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tedious, so Peggy Ashcroft's Mrs. Moore is just an old dear who likes
Aziz and believes in his innocence, and dislikes her pompous son .
Disgusted and tired, she leaves. Forster's old lady, though becoming
querulous and impatient, is someone who knows more than "the
facts." The film viewer can only be amused when she becomes a
mythic being, Esmiss-Esmoor-a new deity in the Hindu pantheon
- during the popular ecstasy over Aziz's victory . Yet she is both
woman and sybil in the novel; she perceives the unutterable mystery;
she persists supernaturally .
Forster's Aziz is a portrait of a man he loved, Syed Masood, to
whom the novel is dedicated . Film audiences have tended to find him
an unsatisfactory hero, obsequious when discovering that Fielding is
friendly, then petulant and stupidly jealous when he thinks he has
been betrayed; even the novel's readers disliked him, and Forster re–
marked,"Scarcely anyone has seen that I hoped Aziz would be charm–
ing." But we need to understand him in the context of history, taking
account of the novel's double-time sense. It depicts India of before
the First WorId War - the affectionate, hopeful Aziz belongs to that
time. But it was mostly written afterwards when Ghandi had launched
his noncooperation movement and Tagore renounced his knight–
hood after the 1919 Amritsar massacre - an event hinted at,
anachronistically, several times in the book. The Aziz who at the
end says, "Clear out, clear out I say. Why are we put to so much suf–
fering?" belongs to the later period, the hidden historic context. A
Muslim, moreover, he can no more than the Westerner share the
Hindu confidence in cosmic unity.
Fielding and Adela also require a depth of historic focus not
easily achieved in film. Only superficially opposed, both come out of
the "fag end of Victorian liberalism" to which Forster said he be–
longed. Adela is as high-minded as anyone, intellectually curious
and intellectually without prejudice. In the end she shows the
English school virtues; she will not lie even to save herself from shame,
and she does not whimper. On screen, the winsome prettiness of
Judy Davis gives the lie to Aziz's contempt for Adela's physical charms,
and when the prosecutor nastily asserts that the darker races are ir–
resistibly attracted to the lighter, the sneer from another Indian
~
"Even when the lady is so uglier than the gentleman?" falls flat. But
the novel wants us to see her as a dry stick. Symbolically without
passion or allure, her failure is the failure of a tradition. Fielding's
sexual failure is like Adela's - he has failed in his previous love life
and he fails Aziz, and his marriage to Stella does not yet reach emo-
