The elegance of Ruth Prawer Jhabvala
In the world of Ruth Prawer Jhabvala, convention is either ignored or obeyed with misgivings. Take her novel “Heat and Dust,” in which a bored Englishwoman in India during the days of the Raj risks dishonor by having an affair with an Indian prince.
Or consider her screenplay adaptation of E.M. Forster’s “A Room With a View,” in which Lucy Honeychurch, betrothed to the wealthy and proper Cecil Vyse, wrestles with the desire to chuck expectations into the bin and pursue a romance with the poorer and freer-spirited George Emerson.
Variations on this conflict appear throughout Jhabvala’s work, as do ethnic clashes, both between India and the West and within each culture.
The impression one gets from reading Jhabvala’s work is that of a sculptor who reuses a favored armature to build nuanced depictions of similar likenesses. Her skillful use of that armature permeates “At the End of the Century” (Counterpoint Press; 448 pages; $26), a posthumous collection of stories — Jhabvala died in 2013 at 85 — that examines the relationships among people from America, Europe and the India that emerged after independence from Britain in 1947.
These 17 stories span 50 years of Jhabvala’s career, and they have a distinctly old-fashioned quality. Modern readers accustomed to arresting openings and dramatic clashes will find these stories quaint. Jhabvala’s technique was to ease the reader into her stories with deceptively calm passages, a theater apparently devoid of theatricality. The cumulative effect, however, can be devastating.
Some of her characters behave in a way that their time dictates but eventually express doubts about their choices. Even the titles make their dilemmas clear, as in “A Loss of Faith.” The protagonist is an Indian man who works at a draper’s shop, in part to take care of the women in his life and “set up an ideal of quiet and orderliness, of meekness and domestic piety.”
But as he works his way up to staff manager, he wonders whether his life of responsibility is better than the more frivolous one led by his oldest brother, who wears a “beautiful suit of smuggled silk,” has shady jobs with business magnates and spends his money on women.
Another recurring theme is that of women who act maternally toward someone younger, only to find that the other person may not be as they seemed. The title character in “The Widow” shows generosity to the son of a new tenant in her home, even when the young man takes advantage of her good graces, such as when he asks for a fancier shirt than the inexpensive one she offers.
In “Miss Sahib,” an unhappy Indian woman who allowed her family to marry her off — another common feature of these stories — befriends an elderly teacher, an Englishwoman, who becomes her confidant. And in “Great Expectations,” a New York real estate agent allows her “most desperate” client and the daughter she gave birth to in India to stay with her, even as the agent struggles to keep her business alive.
Jhabvala recycles many plot points throughout these stories, among them MayDecember romances, relations between English masters and Indian servants and extramarital affairs, the last of which appear often in these works, including “Miss Sahib”; “Desecration,” in which a Muslim woman cheats on her spouse with an Indian Superintendent of Police; “Pagans,” where one sister sleeps with the other’s husband; and “Two Muses,” with a famous German novelist in an open relationship with his wife and a woman who loved only artists, “the more famous, the better.”
The weakest pieces are the most simplistic, such as “A Course of English Studies,” in which a young Indian woman studying literature at an English university develops an infatuation with a married lecturer. Much better are the subtler examinations of East-West relations, such as “An Experience of India,” in which a white Englishwoman grows disenchanted with her marriage, begins a romance with an Indian musician and embarks on a spiritual quest with a guru keen to spread his message.
The best works are the final two: the title piece, which, in its depictions of the lives of two half-sisters, dramatizes the clash between old country money and a more modern urban sensibility; and the posthumously published “The Judge’s Will,” a poignant work about an Indian widow who discovers that her English husband made provisions in his will for the woman he had kept in secret for a quarter of a century.
Even at their weakest, these stories show the same elegance that marked Jhabvala’s film collaborations with producer Ismail Merchant and director James Ivory. “At the End of the Century” is a treasure for readers who savor quiet works of fiction and a fitting tribute to one of the most perceptive and sensitive writers of the 20th century.