During the first part of A Passage to India by E.M. Forster, Mrs Moore expresses to her companions that she wants to see the real India (22). She wants to see more of India than just the Anglicized section of Chandrapore. By the time she visits a Marabar cave located twenty miles from Chandrapore on the invitation of Dr Aziz, however, she changes her mind about seeing the real India. In fact, her negative experience in the cave marks the turning point in her decision to remain in or leave India because she soon after resolves to return to England as soon as possible. Although not blatantly evident, however, Mrs Moore engages in a number of postcolonial activities during her visit to the Marabar cave because she does not base her opinions on nationality but rather individual merits.

As John McLeod asserts in chapter two of Beginning Postcolonialism, "Reading Colonial Discourses," Orientialism expresses its tenets through binary divisions, which set in opposition the West and the East (40). Orientalist binaries create unequal divisions between the Occident and the Orient, usually with the East as inferior to the superior West. The binary of English as superior to Indian, for example, is a chief binary established by colonialism. The problem with this and most Orientalist binaries is that the descriptions of the East are artificially created by the West, making the comparisons both untrue and unjust. Mrs Moore, however, does not completely accept the idea that the West is superior in all ways to the East as demonstrated by the ways in which she thinks about her experience in the Marabar cave: not generalizing all Indian caves as horrid, depicting the echo through a "human alphabet," and not basing her descriptions of people based on their nationality. Thus, a close reading of the use of binaries by Mrs Moore and the ways in which she challenges those binaries in the section is an efficient way to understand A Passage to India as postcolonial literature because Mrs Moore and her actions prove that not all English people accept Orientalist ideas as true.

Before the passage begins, Mrs Moore is delighted with the idea of seeing the real India as opposed to the Anglicized version. When Dr Aziz invites her, she seizes an opportunity to visit the Marabar caves located twenty miles from Chandrapore. Her first impression of the cave as she enters with Dr Aziz and Adela, however, is that it is horrid and stifling. When the villagers and servants enter after her, the "circular chamber [begins] to smell" because of so many bodies crammed into an enclosed space. Mrs Moore nearly faints because the cave is horribly stuffy and cramped. She is also alarmed by the terrifying echo, which she describes as "boum," "bou-oum," or "ow-boum." However, even as she is freaking out about the "terrifying echo," Mrs Moore also keeps an open mind about other caves in India, which is important in illustrating that not all people from England accept Orientalist binaries as true. Once she finally exits the "Indian" cave, she firmly decides that she will not visit another Marabar cave. But, even though she does not enjoy her experience, Mrs Moore challenges the binary of English as superior to Indian by the way she thinks about the Marabar cave in contrast to other Indian caves.

According to the binary, caves in England are superior to caves in India. Thus, since one cave in India is horrid, all caves in India are accordingly horrid compared to the non-horrid caves in England. However, when Mrs Moore fails to generalize all caves in India as horrid just because of her negative experience in the Marabar cave, she contests the binary. She highly dislikes the strange, coiling echo, calling it "entirely devoid of distinction," but does not discriminate against other Indian caves and their echoes based on a single incident. In fact, as she recalls her discussion with Professor Godbole about the Marabar caves, Mrs Moore overtly conveys the sentiment that "there are some exquisite echoes in India." She thinks about the echo at Bijapur, which is a "whisper round the dome" of the cave, and about the echoes at Mandu, which are "long, solid sentences that voyage through the air...and return unbroken to their creator." She also comments that the echo in the Marabar cave is nothing like the echoes in the other Indian caves, which shows that she thinks about each cave individually. As opposed to generalizing all caves in India, which is exactly the notion that the binary of English over Indian tries to accomplish, Mrs Moore challenges the idea by basing her opinion on the individual merits of each cave.

Mrs Moore further contests the binary of English as superior to Indian by the terms she uses to depict the echo in the cave. First, the onomatopoeia applied to the sound is "boum." "Boum" is then described as "the sound as far as the human alphabet can express it." The key phrase to the disruption on the binary is "human alphabet," which is in contrast to English or any other specific language. Mrs Moore does not automatically think of the echo in terms of her native language; instead, she encompasses all possible sounds made by all possible human languages. In doing so, she further encompasses all people through the term "human alphabet" as opposed to distinguishing people from each other by their languages. By not expressing the echo through an onomatopoeia created from the English alphabet, for which the binary of English over Indian demands, Mrs Moore challenges the binary by grouping all alphabets together as human and, thus, grouping all people together as human.

