Characterisation of Olivia

Olivia is an English woman. She comes to India, because of her husband, who´s working there. They´re living together in a small apartment. They have servants, what means that they have enough money for living. They have good contact with other English couples, but less with the Indians. Thus they also live like English people are living and not like Indian ones. All the English couples they have contact with and also she and her husband aren´t integrated in Indian life, but it seems as if they don´t really want that. Olivia loves her husband Douglas at the beginning of the novel very much. But she also has her own opinion on things, for example the suttee. Thus she wouldn´t go with Douglas, if he dies, but go on living, never mind how much she loves him. She has an own opinion. She holds her views about the different things. She gets to know the Nawab. He fascinates her very much, although he has a wild mood swing and so she has to suffer a little. She is seduced and by the Nawab. By and by Olivia´s wish of getting a baby grows bigger and bigger. She tries having a baby with Douglas, but it doesn´t work. She is in a way lonely in India, mainly if Douglas is at work. Then she also gets sad about the situation. In those times she wishes  so much to have a baby and imagines that everything would turn in the good way, if she had one. When the summer heat comes, Olivia doesn´t go with the other women to the colder Simla, but stays with her husband. During the day, she stays at the Nawabs palace. There it´s much colder and more comfortable and she also has amusement, because she spends time with the Nawab and Harry. She likes being in the palace very much. She falls in love with the Nawab and gets pregnant. The probability that the father of the baby will be the Nawab is very probable. Olivia is torn. She doesn´t know what to do. Getting the baby she has been waiting for so long, although it´s so probable that not her husband, but the Nawab is the father, or having an abortion. She decides for having an abortion. After removing the dead fetus, Olivia runs away from hospital and to the Nawabs palace. She breaks up with Douglas. The last days of her life she stays in a house in the mountains, which the Nawab has bought for her. Olivia is a woman, who is committed to all her decisions she made.