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E.M.Forster

biographical notes – greatest works

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A Room with a View

February 23, 2010 by Roy Johnson

tutorial, characters, resources, video, further reading

A Room with a View (1905) is a comedy of manners and a satirical critique of English stuffiness and hypocrisy. Lucy Honeychurch must choose between cultured but emotionally frozen Cecil Vyse and the impulsive George Emerson. The Surrey stockbroker belt is contrasted with the magic of Florence, where she eventually ends up on her honeymoon. Upper middle-class English tourists in Italy are an easy target for Forster in some very amusing scenes.

E.M.Forster - portrait

E.M.Forster

E.M. Forster is a bridge between the nineteenth and the twentieth century novel. He documents the Edwardian and Georgian periods in a witty and elegant prose, satirising the middle and upper classes he knew so well. He was a friend of Virginia Woolf, with whom he worked out some of the ground rules of literary modernism. These included the concept of ‘tea-tabling’ – making the substance of serious fiction the ordinary events of everyday life. He was also a member of The Bloomsbury Group.

His novels grew in complexity and depth, until he eventually gave up fiction in 1923. This was because he no longer felt he could write about the subject of heterosexual love which he did not know or feel. Instead, he turned to essays – which are well worth reading.


A Room with a View – plot summary

A Room with a ViewLucy Honeychurch, a young upper middle class woman, visits Italy under the charge of her older cousin Charlotte. At their guesthouse, in Florence, they are given rooms that look into the courtyard rather than out over the river Arno. Mr. Emerson, a fellow guest, generously offers them the rooms belonging to himself and his son George. Lucy is an avid young pianist. Mr. Beebe an English clergyman guest, watches her passionate playing and predicts that someday she will live her life with as much gusto as she plays the piano.

Lucy’s visit to Italy is marked by several significant encounters with the Emersons. George explains that his father means well, but always offends everyone. Mr. Emerson tells Lucy that his son needs her in order to overcome his youthful melancholy. Later, Lucy comes in close contact with two quarreling Italian men. One man stabs the other, and she faints, to be rescued (and kissed) by George.

On a country outing in the hills, Lucy again encounters George, who is standing on a terrace covered with blue violets. George kisses her again, but this time Charlotte sees him and chastises him and leaves with Lucy for Rome the next day.

The second half of the book centers on Lucy’s home in Surrey, where she lives with her mother and her brother, Freddy. A man she met in Rome, the snobbish Cecil Vyse, proposes marriage to her for the third time, and she accepts him. He disapproves of her family and the country people she knows. There is a small, ugly villa available for rent in the town, and as a joke, Cecil offers it to the Emersons, whom he meets by chance in a museum. They take him up on the offer and move in, much to Lucy’s initial horror.

George plays tennis with the Honeychurches on a Sunday when Cecil is at his most intolerable. Cecil reads from a book by Miss Lavish, a woman who also stayed with Lucy and Charlotte in Florence. The novel records a kiss among violets, so Lucy realizes that Charlotte let the secret out. In a moment alone, George kisses her again. Lucy tells him to leave, but George insists that Cecil is not the right man for her. Lucy sees Cecil in a new light, and breaks off her engagement that night.

However, Lucy will not believe that she loves George; she wants to stay unmarried and travel to Greece with some elderly women she met in Italy. She meets old Mr. Emerson by chance, who insists that she loves George and should marry him, because it is what her soul truly wants. Lucy realizes he is right, and though she must fly against convention, she marries George, and the book ends with the happy couple staying together in the Florence pension again, in a room with a view.


Study resources

A Room with a View A Room with a View – Penguin Classics – Amazon UK

A Room with a View A Room with a View – Penguin Classics – Amazon US

A Room with a View A Room with a View – unabridged classics Audio CD – Amazon UK

A Room with a View A Room with a View – BBC audio books edition – Amazon UK

A Room with a View A Room with a View – Merchant-Ivory film on VHS – Amazon UK

A Room with a View A Room with a View – eBook version at Project Gutenberg

A Room with a View A Room with a View – audioBook version at LibriVox

Red button The Cambridge Companion to E.M.Forster – Amazon UK

Red button E.M.Forster at Wikipedia – biographical notes, links

Red button E.M.Forster at Mantex – tutorials, web links, study resources


Principal characters
Lucy Honeychurch a musical and spirited girl
Mrs Honeychurch her mother, a widow
Freddy her brother
Charlotte Bartlett Lucy’s older, poorer cousin and an old maid
Mr Emerson a liberal, plain-speaking widower
George Emerson his truth-seeking son
Cecil Vyse an over-cultivated snob
Mr Beebe the rector in Lucy’s home town
Miss Lavish lady novelist with strident, commonplace views
Mr Eager self-righteous British chaplain in Florence

