d everywhere is very different from the Church’s emphasis on division between sacred and profane. Modern Christianity rests on the cleavage of self and divine, and Mrs. Moore has abandoned that. However, in many ways Mrs. Moore is neither East nor West as traditionally defined. Her pursuit, simple as it may sound, is to “be one with the universe” (208). Her initial approach to this seems to suggest a more Eastern view, finding worth in people, places and experiences without trying to quantify their value, and believing in universal love as the highest governing power. The Marabar experience, however, puts her in another sphere entirely, beyond even the most enigmatic philosophies of Godbole. The professor seems to have undergone a similar experience in his past; Aziz observes that “a power he couldn’t control capriciously silenced his mind” (76) when it came to the subject of the Marabar. For some reason, though, he was not affected by it as Mrs. Moore was, perhaps because he had the backing of a sympathetic religion to pull him back to conventional reality, or perhaps because she was at such a crucial juncture in her mind and in her life. As Forster says, “She had come to that state where the horror of the universe and its smallness are both visible at the same time” (207). Her perspective has gone beyond race, class, species, and even planet to a place where all are one and the same. This is a expanding of her original philosophy to bring everything in the universe onto the same scale, not just the varying shades of humanity. If everything is equal to everything else, then nothing is really anything, and “Boum, it amounts to the same” (208). Whether due to her age or her ability to view reality independently, free of the ideas and influences of others, Mrs. Moore has arrived at an absolute extreme that no-one else in the book (English or Indian) can attain. Godbole and Adela ...
