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Monday 1 December 2008

The Raj Quartet 1: The Jewel in the Crown, A Division of the Spoils

When the sun finally set

Margaret MacMillan

They were trapped by codes and principles, which were in part to keep their own fears and doubts at bay. Sarah Layton’s sister, Susan, secretly believes that she has no centre at all. Susan’s husband Teddie once has an uncomfortable moment when he realises how boring his life has been ‘because he never did anything, never would do anything, except according to the rules laid down for what a man of his class and calling should do and for how and why he should do it’. Teddie dies because he cannot face the fact that his beloved soldiers have turned traitor.

The scorpion is supposed to sting itself to death if it is surrounded by fire but in fact it dies as a result of a reflexive action to protect itself. It is doomed by the inadequacy of its armour, just as the British community in India was doomed. When old Mabel Layton, the girls’ aunt, withdraws from station social life, it causes a frisson of disquiet:

The god had left the temple, no one knew when, how, or why. What one was left with were the rites which had once been propitiated, once been obligatory, but were now meaningless because the god was no longer there to receive them.

The Raj is collapsing like a house of cards and the British who had lived and worked on such a grand scale are going back to their small island. As Scott puts it, they ‘came to the end of themselves as they were’.

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