Nonexistent Rape as Failure of Sexuality

One of the most predominant themes in both Forster's Passage to India and Eliot's Wasteland is a glaring lack of fertility and sexuality, represented both in the characters, their relationships, and the setting. In Passage of India, there is a complete and utter failure of female sexuality. Mrs. Moore and Adela feature as the only women, with a fleeting look to Aziz's wife in purdah. Aziz encounters Mrs. Moore in a mosque, and while their conversation is lively and exciting, Aziz is crestfallen when he discovers she is old. In an instant, she loses all that Aziz was attracted to in the preceding moments. Adela is often described as ugly, like in the courtroom, and Aziz comments openly on her lack of voluptuousness. Men, on the other hand have been delineated often in overtly sexual tones, Aziz as a beautiful man and the pankha wala as a God. Therefore, it can be argued that the lack of an actual rape in the story serves as a reinforcement of this theme. It is not that there is an absence of rape; it is that Adela imagines a rape and eventually is proven wrong. In a twisted way, the stereotype of a native man pursuing a white woman sexually represents thriving sexuality; what Forster creates here is the opposite.

Contrasts can be drawn with this and Alexander Pope's 'Rape of the Lock'. It makes into an epic an incident where a suitor cuts off a lock of hair of the woman he desired. The language and imagery epitomizes this breach and frames it in the language of an elaborate rape. This is not how it is in Forster's work. Even when Adela believes that the rape has happened, she can never explain it, all she can articulate is about a feeling and an echo; intangible, vague occurrences which make the rape anything but a sexual act. The scene in the Marabar caves is abrupt, short and the only object of conflict are binoculars. In fact, in the courtroom, people are heard to counter the possibility of the rap merely because Adela is so unattractive. It is much like the scene of the affair of the typist in 'Wasteland' in the sordid apartment building with the 'assault', 'groping' and 'patronizing kiss'. While Eliot illustrates a failure of (female) sexuality in this and the bar scene, Forster chooses to do this through a failed, imaginary rape.