Racial Prejudice and Panic Attacks

The subplots underlying all the action in Passage To India are racial prejudice, class distinction, and psychic trauma. The inciting incident is the Marabar Caves episode, and British society despising Indian culture instantly leaps to the assumption that inferior Adela has been raped by brutal Aziz. In the film Lean gives the erroneous impression that there is some subliminal sexual attraction between them but in the novel Forster makes it abundantly clear that Aziz has no sexual interest in her nor she in him.

What Adela is struggling with is her aversion to sexuality and being trapped in a marriage with Ronny Moore whom she does not love. Adela’s fears first emerge in the episode with the erotic sculptures and howling monkeys and she flees the scene. Left alone in the Marabar Cave with the howling echoes she has a full-fledged classic panic-attack triggered by the sounds and the feeling of being trapped. She dashes down the mountain in total distraction, and of course the Brits leap to the assumption that Aziz has attempted to rape her. In her distracted mental state lasting for days Adela accepts the delusion of rape foisted on her until she comes to her senses in the trial and tells the truth.

Panic attacks are psychological responses to the fear of being trapped in a bad situation and that is what overwhelms Adela, not some erotic sexual response to the caves and Aziz as has been so often posted as a result of Lean’s misleading screenplay. After the trial we, along with Aziz in the novel, expect that Adela will eventually marry her rescuer Fielding but her fear of being trapped persists and at the end Adela remains unattached.

What Adela needed from Dr. Aziz was a prescription for Xanax t.i.d., not sex.