The Glass Palace

Fiction | Novel | Adult | Published in 2000

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Part 1, Chapters 1-5Chapter Summaries & Analyses

Part 1, Chapter 1 Summary

Rajkumar, an 11-year-old Indian boy in Burma, is the only person in Mandalay to recognize the sound of cannon fire approaching the city. After sailing to the city on a sampan, he is told to find work with Ma Cho, who runs a food stall near the palace. When Ma Cho discovers that Rajkumar is an orphan, she agrees to give him a job.

While working on the stall, Rajkumar becomes fascinated by the Glass Palace inside the citadel and asks Ma Cho repeatedly about the royal family who live within. Due to Rajkumar’s Indian heritage, he will not be allowed inside. One morning, he meets Saya John, Ma Cho’s occasional lover. Saya John speaks Hindustani but is not from India and makes his living delivering supplies to the teak camps. When he and Rajkumar talk, Saya John reveals that he was raised by Catholic priests in Malacca.

One holiday, Saya John introduces his son, Mathew. He pays Rajkumar to take Mathew to a festival. As they sit and eat peanuts, Rajkumar tells Mathew how his family died when a plague struck their town. Mathew warns Rajkumar that he and his father will leave the next day; they believe the British are coming, bringing war.

In the following days, panic sets in around the city. The king issues a proclamation saying that he has beaten the British in battle, but this is a lie. The British arrive the next day and Rajkumar hears their cannons approach the city.

Part 1, Chapter 2 Summary

With the British guns echoing in the distance, the royal family inside the palace listen carefully. Though she is late in her third pregnancy, Queen Supayalat, the king’s chief consort, climbs a guard post to listen. She has with her a crowd of young attendants who care for her two daughters. Among these handmaids is Dolly, a slender 10-year-old and the only one who can control the second princess’s fits of anger.

Dolly was bought by Queen Supayalat at a very young age and has no memory of her parents. On this particular morning, she struggles to keep the baby princess calm. The loud guns frighten the baby. The queen fires question after question at the guards, but they provide no answers. She remembers the build-up to the war: a dispute with the British over timber in which the British were–in her view–evidently wrong. The queen has pressured the king into not backing down to the British despite their martial might.

Guards beg the queen to retreat to a safe place. They hassle Dolly, urging her to descend a flight of stairs. Dolly believes the princess is too heavy and that she will drop the baby. The queen intervenes and, together, they run and hide in a dark, damp room with heavy doors.

Hours later, a dispatch informs them that a general has defeated the British. The queen disregards this as lies. Hours after that, the truth emerges: the British have defeated the local forces with ease. Two ministers are competing to hand over the royal family to the invaders. After just fourteen days, the Burmese army surrenders to the invaders.

Part 1, Chapter 3 Summary

In Mandalay, people are beginning to panic. Rajkumar is swept up in a crowd, eventually finding himself confronted with a pair of British soldiers on horseback. Behind them is the British army, marching emotionlessly into the city. A silence falls on the crowd as they realize the soldiers are of Indian descent. The crowd turns on Rajkumar, demanding that he explain the presence of his countrymen. As an unseen assailant attacks, Saya John intervenes, armed with a pistol. John explains to Rajkumar that the sepoys fight for money, though very little. If ever Rajkumar needs a job, Saya John explains, he only has to ask.

The soldiers loot the citadel. That evening, the palace servants escape. The people of the city realize that the citadel is no longer guarded. Rajkumar and Ma Cho enter the palace alongside many others. The crowd begins to tear the palace apart, looking for anything of value.

Ma Cho finds the queen in a distant chamber. She is furious: one day before, commoners entering the palace would have been executed. Now, she is powerless to stop them. As people arrive and bow before the raging queen, Rajkumar spots a face through the crowd and is instantly smitten. The girl introduces herself as Dolly. As soldiers return and the commoners flee, Rajkumar promises to see Dolly again.

Part 1, Chapters 1-3 Analysis

The opening chapters of The Glass Palace establish the colonial backdrop against which the rest of the narrative takes place. The reader is introduced to Burma in its pomp, with the titular citadel described as a “miracle to behold” (4). But even as the reader sees Mandalay through the eyes of a foreigner, there is a rumble of discord. Rajkumar is the only one who understands the trouble lurking on the horizon; when he warns people that the “unfamiliar and unsettling […] stuttering growls” (1) in the distance are British cannons, he is considered “not an authority to be relied upon” (1).

In this opening, Ghosh introduces many of the themes of the text. The racial dynamics are presented starkly, whether it’s Rajkumar’s otherness, the Christianity of Saya John, or the distrust towards these two by the Burmese locals. There is also the looming threat of colonialism and the way the invasion of the British shatters an otherwise opulent world. With so much money being made, it is a dispute over the price of teak that destroys a centuries-old royal bloodline.

Likewise, the king’s absence from the early narrative will foreshadow his later withdrawal from society and better highlight his relationship with the queen. It is Supayalat who portrays the true rage of the ruling dynasty. While the King is issuing false proclamations and holding out hope for an easy resolution, the queen busies herself with resentment and fury. It’s through the queen’s perspective that the trade dispute with the British is explored and, as the invading army approaches, it’s the queen’s perspective alone which can comprehend the magnitude of the situation. Her ruthless anger, the text seems to hint, will become a major part of her character, especially when juxtaposed against the weak and passive king.