A Room with a View – film version

Merchant-Ivory 1985 film adaptation

This is a production which takes one or two minor liberties with the original novel. But it’s beautifully acted, with the deliciously pouting Helena Bonham Carter as the heroine Lucy, plus Denholm Eliot as Mr Emerson, Daniel Day-Lewis as a wonderfully pompous Cecil Vyse, and Maggie Smith as the poisonous hanger-on Charlotte. The settings are delightfully poised between Florentine Italy and the home counties stockbroker belt. I’ve watched it several times, and it never ceases to be visually elegant and emotionally well observed. This film was nominated for eight Academy awards when it appeared, and put the Merchant-Ivory team on the cultural map.

Red button See reviews of the film at the Internet Movie Database


Further reading

Red button David Bradshaw, The Cambridge Companion to E.M. Forster, Cambridge University Press, 2007

Red button Richard Canning, Brief Lives: E.M. Forster, London: Hesperus Press, 2009

Red button G.K. Das and John Beer, E. M. Forster: A Human Exploration, Centenary Essays, New York: New York University Press, 1979.

Red button Mike Edwards, E.M. Forster: The Novels, London: Palgrave Macmillan, 2001

Red button E.M. Forster, Aspects of the Novel, London: Penguin Classics, 2005

Red button P.N. Furbank, E.M. Forster: A Life, Manner Books, 1994

Red button Frank Kermode, Concerning E.M. Forsterl, London: Weidenfeld and Nicolson, 2009

Red button Rose Macaulay, The Writings of E. M. Forster, New York: Barnes and Noble, 1970.

Red button Nigel Messenger, How to Study an E.M. Forster Novel, London: Palgrave Macmillan, 1991

Red button Wendy Moffatt, E.M. Forster: A New Life, London: Bloomsbury Publishing, 2010

Red button Nicolas Royle, E.M. Forster (Writers and Their Work), Northcote House Publishers, 1999

Red button Jeremy Tambling (ed), E.M. Forster: Contemporary Critical Essays, London: Palgrave Macmillan, 1995


A Room with a View – film interview

Daniel Day Lewis on Cecil Vyse


Other works by E.M. Forster

Where Angels Fear to TreadWhere Angels Fear to Tread (1902) is Forster’s first novel and a very witty debut. A spirited middle-class English girl goes to Italy and becomes involved with a local man. The English family send out a party to ‘rescue’ her (shades of Henry James) – but they are too late; she has already married him. But when a baby is born, the family returns with renewed hostility. The clash between Mediterranean living spirit and deadly English rectitude is played out with amusing and tragic consequences.

Forster greatest works Buy the book at Amazon UK
Forster greatest works Buy the book at Amazon US

 

Howards EndHowards End (1910) is a State of England novel, and possibly Forster’s greatest work – though that’s just my opinion. Two families are contrasted: the intellectual and cultivated Schlegels, and the capitalist Wilcoxes. A marriage between the two leads to spiritual rivalry over the possession of property. Following on their social coat tails is a working-class would-be intellectual who is caught between two conflicting worlds. The outcome is a mixture of tragedy and resignation, leavened by hope for the future in the young and free-spirited.

Forster greatest works Buy the book at Amazon UK
Forster greatest works Buy the book at Amazon US

 


E.M.Forster: A LifeE.M.Forster: A Life is a readable and well illustrated biography by P.N. Furbank. This book has been much praised for the sympathetic understanding Nick Furbank brings to Forster’s life and work. It is also a very scholarly book, with plenty of fascinating details of the English literary world during Forster’s surprisingly long life. It has become the ‘standard’ biography, and it is very well written too. Highly recommended.

E.M. Forster Buy the book here

 

© Roy Johnson 2010


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Filed Under: E.M.Forster Tagged With: A Room with a View, E.M.Forster, English literature, Literary studies, study guide, The novel

E.M.Forster – biographical notes

September 27, 2009 by Roy Johnson

E.M.Forster - portrait1879. E.M.Forster (Edward Morgan) born in London. His father dies the following year.

1887. Inherits £8,000 from his great-aunt Marianne Thornton.

1890. Educated at private schools in Eastbourne and Tonbridge Wells, where he was very unhappy and developed a lasting dislike of the public school system.

