer, at least they are not ready to join hands in friendship for the present.
Forster has tried to provide deep insight into various relationships at a personal level – among them – Aziz Fielding relationship, Aziz- Mrs Moore, Aziz-Adela relationship etc. But quite impressive and even queer is the Fielding-Adela relationship. “Everything echoes now; there is no stopping the echo. The original round may be harmless but the echo is always evil,” says Mr. Fielding, who is normally rational as he is eager to present the western view-point.
We need to examine Fielding’s words about Adela-“She was no longer examining life, but being examined by it-she had become a real person.” As Fielding and Adela develop a sort of liking for each-other, we have the authorial comments “Both man and woman were at the height of their powers – sensible, honest, even subtle.” This, however, does not mean all-embracing comprehensibility and a rapport replete with the essence of understanding,
“It is as if I ran my finger along that polished walls in the dark and cannot be further. I am up against something, and so are you.” Forster wants to maintain that all human (or personal) relationships are limited in essence, and there is always a limit beyond which they cannot go – “Worlds beyond which they could never touch, or did all that is possible enter their consciousness ?”
Godbole – Mrs Moore Relationship :
On the surface of it, it would look odd to find a relationship between them. But both have certain things common, though they differ also. For instance, the caves communicate the following terrifying message to Mrs Moore – “Pathos, piety, courage, they exist, but are identical and so is faith. Everything exists, nothing has value. If one had spoken vileness in that place, or quoted lofty poetry, the comment would have been the same-boum-Devils are of the North, and poems can be written about them, but no one could romanticize the Marabar because it robbed infinity and eternity of their vastness, the only quality that accommodates them to mankind.”
As far as Godbole is concerned he finds no evil in the caves. In any case, good and evil live on equal planes for him. Both these characters believe in goodness and love and have divine faith. God bole is a Brahmin Hindu and Mrs Moore, though an English lady, is an “oriental.” Godbole sees in his vision both Mrs Moore and the “little, little wasp” whom Mrs Moore says, “Pretty dear” when she finds it sitting on the tip of a peg.
Thus, they become identical in the ultimate realization of love which alone can solve the riddle of banishing evil from the world. Forster thus says about Godbole when he is there to celebrate Janmashtami in the town of Man : “Some hundreds of miles, westward of the Marabar Hills, and two years later in time, Professor Narayan Godbole stands in the presence of God.” Pointing out one fundamental difference between the outlook of the Indian and the English old woman, Forster says, “Godbole, unlike Mrs Moore, requires no belief that God can come to him … To Godbole, union with God is always a desire, not a reality.”
Godbole believes in mysteries, but Mrs Moore does not dislike “muddle”. She says, I like mysteries but I rather dislike muddle. Then Fielding rationalize or clinches the issue.” “A mystery is only a high-sounding term for a muddle. No advantage in stirring it up, in either case.”
However, Krishna’s birth meant love for all and Godbole physical and mentally represented the occasion in an ecstatic way, when- “all sorrow was annihilated, not only for Indians but for foreigners, birds, caves, railways, and the stars; all became joy, all laughter, there had never been disease nor doubt, misunderstanding, cruelty, fear.”
Aziz – Mrs. Moore Relationship :
This is what Mrs. Moore felt she met Aziz in the Mosque- “A sudden sense of unity, of kinship with the heavenly bodies, passed into the old woman, and out, like water through a tank, leaving a strange freshness behind.”
“Aziz was rooted in society and Islam. He belonged to a tradition that bound him, and he had brought children into the world, the society of the future. Though he lived in this flimsy bungalow, nevertheless he was placed, placed.
He murmured to himself the following Persian inscription (about himself) after death “Alas, without me for thousands of years the Rose will blossom and the spring will bloom. But those who have secretly understood my heat they will approach and visit the grave where I like.”
Aziz had said to Mrs Moore-“Then you are oriented.” But, unfortunately after her visit to the caves
“She lost all interest, even in Aziz, and the affectionate and sincere words that she had spoken to him seemed no longer hers, but the air’s.”
Forster’s own viewpoint regarding personal relationships is evident from what a critic says while bringing Forster and Lawrence together.
“Not only did Forster and Lawrence share this general reaction against contemporary civilization, but they also had a common positive theme, for the novel of both are really exercises on the motif of “right personal relationship, ” a favourite phrase of Forster. Their solutions are radically different.
Forster relied on intelligence, culture and an awakening of the heart while Lawrence, though he too was preaching to the heart, relied primarily on the passions of the blood and was preoccupied with sexuality, a theme almost alien to Forster. But they had ir common a belief in the necessity for the individual to be free in his inner life; not even in love must a man suffer himself to be possessed in his thoughts and feelings by another, or a woman herself.
Lawrence saw the relationship between the sexes largely in terms of a fight by the woman to possess the man and of the man’s furious struggle to escape or vice-versa. Forster similarly revolted from the idea of marriage as “eternal union, eternal ownership.” Moreover, there is the Forster’s first novels a curious Lawrentain strain, for complimentary to the doctrine of sweetness and light, of love and culture, there is an admiration of crude vitality in the Italian Gino: Where Angels Fear to Tread and of uncouth vitality in Stephen in the Longest journey.”
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