Ruth Prawer Jhabvala confines her attention to the Indian middle classes and the expatriates and her novels deftly ring the chimes on the same themes, tracing numerous permutations on family conflicts. The second novel The Nature of Passion opens with several scenes of tensions and domestic discord for which Lalaji's wife, his sister and elder son hold him responsible. Their complaint is that instead of confining his younger children within traditional moulds he has not only educated them

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... all reasonable limits but allowed them to forget the real business of life. In a society in which young men must be absorbed in business before they can develop any specific choices and women be married off at a tender age, too much freedom to the young has jeopardized his family's unity, making him a failure