In this article, Freud’s theory of neurosis is used to analyze the
actions of E.M. Forster’s female character in A Passage to India (1924)
as well as those of Sunetra Gupta’s protagonist in Memories of Rain
(1992). To begin with, this text demonstrates that Adela was marginalized
by the ideological apparatus of empire thanks to the circulation of the
myth of the black superpenis. In fact, this article was written to suggest
that many white women who lived in the periphery were psychologically
oppressed by Western patriarchal norms until the myth dealt with
here was challenged by modernism. That is the reason why postcolonial
novels such as Memories of Rain cannot be understood without a wide
knowledge of the tradition they “attack”. As I see it, Gupta’s text does
not only reverse A Passage to India. This novel is a proof that the legend
of the interracial violator has been recently transferred to racial
minorities.
