English Literature EEN 1024, External Degree Program, Bhiksu University of Sri Lanka Anuradhapura

Summary Of the novel, The Village in the Jungle

Leonard Woolf, husband of Virginia Woolf, the celebrated author, drew on his own experiences as a colonial civil servant in Ceylon to write this ground-breaking book. It is one of the best-loved and best-known stories in Sri Lanka, even today.

The Village in the Jungle describes the lives of a poor family in a tiny isolated village as they struggle to survive. Apart from the problems of poverty, disease, superstition and the pitfalls of the jungle itself, they must contend with an unsympathetic colonial system and the corruption it engenders. The head of the family is a hunter, Silindu, with two daughters. Their lives are shattered when a licentious trader comes to the village and convinces the headman to frame the elder daughter’s husband and send him to prison. Although Silindu tries to intervene, he is put on trial for murder in an English-speaking court where he has no voice.

This volume includes a short story, ‘Pearls and Swine’, which vividly draws on Woolf’s own experiences as a young District Commissioner, as well as a new biographical afterword by Sir Christopher Ondaatje, author of Woolf in Ceylon. Packed with first-hand knowledge of the colonial machine, The Village in the Jungle accurately depicts its profound disregard for its subject peoples.

 Leonard Woolf

Leonard Woolf was born in London in 1880. In 1904 he joined the Civil Service in Ceylon, working there for several years as a government agent. On his return to England in May 1911 he married Virginia Stephen who was, like her husband, a central figure in the Bloomsbury Group. His first novel, The Village in the Jungle, was published in 1913. He worked as literary editor of the Nation (1923–30), as well as for the Hogarth Press, which he co-founded with Virginia Woolf in 1917. He died in 1969.

The Village in the Jungle is a novel by Leonard Woolf, published in 1913, based on his experiences as a colonial civil servant in British-controlled Ceylon in the early years of the 20th century. Ground-breaking in Western fiction for being written from the native rather than the colonial point of view, it is also an influential work of Sri Lankan literature.

Background

Leonard Woolf worked for the British Ceylon Civil Service in Sri Lanka for seven years after graduating from Cambridge University in 1904. He became Assistant Government Agent in Hambantota District, dealing with a variety of administrative and judicial issues. The district he was in charge of had a population of 100,000 people. Books he took with him to Sri Lanka included the complete works of Voltaire. Woolf also kept a comprehensive diary while there and later said that his experiences in the country led to him adopting liberal political views and becoming an opponent of imperialism. He wrote The Village in the Jungle, his first novel, after he returned from Sri Lanka to England in 1911 while he was courting his future wife, Virginia Stephen. He dedicated the novel to her.

Plot

The novel describes the lives of a poor family in a small village called Beddagama as they struggle to survive the challenges presented by poverty, disease, superstition, the unsympathetic colonial system, and the jungle itself. The head of the family is a farmer named Silindu, who has two daughters named Punchi Menika and Hinnihami. After being manipulated by the village authorities and a debt collector, Silindu is put on trial for murder.