Between the Notes: Searching for Voice in Paul Scott’s late novels

Abstract

This dissertation is about searching for a moral voice in Paul Scott’s late novels of the Raj. Using his key vocal-narrative device, that of the stranger, it emphasizes the importance of sound and listening as clues to his contradictory reputation: an imperialist manque according to some scholars; one of his generation’s most astute critics of imperialism to others.

It takes three settings and the social practices his fictional protagonists brought to life around them that helped to sustain and question imperial rule in India: first creating records, second performing family duties, and thirdly, cultivating one’s garden. Listening to Scott’s dialogue between inner and outer voice reveals the doubts, conflicts and compromises that reflected the ambiguities of everyday human experience of ‘the situation’, his sharp critique of the racism and snobbery that kept Indians at a distance, how authority was subverted or adhered to, responsibility affirmed or ignored.

Yet his bleakness is tempered by a respect for human dignity and the desire to reach across to those whom we call ‘strangers’. A critical reflexivity is at stake, arguably an analytical strength not a methodological weakness. Whilst there are no certainties and few answers in Scott’s work, my close-grained critical approach reveals that he had a tougher moral stance on Britain’s imperial legacy than often assumed. It is precisely the stranger’s presence that keeps Scott’s moral voice alive, responding to Paul Gilroy’s call to ‘work through’ Britain’s loss of imperial prestige in less febrile and polarised ways.

The dissertation shows that Scott’s most urgent truths are to be found in those momentary silences between the notes, between understanding and critique, social justice and tyranny, a reformist liberalism and a paternalistic imperialism. Whilst we may not like ambivalence, we might learn to work more productively with it.