locate the emergent narrative mode, considered through certain representative examples, in its social and cultural context Attuned both to contextual pressure and to formal 'instress', she seeks to show that "the novel in India [is] a product of configurations in philosophical, aesthetic, economic and political forces in the larger life of the country". She sees the novel in India as being, crucially, a hybrid: "nursed if not bom out of the tension between opposing systems of value in a colonial society". And thus her essay is, in important respects, an attempt to see through the different articulations of narrative possibility, into the process of colonial interaction itself—through the colonial hybrid of the novel into the society of the hybridised nation, the colony. Beyond the obvious and expectable regional variations, Mukherjee seeks to identify a "basic pattern [that] seems to emerge from the shared factors like the puranic heritage, heirarchical social structure, colonial education, disjunction of agrarian life and many others that affect the form of a novel as well as its content". Well. It is an ambitious project: one that, despite the appeal of its during, puts one in mind of Tolstoy's famous story. ^
The varied and complex development of the novel in India is sorted out by Mukherjee into "three dominant strands". The first of these consists of the 'missionary' novels, hortatory exercises of ancient provenance only thinly disguised as fiction. The second strand is "an inclusive category where the apparently opposed tendencies of historical and supernatural fiction merge". The third strand is the one that provides her with the title other book: fiction which "attempted to render contemporary Indian society realistically...". It would perhaps be advisable to look briefly at Mukherjee's organisation of her material before coming to grips with her argument(This kind of paraphrase repeats a difficulty that hampers the book as well. In the absence of widespread awareness and discussion of the matters under consideratiori, any attempt to raise issues must be preceded by a paraphrase of the material itself. In the manner of itinerant performers, who sling their acts over their shoulders, we must first put up the tent, and the garishly painted backdrop, the sign full of suggestive ambiguities outside the door, and the rickety table within, before the show can commence.)
The first, didactic-missionary strand is not really relevant to the main thrust of the argument Most of the writings which fall in this category were rather pointedly functional mere illustrations of preconceived theses, and do not recreate, in the single-mindedness of their propagandist intent, the drama that is Mukherjee's subject: "...the synthesis of a borrowed literary form and an indigenous aesthetic...." It hardly needs to be pointed out that such didactic narratives are to be found in the prehistory of the English novel as well. However, these writings did introduce one new element to the native cultural scene: the precise observation of specific physical environments instead of the generalised landscapes of the indigenous tradition. This isn't yet realism, but it is a necessary development in the right direction.
The evolution of the second, historical strand is, in fact, deeply ironic. The novel has, from its earliest beginnings, sought to align itself with history, sought
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