1897. Studies classics and history at King’s College, Cambridge. Influenced by philosopher G.E. Moore and the notion that the purpose of life is to love, create, to contemplate beauty in art, and to cultivate friendships. Becomes a member of the Apostles, which was later to form the nucleus of the Bloomsbury Group. He was a contemporary of Leonard Woolf, Lytton Strachey, Thoby Stephen, and Maynard Keynes.

1901. One year’s tour of Italy and Austria with his mother. Begins writing seriously.

1902. Teaches at the Working Men’s College and Cambridge Local Lectures Board (extra-mural department).

1904. Begins contributing stories to the Independent Review, launched by a group of Cambridge friends, including G.M.Trevelyan. ‘The Story of a Panic’ his first published work.

1905. Where Angels Fear to Tread is published. Spends some time in Germany as tutor to the children of Countess Elizabeth von Arnim (first cousin of Katherine Mansfield).

1906. Works as a private tutor to Syed Ross Masood, a colonial Indian patriot, for whom he develops a passionate attachment.

1907. The Longest Journey published. Forster is a member of the Bloomsbury Group and a friend of Virginia Woolf, Leonard Woolf, Lytton Strachey, and Roger Fry.

1908. A Room with a View.


E.M.Forster: A Life is a readable and well illustrated biography by P.N. Furbank. This book has been much praised for the sympathetic understanding Nick Furbank brings to Forster’s life and work. It is also a very scholarly book, with plenty of fascinating details of the English literary world during Forster’s surprisingly long life. It has become the ‘standard’ biography, and it is very well written too. Highly recommended.
 


1910. Howard’s End: his first major success, which established his reputation as a writer of importance.

1911. Publishes a collection of rather light and whimsical short stories, The Celestial Omnibus.

1912. Visits India and travels with Masood. Begins writing A Passage to India.

1913. Visits Edward Carpenter (an early evangelist for gay rights) and as a result begins writing Maurice, a novel about homosexual love which is not published until 1971, after Forster’s death.

1915. Begins working for the Red Cross in Alexandria.

1919. Returns to England.

1921. Second visit to India. Becomes private secretary to the Maharajah of Dewas.

1924. A Passage to India widely acclaimed. But gives up writing novels because he felt he could not write openly and honestly about sexual relations.

1927. Elected Fellow of King’s College, Cambridge. Gives the Clark lectures which are published as Aspects of the Novel.

1934. First president of the National Council for Civil Liberties.

1936. Abinger Harvest: a collection of his essays and reviews.

1945. Death of his mother. Elected Honorary Fellow at King’s and takes up entitlement to live there.

1947. Lecture tours in the United States.

1969. Awarded the Order of Merit.

1970. Dies in the home of friends.

© Roy Johnson 2009


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Filed Under: Bloomsbury Group, E.M.Forster Tagged With: Biography, E.M.Forster, Literary studies, The novel

EM Forster – greatest works

September 18, 2009 by Roy Johnson

novels and stories by Bloomsbury modernist

EM Forster greatest worksE.M.Forster is often seen as a bridge between the nineteenth and the twentieth century novel. He documents the Edwardian and Georgian periods in a witty and elegant prose, satirising the middle and upper classes he knew so well. He was a friend of Virginia Woolf, with whom he worked out some of the ground rules of literary modernism. These included the concept of what they called ‘tea-tabling’ – making the substance of serious fiction the ordinary events of everyday life. He was also an inner member of The Bloomsbury Group. His novels grew in complexity and depth, and yet he suddenly gave up fiction in 1923. This was because he no longer felt he could write about the subject of heterosexual love which he did not know or feel. Instead, he turned to essays – which are well worth reading.

 

Where Angels Fear to TreadWhere Angels Fear to Tread (1902) This is Forster’s first novel and very witty debut. A wealthy and spirited middle-class English girl goes to Italy and becomes involved with a penniless local man. The English family send out a party to ‘rescue’ her (shades of Henry James) – but they are too late; she has already married him. But when a baby is born, the family returns with renewed hostility. The clash between living Mediterranean spirit and deadly English rectitude is played out with amusing and tragic consequences. If you’ve not read Forster before, this is a good place to start.
E.M.Forster greatest works Buy the book at Amazon UK
E.M.Forster greatest works Buy the book at Amazon US

 

