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      In British imperial fiction, physical setting or landscape commonly plays a prominent role in the central thematic subject.  In these works, landscape goes beyond an objective description of nature and setting to represent “a way of seeing- a way in which some Europeans have represented to themselves and others the world about them and their relationships with it, and through which they have commented on social relations” (Cosgrove xiv).  By investigating the ways in which writers of colonial ficition, such as H. Rider Haggard and E.M. Forester, have used landscape, we see that landscape represents a historically and culturally specific way of experiencing the world.  In Rider Haggard’s King Solomon’s Mines, the landscape is gendered to show the colonizer’s ability to dominate over native territory.  However, while the scenario of the male colonizer conquering a feminized landscape reinforces a legitimizing myth of colonization, it is later overturned by Forester’s A Passage to India.  In this novel, the landscape takes on a complex, multifaceted role, articulating the ambivalence of cross-cultural relationships and exposing the fragility of colonial rule.  In contrast to King Solomon’s Mines, A Passage to India uses landscape as a tool to expose the problematic nature of colonial interaction that might have easily been left obscured and unacknowledged.  We can read the landscape as a type of secondary narrator in A Passage to India that articulates the novel’s imperial ideology.    
      The African landscape of King Solomon’s Mines is clearly feminized.  The treasure map shows that the geography of the travelers’ route takes the shape of a female body (Rider Haggard 55).  The major hurdle for the men in taming the landscape is preserving through the harsh climates of mountain and desert.  All along the way, they are in imminent danger of perishing from thirst, starvation, and extreme temperatures.  However, the struggle of Quatermain and his companions to survive through the feminized landscape only heightens their masculinity.  By associating the dominating male with the colonizer and the feminine object with the natives, King Solomon’s Mines propagates a classic “myth of empire” that imperial lands are simply waiting to be conquered by Europeans.  The landscape has an allure for the men because it challenges them to persevere, essentially asking them to prove that they are “man enough” to overcome the perilous geography and penetrate the treasure cave.  After they cross the mountains of Bathsheba’s Breasts, Quatermain declares, “The magic of the place, combined with the overwhelming sense of dangers left behind, and of the promised land reached at last, seemed to charm us in silence” (Rider Haggard 109).  Using landscape in this way provides a positive view of colonization because it demonstrates that British men who lack certain aspects of social standing in England, such as Quatermain and his friends, can use the colonies as a way to acquire masculine potency through imperial adventure.  The novel’s presentation of landscape also masks “anxieties of empires,” such as loss of identity, miscegenation, and corruption, which are evident in other works of imperial fiction (Suleri 16).  The men never question their authority or right to explore native land; in fact, they set out to perform a symbolic rape by removing the treasure from the sexual organs of the feminized landscape.  This appears to be an inherently natural process because it creates a balance between their masculinity and nature’s female persona.  The men’s entry into the treasure cave becomes a metaphorical sexual union that helps bring about a rebirth of their male identities.    
      Writers such as E.M. Forester responded to this kind of gendering of imperial landscapes by forcing the reader to question the fairness, legitimacy, and power the colonial figure has to transform native landscape and culture.  In A Passage to India, landscape and geography play an important role both structurally and thematically by creating a more complex model of colonial interaction.  The three sections of the novel, Mosque, Caves, and Temple, are titled with names of physical places significant to the Indian landscape.  The beginning of the novel further emphasizes the importance of place by describing the city of Chandrapore in extensive detail.  The description of Chandrapore is our first indication of the way in which Forester abandons the typical exotic imagery of colonial landscape.  In King Solomon’s Mines, the land of the Kukuanas is a “paradise” (Rider Haggard 108).  Chandrapore has none of this exotic appeal: “It charms not, neither does it repel” (Forester 5).  The layout of the city, its climate and vegetation are described very matter-of-factly, which establishes a quality of realism in the narrator’s voice.  It makes the reader believe that the novel will provide an unbiased and objective account of the story.  Unlike the landscape of King Solomon’s Mines, there is nothing alluring about Chandrapore.  By depicting colonial space in this way, Forester highlights the illusory nature of places such as Kukuanaland.  He establishes that India is not an arena for the British to act out their imperial fantasies, but a real-world environment where colonization is a fluid, tenuous structuring of cultural groups.
