Historical Context of The Jewel in the Crown
The historical context of Paul Scott's novel - The Jewel in the Crown - serves to explain and interpret a tragic love story between two characters; Daphne Manners and Hari Kumar. The love story serves to clarify and interpret the social/racial and historical significance of the time period in which it is set - 1942. Their love - a product as well as a victim of the time and events - is an allegory for the relationship between England and India - the White man and the Black man. The Jewel in the Crown demonstrates that the elements of life and love are colorless and timeless and that arrogance and hate are universal.
Through a historically accurate setting using imaginary characters we are shown the fictionalized city of Mayapore, India during the British Raj and told the "story of a rape, of the events that led up to it and followed it and of the place in which it happened" (Scott 3). The story is relayed to us, in the most part, through an unnamed narrator that began his quest for answers, concerning the Daphne Manners case, in 1964. He compiles testimonies and documents that reveal the events to us from a variety of realistic perspectives. The information is not given in chronological order but as a person who reminiscences would convey a story. The author effectively uses the characters, time-period and historical events to support the underlying theme of injustice, tragedy and the indomitable human spirit.
Daphne and Hari would never have met and fallen in love in any other place during any other time period. 1942, in India, was their destiny. Tragic as the outcome was, their story provides us insight into the folly of the white man's superiority mentality and to the consequences of repression. Daphne ironically symbolizes the superior white race and yet she is able to reflect "that 'white superiority' is an 'idea' at the heart of a 'game', a 'charade', and it was (too) easy 'to act at conforming' "(cagatucci Jewelsg3.htm 6/5/01). Hari represents the inferior black race. The author was careful to craft the characters to avoid the "noble savage" winning the heart of the "princess" epic story line. Daphne is portrayed as a rather common - even unattractive - and clumsy girl who finds herself in India due to misfortune rather than through adventure. Not the heroine one would imagine for an exotic love story. Hari is an enigma. He remains mysterious to us, in part to define his character and in part because the author did not know how to explain or understand one who did not fit the accepted image of the inferior man. (However politically open-minded he may have been, Paul Scott was still a product of 20th century England.) In England, Hari would have been Daphne's better and a love between them would never have been possible. Hari learns humility from India while Daphne experiences a degree of acceptance and freedom (that unleashes something of a rebellious nature) that England never afforded her. She chose to live "in defiance of others" (Scott 397), as she found she "had no talent for self-denial" (Scott 412).
Hari serves the story as a type of Byronic Hero. His divided character and loyalties portray a victim and a warrior simultaneously. He vacillates between stoic acceptance of his plight(s) to outbursts of emotional violence. Hari's experiences have left him vengeful, vindictive and angry - which shape his character, relationships and life. Daphne also characterizes elements of a Byronic Heroine. She is intent on emotional honesty and seeks deeper truths and understanding than her environment allows. She rebels against what is considered acceptable behavior and refuses to conform even when confronted or intimidated. Her behaviors could be interpreted as self-destructive in retrospect - her memoirs indicate she was cognizant of the potential consequences of her love for Hari, her rejection of Ronald Merrick and even of her death as a result of giving birth to the baby.
The story ends tragically for Daphne and Hari just as the story ends tragically for the England of old and the India of old - but out of their union a new story begins. Although the offspring of the encounter will not unlearn quickly the evils taught for all those generations before, there is now a hope, "the promise of a story continuing instead of finishing...established for the sake of the future rather than of the past" (Scott 461). The Jewel in the Crown is part historical novel, part mystery, part love story, part allegory (drjohnholleman 6/9/01) - and in all its parts, it will continue to reveal the darkness, in each of us, that has no connection to skin color.
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