In Mary Margaret Key’s The Far Pavilions we move from the foothills of the Himalayas to the exotic palaces of the East. Like Gone With The Wind, the story is a tale of star-crossed love between an Indian princess and an Englishman raised as an Indian. It is also a tale of the star-crossed mixing of East and West as Gone With The Wind had the Civil War between North and South as its backdrop. Throughout the epic-length novel, we follow the story of Ashton Hilary Pelham-Martyn, Ash, who is taken at birth by his Indian nurse and raised to believe he is Indian. He comes to work at the Palace where he meets Anjuli-Bai, the half-caste princess he calls Juli. When his mother dies, Ash discovers his English heritage and leaves Juli to be trained in England. He returns to India to lead a wedding part of two Indian brides, one of the them his beloved Juli. Through the story of Ash and Julie we discover much about the star-crossed relations between East and West. Beneath the surface of the love story we get a look at the difficulties of blending two countries that retain distinctly different religions, ideologies, ethnicities, and cultures.
Many of the differences exposed between East and West have to do with social customs and rituals like marriage. The burning of widows is one such peculiarly Indian custom, one that will create great drama at the end of the story. We also see the differences in marriage customs such as marriage contracts and rules regarding caste defining who and who not one might marry. One of Ash’s difficulties lies in making contact with Juli while she is traveling with the wedding party because of the way brides are kept secluded, “Anjuli remained invisible, and he knew that there was little chance of seeing her again save as a sari-shrouded figure on the occasion of her marriage;…He could not even send her a message, because the brides were now kept closely seclude
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