However, the onomatopoeia "boum" is spelled with letters from the Latin alphabet. Even though Mrs Moore attempts to fully group all languages and people together with the term "human alphabet," she only encompasses languages that use modifications of the Latin alphabet such as English, German, Polish, and Spanish. She leaves out Arabic and Hebrew scripts, Scandinavian runes, and Asian logographs among numerous other languages that do not use an "abc" alphabet. No matter how hard she tries, Mrs Moore is unable to completely relinquish all of her Orientalist presumptions. However, she does succeed in being less Oriental than her son, who does not understand why she wants to leave the comfort of the Chandrapore club, visit "Indian" caves, and talk to "Indian" people. Thus, the importance of her depicting the echo in the cave as "boum" is not only because Mrs Moore ignores nationality and groups all people together as human. The importance is because even though she is not entirely successful because she does not account for non-Latin alphabets, she makes the attempt eliminate a binary that sets in opposition languages from the West and languages from the East.

As soon as she enters the cave, Mrs Moore finds herself unable to breathe in the stifling air. However, she not only dislikes the cave because of the echo and the stuffiness but because she becomes separated from Adela and Dr Aziz in the darkness amid a mass of villagers and servants. The cave soon becomes "too full" because "all their retinue followed them" in from outside. When Mrs Moore tries to get back to the entrance to exit, she is pushed farther into the cave by more villagers who are entering the cave. She freaks out because she "didn't know who touched her, couldn't breathe, and some vile naked thing struck her face and settled on her mouth like a pad." Although most of the people in and entering the cave are Indian in nationality, they are distinguished into two groups — "villagers and servants" — as opposed to grouping together all Indians as lowly servants. Thus, Mrs Moore again challenges the English over Indian binary by the way she refers to the non-English people on the expedition: "villagers and servants."

To explain, a corresponding binary to English over Indian is civilized over uncivilized. According to Orientalism, all Indians are an uncivilized and lesser people because the English are civilized and higher. However, Mrs Moore contests both binaries because she recognizes class differences within the Indian society. Just like in English, some Indians are villagers while other Indians are servants. She also refers to the Indians as the "mildest individuals" once she is out of the Marabar cave and realizes their "only desire was to honour her" by giving her a tour of their native cave. She does not refer to them as savages, which is equated with uncivilized, or any other negative term simply because their nationality is Indian. In fact, throughout the specific passage, Mrs Moore does not even distinguish anyone in the cave as either Indian or English. She refers to her close companions as Adela and Aziz and to the rest of the group as "villagers and servants." Therefore, she challenges the binary of English as superior to Indian by not basing her names and descriptions of people on their nationality, which is significant because Mrs Moore disregards the Orientalist belief that all English people are superior to the uncivilized Indians.

Finally, Mrs Moore contests the main binary of English over Indian through her actions toward Dr Aziz. While separated from Adela and Aziz in the cave, Mrs Moore experiences a moment of madness. She is terrified by the combination of stench, crowd, and echo and begins "hitting and gasping like a fanatic." Once she is finally able to exit the cave, Mrs Moore smiles for Dr Aziz because she does not want him to think that she did not enjoy the experience even though she did not: "Aziz and Adela emerged smiling and she did not want him to think his treat was a failure, so smiled, too." As an Englishwoman, Mrs Moore is considered by the binary better than Dr Aziz because he is Indian in nationality. As such, she can treat him badly for her negative experience due to his inferiority. However, even though Dr Aziz is an Indian man, Mrs Moore smiles to feign an enjoyable time because she does not want him to think his treat was a failure. As the rest of the people exit the cave, she searches the crowd for the "villain" who pushed her but ultimately concedes that nothing evil was in the cave. Once she calms down, Mrs Moore realizes that Dr Aziz and the villagers and servants only wanted to honor her by offering her a pleasant expedition to the Marabar caves. Instead of yelling at and condescending Dr Aziz as the binary of English over Indian allows, she treats him like a fellow human. Mrs Moore challenges the binary by behaving politely toward a man who tried to give her an enjoyable day trip regardless of his nationality.

Even though Mrs Moore originally wanted to see the real India, her negative experience in the Marabar cave changes her opinion about her visit to the country. In fact, she decides to return to England soon after the daytrip to the caves. However, since binary divisions are a main tenet of colonialism as explained by McLeod in Beginning Postcolonialism, the ways in which Mrs Moore contests the main binary of English as superior to Indian is an effective method of close reading to understand the postcolonial aspects of A Passage to India. Mrs Moore is significant to postcolonial thinking because her actions demonstrate that not all people from England believe the binaries created by Orientalism are true.

Forster, E.M. A Passage to India. Harcourt, Inc.: San Diego, 1924.

McLeod, John. Beginning Postcolonialism. Manchester University Press: Manchester, 2000.