      The early descriptions of the city also draw attention to way in which the British have altered the landscape to enforce colonial order.  “The roads, named after victorious generals and intersecting at right angles, were symbolic of the net Great Britain had thrown over India” (Forester 13).  This passage exposes how colonial spaces are structured to “emphasize the relations of power and subordination that are effected in and through the organization of space but which are often deliberately obscured to the eye” (Cosgrove xxv).  Aziz must respond to the Major Callendar’s summons by traveling through a proscribed spatial path specifically designed to impose British authority over the city.  However, the novel goes on to reveal that this imposed order, or “net,” has narrow limits on the local terrain.  The British government’s use of space as a means of practical control over the natives does not extend beyond this small area of grided streets.  Forester uses landscape here to highlight the limitations of imperial power.  As opposed to the British men who can sweep over a vast landscape in King Solomon’s Mines, the urban and rural landscapes in A Passage to India elude the controlling grasp of colonial order.  Outside the “civil lines,” we find landscapes where the imposition of imperial authority disappears and the traditional labels of colonial identity are challenged.
      The Marabar Caves are the only notable feature of the Indian countryside in the novel.  They are unique as a landscape in colonial fiction because, unlike Rider Haggard’s connection of the female landscape to colonial masculinity, Forester prevents the reader from connecting them to the cultural identity of the Indians or the British.  The Caves are reduced to the most basic type of mathematical description, and since they all look identical, they leave a visitor “uncertain whether he has had an interesting experience or a dull one or any experience at all” (Forester 124).  We are told that absolutely nothing (certainly no treasure) exists inside the caves.  Yet, when Adela Quested first hears about the caves, she demands that Aziz tell her everything about them so that she may “understand India” (Forester 79).  Adela, a young woman, has replaced the middle-aged men as the colonial seeking to explore the imperial landscape.  Forester uses Adela’s passionate desire to “see the real India” to establish her as a parallel to the type of British male characters that appear in King Solomon’s Mines.  However, unlike the experiences of Quatermain and his companions, Adela cannot find the “real India” she desires.  This is because the novel’s landscape does not succumb to the desires of the colonizer; instead, the landscape has agency to affect both British and native characters.  “Rather than landscape serving as the female context upon which an imperial man can arrive at storytelling, geography in A Passage to India assumes the significance of that presexual space upon which the participants in the great game of colonial intimacy can recognize their postsexuality” (Suleri 146).  There is no objectified truth or vision of India for Adela to find; it is India that will expose truths about the characters and their relationships.  
The first and foremost result of the expedition to the Marabar Caves is profound and mutual cultural disappointment.  As Adela looks out at the countryside from the inside of the train, she cannot find anything distinct or meaningful in the landscape.  The narrator concludes that “India is not a promise, only an appeal” (Forester 150).  This statement stands as a complete opposite to the presentation of Kukuanaland: there, the treasure is proved to exist, the exotic appeal carries all the way through the novel.  However, Adela, despite her youth and earnestness, soon loses her naïve faith in finding the “real India” in which she once believed.  The potential for Aziz’s hospitality to foster cross-cultural friendship and understanding is further undercut by the morning’s false dawn and the failure of Fielding and Professor Goldbole to board the train to join Aziz, Adela, and Mrs. Moore.  When the party arrives at the caves, each character undergoes an experience that challenges their identity, cultural, gender, or colonial, in an important way.  The snake imagery that pervades through this section of the novel suggests that the characters are about to experience a kind of a fall from naïve, Edenic state, a parallel which is also supported by the vast nothingness of the caves themselves: “the cave is stuffed with a snake composed of small snakes, which writhe independently” (Forester 163).
