CRITIQUING THE IMPERIAL PAST: A STUDY OF J. G. FARRELL’S EMPIRE TRILOGY

Abstract

The relationship between Literature and History is very significant. Since ages, literature has taken recourse to history for its subject matter, and at times literature has played an essential role in setting off various movements in the world history. Since long, both as an academic discipline have been the storehouse of human knowledge and experiences. History has a goal to introduce its readers to unknown facts of the past and cater a sense of historicity. While literature is an aesthetic exercise with a purpose to entertain, instruct along with educating values to its readers. An amalgamation of both disciplines from a literary perspective in the eighteenth century has resulted into the birth of historical novels, which combines fact of history and fiction of literature and vice versa. Historical novels have helped in developing the historical sensibilities of people efficaciously. It can be argued that it has been more effective than history because it engages emotionally with human lives and human experiences. In twenty-first century, the approach towards traditional historiography has changed. Today not only the fact/fiction dichotomy but also the ideological and institutional systems that guide the production of historical narratives is under question. The new awareness brought by different schools of thought such as Postcolonialism, Cultural Studies, Feminism, Marxism, Subaltern, Black & LGBTQ Studies, etc. have allowed a space for critically engaging with the history that has traditionally ignored such groups or had kept them at margin. Historical novelists through their works present to the readers the alternate viewpoint of approaching towards any historical subject. Their writings, Jerome de Groot appropriately puts, “fundamentally challenges subjectivities, offering multiple identities and historical story lines” as well as “provides a space for political intervention and reclamation; for innovation and destabilisation” (139-40). The present research studies the historical novels, Troubles (1970), The Siege of Krishnapur (1973) and The Singapore Grip (1978), by British author James Gordon Farrell (1939 1979). Winner of Booker Prize twice, Farrell’s historical novels are popularly referred as the Empire Trilogy in academia. Farrell’s historical novels are based on the settings uniquely chosen to represent the decline of the British Empire, which at one point in time dominated quarter of the world. For this, Farrell has selected such moments in history which involve “blows to imperial self-esteem and a loss of cultural self-confidence” (Binns 17). The first instalment of the trilogy is set in Ireland, in the decaying Majestic Hotel, just after the First World War, against the i background of Sinn Fein violence. The novel features the long-standing clash between the Anglo Irish Ascendency and the native Gaelic Catholics on several grounds, such as race, religion, and independence. Troubles is the namesake for the actual “Troubles” in Ireland. The second part of the trilogy, The Siege of Krishnapur, set in India, deals with the events of the first Indian struggle for independence of 1857, in a characteristically ironic and comic vein. It alludes to the historic siege of Lucknow Residency which lasted for more than five months with nearly two thousand Europeans besieged inside living in hand to mouth situation. The third novel, The Singapore Grip, set in Singapore is about the fall of Singapore to the Japanese during the invasion of 1942, an event which Farrell portrays as a deathblow to the British Empire. Situating the Blackett & Web family amidst the gradual annexation of British Malaya, Farrell foregrounds the commercial and social exploitation of the colonized population of Singapore. Taking insights from Edward Said’s idea of “Orientalism” and Gayatri Chakravarty Spivak’s idea of “othering” the first chapter of thesis explores the prejudiced attitude of the Anglo Irish Protestants towards the native Catholic Irish which results into ideological discrimination, the “othering” of the latter because of their ethnicity and different religious practices. Farrell, through his characters, foregrounds the everyday reality of encounter between the two sects and the two classes that have emerged over a period. The role of colonialism is at the backdrop of the intense dislike and hatred between the two classes. In this context, reading of the narratives as propounded in the literature of the past by the colonial masters, i.e., the British Protestants, has shown how an “episteme” of the “other” was created in these texts that played a crucial role in framing the sensibilities of the future English Protestants and has a bearing on their attitude towards the native Catholics. The thesis argues that the native Catholics are the victim of racial hatred because of the British colonial fallacy, which is guided by the episteme that has so far denigrated the natives (Maurya and Kumar, “Member” 2177). It also shows that the Majestic Hotel in the novel acts as a microcosm of the British rule in Ireland which by the end of the novel is burnt to the ground signifying the end days of the British Empire in Ireland. Informed by the Michel Foucault’s idea of “medical gaze” and new historicists concept of “context as co-text”, the second chapter studies how Farrell critiques the Victorian cultural hegemony by historicising the siege by focuses on the cultural mediums such as cultural artefacts, animal, religion, economic exploitation, and medical debates in The Siege of Krishnapur. Keeping the besieged (who are dominantly British) at the centre of the novel’s narrative, Farrell exposes their pomp and follies to critique the British cultural superiority. He chooses many cultural mediums to exhibit his subtle criticism. The cultural artefacts such as the brick houses of the British, lavish showpieces, busts of literary authors initially suggest material superiority as opposed to the natives who are the “population of degenerate types” but later on symbolises futility and barbarity when they are being used as the improvised ammunition by the British to fight with the natives. The motifs of animality used by Farrell in representing the Indian pariah dogs and the British Spaniel creates a stark contrast between the Indians and the British. The survival of pariah dogs in the end and the bestial revelation of the British Spaniel, which was erstwhile racially superior, signifies the victory of the natives (the insiders) over the British (the outsiders or the alien). The debate between the two doctors stationed at the Residency on the aetiology of Cholera illustrates the limitations of colonial medicine (Maurya and Kumar, “Colonial Medicine” 70). The fourth chapter of the thesis shows how the Empire’s truly capitalist and self-centred economic strategies in the colony of Singapore exploit the native small shareholders. It shows that the development programme of the Empire, meant to uplift their condition, are corrupt. Another aspect that the chapter is devoted to is the social and economic condition of the prostitutes in Singapore, an important part of colonial Singapore’s demography. The discussion has highlighted the grim realities of brothel life and the kind of treatment the prostitutes receive from their customers (Maurya and Kumar, “Race” 10). Referring to idea of economic violence and Kathleen Barry’s views on prostitution and sexual slavery, it examines how the Empire contributed to economic exploitation in colonial Singapore with a special reference to the rubber planters & labourers and the prostitutes in the last novel of the trilogy. Through the horror of the young diseased prostitutes in Singapore, Farrell contests the notion that colonisation was good for the colonies and highlights the failure of the British to bring health and education to the women and children. Farrell’s novels, though the product of the contemporary age, reflect an altogether different attitude towards the trend of novel writing. The beauty of his narration lies in the fact that he is writing about the end of Empire and the British themselves speak for this end. He does it unconventionally as we see that the narration is from the British perspective and not from the natives’ perspective. Although many scholars have criticised Farrell for suppressing the voice of the natives or for not giving them due representation in his trilogy novels, this research finds that this act of forgetting the natives in no way has delimited Farrell’s critique of the Empire and its policies.