Description
A Room With a View, perhaps E. M. Forster’s lightest novel, was also one long in gestation—he began it as early as 1901, and only published it in 1908.
In it we meet young Lucy Honeychurch and her cousin Charlotte Bartlett, who have gone on tour to Italy. During their stay they meet a series of interesting characters, including George Emerson, the son of an eccentric gentleman. The conflict between Lucy’s choice of the unusual George, or her more conventional English suitor Cecil, forms the crux of Forster’s critique of contemporary English society.
Despite the novel being a societal critique, the prose is light and studded with Forster’s easy witticisms. In 1958 Forster added an appendix elaborating on what occurred to the main characters after the novel’s end: the two world wars figure largely in their futures.
Description
The setting of A Passage to India is the British Raj, at a time of racial tension heightened by the burgeoning Indian independence movement. Adela Quested, a young British subject, is visiting India to decide whether to marry a suitor who works there as a city magistrate. During her visit, a local physician, Aziz, is accused of assaulting her. His trial brings tensions between the British rulers and their Indian subjects to a head.
The novel is a complex exploration of colonialism, written at a time when the popular portrayal of the Indian continent was of mystery and savagery. Forster humanized the Indian people for his at-home British audience, highlighting the damage that colonialism caused not just to interpersonal relationships, but to society at large. On the other hand, some modern scholars view the failure of the human relationships in the book as suggesting a fundamental “otherness” between the two cultures: a gulf across which the disparate cultures can only see each other’s shadows. In any case, the novel generated—and continues to generate—an abundant amount of critical analysis.
A Passage to India is the last novel Forster published in his lifetime, and it frequently appears in “best-of” lists of literature: The Modern Library selected it as one of its 100 great works of the 20th century, Time magazine included it in its “All Time 100 Novels” list, and it won the 1924 James Tait Black Memorial Prize for fiction.
Description
Soon after the widowed Lilia Herriton arrives at the dusty Tuscan town of Monteriano with her friend Caroline Abbott, she falls in love with Gino Carella, a handsome—and younger—man. When her overbearing in-laws hear of the engagement, they panic, believing a marriage like that would dishonor their family and the memory of Lilia’s late husband and their child.
Lilia’s brother-in-law, Philip Herriton, rushes to Italy to stop the marriage and “rescue” Lilia from Gino. He soon discovers that he’s too late, and that they’ve already married. Their impulsive decision will have major consequences—not just for the couple itself, but also for Caroline, Philip, and everyone else in their orbit.
Forster was just twenty-six in 1905 when Where Angels Fear to Tread, his first novel, was published. In a contemporary review, The Manchester Guardian called it “almost startlingly original” in its setting and the treatment of its motive, but also wondered if Forster could “could be a little more charitable” in future works. In 1991 it was made into a movie starring Helen Mirren, Helena Bonham Carter, Judy Davis, and Rubert Graves.
Description
Howards End, published in 1910, is considered by many to be Forster’s masterpiece. The plot revolves around three families in Edwardian England: the Schlegels, a trio of half-German, middle-class siblings who to poor people seem rich, but to rich people seem poor; the Wilcoxes, a large, wealthy family of businessmen; and the Basts, a lower class young couple struggling to keep up appearances.
The Schlegel siblings are sharp, intelligent, and idealistic, and they pursue culture and art with an enthusiasm reminiscent of the Bloomsbury group. They befriend the Wilcoxes while on a trip abroad, and the lonely Wilcox matriarch and Margaret Schlegel, the strong-willed elder sister, strike up a friendship. As their families begin butting heads in London, Helen, the younger Schlegel sister, runs in to Leonard Bast while at the opera. Bast is proud and ambitious, but clearly impoverished and lacking gentility. Helen, a rash and fiery idealist, takes him up as a pet project, oblivious to the deep cultural gulf between Bast and themselves as she tries her best to educate him in matters of art and literature and lift him out of his class.
The interplay between the three families becomes a complex reflection on social codes and class difference in England: how class can lock lives in place, and how even the well-to-do are not immune from becoming ossified in their station thanks to the seemingly-unbreakable social conventions of the age. Capitalism, a still-new philosophy of life, is juxtaposed against humanism and the arts as the families try to do what they each think is the right thing. Forster weaves these threads expertly against the backdrop of London city life and the cozy family cottage of Howards End, the ultimate centerpiece in these three families’ lives.