      Mrs. Moore, who up to this point has served as a bridge between Aziz and British society, becomes terrified to the point of madness by the echoes in the caves, which murmur to her “everything exists, nothing has value” (Forester 165).  Mrs. Moore’s brief venture into the cave leaves her uninterested in maintaining familial relations or even maintaining her faith in God.  Her purpose in coming to India was to secure the marriage of Adela and her son Ronny, but in the caves, that goal becomes compromised through the interaction between Adela and Aziz.  When Aziz and Adela explore another cave by themselves, Adela realizes she does not love Ronny, and at the same time, turns a sexualized gaze onto Aziz, contemplating his “beauty, thick hair, and fine skin” (Forester 169).  This exchange between Adela and Aziz complicates the identity of the British colonial because Adela, as a woman, does not exercise the control over natives that we might expect from a British man in a novel such as King Solomon’s Mines.  Adela does not find the “real India,” but she does find some version of the “real Aziz.”  She takes a sudden interest in his personal life: his children, his marriage, his sexual identity.  When they are alone together, Adela no longer ascribes to Aziz the oriental quality she has thus far projected on him as her guide.  Nevertheless, it is this change in attitude that leads to the disaster.  Adela deeply offends Aziz by inquiring whether he has more than one wife (Forester 169), and the incident later turns into the supposed rape that causes a major upheaval for the entire city.  While Adela has in some respects taken on the identity of a colonial, her perceived rape seems to render her more a victim of this cross-cultural encounter than a dominator.  However, in the actual scene that takes place in the cave, it seems that Aziz is the one becoming victimized by Adela’s quasi-sexual advances and culturally insensitive question about his lifestyle.  
      So how are we to resolve the ambiguity and confusion about what transpires in the caves?  Mrs. Moore’s depressing revelation in the caves about the futility of human relationships reflects the consequences of the characters’ collective colonial experiences.  Following the comparison of the caves to a historyless, Edenic place, Mrs. Moore is bitten by the snake that makes her aware of the limits of cross-cultural understanding and friendship.  She no longer has any concern for Aziz or a desire to understand his culture (Forester 166).  Mrs. Moore’s abrupt shift to this pessimistic outlook suggests that she has somehow psychically sensed the breakdown of relationships that will come from the outing to the caves.  The failed sexual encounter between Adela and Aziz becomes further evidence of the incompatibility of cultural exchange.  Adela’s sudden personal interest in Aziz does not bring the two of them closer together; it results in Adela offending him in the worst possible way.  Conversely, Adela’s imagined rape and later recantation of her story suggests that a heterosexual union is not possible between the two cultural groups, leaving no possibility for genetic racial mixing.  
      The effects of the Marabar Caves landscape create a pessimistic outlook for cross-cultural relations in colonial India.  Yet, the novel explores more private landscapes that give a different perspective on the characters’ interactions.  When Mrs. Moore first meets Aziz in the mosque, Aziz rebukes her for not taking off her shoes, anticipating a lack of cultural understanding from her because she is British.  He misjudges Mrs. Moore, however, who, aware of the Muslim custom, has already removed her shoes (Forester 18).  This mutual understanding of religious practice enables the two to initiate a deeper conversation which results in Aziz feeling greatly elated at Mrs. Moore’s understanding of him (Forester 21).  He dubs her “an Oriental,” showing the flexibility of cultural titles, so that the ‘Brit’ and the ‘Oriental’ may be defined by their personality rather than their nationality.  
      In analyzing this scene, we see that landscape affects the characters’ perceptions and interaction.  The description of the mosque shows how it serves a respite for Aziz from the colonial city: “The front—in full moonlight—had the appearance of marble, and the ninety-nine names of God on the frieze stood out black, as the frieze stood out white against the sky.  The contest between this dualism and the contention of shadows within pleased Aziz…Here was Islam, his own country” (Forester 16).  Within the confines of the mosque, Aziz leaves behind the identity of a native dominated by British imperialism.  The landscape facilitates the connection that develops between Aziz and Mrs. Moore because it shelters them from the hierarchy of colonial society that exists in the city, particularly in establishments like the club Mrs. Moore has just left.  As Aziz leaves the mosque with his new companion, he regains a sense of ownership over his native land: “As he strolled downhill, beneath the lovely moon, and again saw the lovely mosque, he seemed to own the land as much as anyone owned it” (Forester 22).  As Cosgrove notes, “Landscape is a social product, the consequence of a collective human transformation of nature”: the repeated reference to the hill and the moonlight implies that nature also helps grant Aziz a feeling of independence (14).  From the meeting of Aziz and Mrs. Moore, we might conclude that cross-cultural friendship is the way for Indians to liberate themselves from colonial subjugation, but subtle elements of their encounter prevent that simplistic of a reading.  When Aziz begins to speak with Mrs. Moore, one of the first things he warns her against is walking alone at night because of the leopards and snakes that come from the Marabar Hills (Forester 19).  Mrs. Moore’s frightened reaction to the mention of snakes portends the snake imagery throughout the incident in the caves that marks the downfall of her earnest attempts to form a bond with Aziz and the land of India.          
      Another important example of a private setting that encourages cross-cultural friendship is when Aziz first meets Fielding in his bedroom.  Yet, like the meeting of Aziz and Mrs. Moore in the mosque, the protected nature of their surroundings still does not allow the relationship to come to complete fruition.  The unconventionality of circumstances, Fielding asking Aziz to enter his dressing room with the collar stud, allows a heightened feeling of intimacy between the two men.  Aziz “forgets himself entirely,” and settles in comfortably on the bed (Forester 68).  Aziz, believing that Englishmen always kept their spaces very tidy, finds the disheveled nature of the room surprising.  This puts Aziz at ease because he no longer needs to feel “ashamed”—coming into the privacy of Fielding’s bedroom makes him feel less conscious about the cultural and racial difference between them.  The connection the two men form in this scene introduces the homoerotic quality of Aziz and Fielding’s relationship that persists throughout the novel.  Forester uses the homosexual imagery of Aziz inserting the stud into Fielding’s collar to comment on the potential of the men to form a lasting relationship: as Aziz goes to put in the stud, he remarks, “the shirt’s back’s hole is rather small and to rip it wider a pity” (Forester 69).  Not only does the collar stud allude to the eroticized relationship between the two men, it refers to the problematic nature of their friendship.  The cultural and political barriers that will come between Aziz and Fielding after Aziz is put on trial ultimately precludes them from forming a lasting relationship.  The problem Aziz encounters with the collar stud foreshadows the dangerous consequences that come with the assumption of cross-cultural friendship (Suleri 139).  Those dangerous consequences evidence themselves as soon as Aziz and the British women venture out into the uncontrolled landscape of the caves.  
      The private landscapes of the mosque and the dressing room allow the characters a sense of removal from society’s labels and hierarchy of status.  If there was any hope for them to overcome the cultural, social, and political barriers that separate them, it would be in those spaces.  The genuine desire of characters such as Mrs. Moore, Fielding, and Aziz, to, at different points in the novel, form an attachment to their cultural “other” it is not enough to ultimately achieve that goal.  The landscapes in the novel trace the struggle throughout the book for the characters’ relationships, particularly that between Aziz and Fielding, to survive.  Yet, at the end of the novel, it is the landscape that pulls Aziz and Fielding apart from one another.  When Fielding mournfully questions why the two men cannot be friends, it is not Aziz that responds, but the landscape itself: “the horses didn’t want it…the earth didn’t want it…the temples, the tank, the jail, the palace, the birds, the carrion, the Guest House…they didn’t want it, they said in their hundred voices, ‘No, not yet,’ and the sky said, ‘No, not there’” (Forester 362).  We would expect that the structures of colonial rule, such as the jail and the Guest House, would symbolically pull Aziz and Fielding apart.  The presence of nature, the earth, the horses, the birds, with the sky itself dictating that they cannot now be friends is a deeper form of rejection to the notion of cross-cultural relationships.  The only hope we are left with is the sky’s qualification of the “no”: not yet… not there.  



Works Consulted


Cosgrove, Denis.  Social Formation and Symbolic Landscape.  Madison, Wisconsin: University of Wisconsin Press, 1998.

Forester, E.M.  A Passage to India.  London: Harcourt, 1924.

Ridger Haggard, J.  King Solomon’s Mines, ed. Gerald Monsman.  Ontario: Broadview Press, 2002.  

Suleri, Sara.  The Rhetoric of British India.  Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1992.