Where Angels Fear to Tread (DVD)Where Angels Fear to Tread – DVD This film version is not a Merchant-Ivory production, although it’s done very much in their style. But it is accurate and entirely sympathetic to the spirit of the novel, possibly even stronger in satirical edge, well acted, and superbly beautiful to watch. Much is made of the visual contrast between the beautiful Italian setting and the straight-laced English capital from which the prudery and imperialist spirit emerges. The lovely Helena Bonham-Carter establishes herself as the perfect English Rose in this her breakthrough production. Helen Mirren is wonderful as the spirited Lilia who defies English prudery and narrow-mindedness and marries for love – with results which manage to upset everyone.
E.M. Forster greatest works Where Angels Fear to Tread Buy the DVD at Amazon UK

 

A Room with a ViewA Room with a View (1905) This is another comedy of manners and a satirical critique of English stuffiness and hypocrisy. The impulsive and cultivated Lucy Honeychurch must choose between taklented but emotionally frozen Cecil Vyse and the impulsive George Emerson. The staid Surrey stockbroker belt is contrasted with the magic of Florence, where she eventually ends up on her honeymoon. Upper middle-class English tourists in Italy are an easy target for Forster in some very amusing scenes.
E.M.Forster greatest works Buy the book at Amazon UK
E.M.Forster greatest works Buy the book at Amazon US

 

A Room with a View (DVD)A Room with a View – DVD This is a Merchant-Ivory production which takes one or two minor liberties with the original novel. But it’s still well acted, with the deliciously pouting Helena Bonham Carter as the heroine, Denholm Eliot as Mr Emerson, Daniel Day-Lewis as a wonderfully pompous Cecil Vyse, and Maggie Smith as the poisonous hanger-on Charlotte. The settings are delightfully poised between Florentine Italy and the home counties stockbroker belt. I’ve watched it several times, and it never ceases to be visually elegant and emotionally well observed. This film was nominated for eight Academy awards when it appeared, and put the Merchant-Ivory team on the cultural map.
E.M. Forster greatest works A Room with a View Buy the DVD at Amazon UK

 

The Longest JourneyThe Longest Journey (1907) is one for specialists, and is widely regarded as Forster’s ‘problem’ novel. That is, it deals with important personal issues, but does not seem so well executed as his other works. Rickie Elliot sets out from Cambridge with the intention of writing. In order to marry the beautiful but shallow Agnes, however, he becomes a schoolmaster instead. This abandonment of personal values for those of the world leads him gradually into a living death of conformity and spiritual hypocrisy from which he eventually redeems himself – but at a tragic price.
E.M.Forster greatest works Buy the book at Amazon UK
E.M.Forster greatest works Buy the book at Amazon US

 

Howards EndHowards End (1910) is a State of England novel, and possibly Forster’s greatest work – though that’s just my opinion. Two families are contrasted: the intellectual and cultivated Schlegels, and the capitalist Wilcoxes. A marriage between the two leads to spiritual rivalry over the possession of property. Following on their social coat tails is a working-class would-be intellectual who is caught between two conflicting worlds. The outcome is a mixture of tragedy and resignation, leavened by hope for the future in the young and free-spirited.
E.M.Forster greatest works Buy the book at Amazon UK
E.M.Forster greatest works Buy the book at Amazon US

 

Howards End (DVD)Howards End – DVD This is arguably Forster’s greatest work, and the film lives up to it. It is well acted, with very good performances from Emma Thompson and Helena Bonham Carter as the Schlegel sisters, and Anthony Hopkins as the bully Willcox. The locations and details are accurate, and it lives up to the critical, poignant scenes of the original – particularly the conflict between the upper middle-class Wilcoxes and the working-class aspirant Leonard Baskt. This is another adaptation which I have watched several times over, and always been impressed.
E.M. Forster greatest works Howards End Buy the DVD at Amazon UK

 

A Passage to IndiaA Passage to India, (1923) was started in 1913 then finished partly in response to the Amritsar massacre of 1919. Snobbish and racist colonial administrators and their wives are contrasted with sympathetically drawn Indian characters. Dr Aziz is groundlessly accused of assaulting a naive English girl on a visit to the mystic Marabar Caves. There is a set piece trial scene, where she dramatically withdraws any charges. The results strengthen the forces of Indian nationalism, which are accurately predicted to be successful ‘after the next European war’ at the end of the novel. Issues of politics, race, and gender, set against vivid descriptions of Chandrapore and memorable evocations of the surrounding landscape. This is generally regarded as Forster’s masterpiece.
E.M.Forster greatest works Buy the book at Amazon UK
E.M.Forster greatest works Buy the book at Amazon US

 

A Passage to India (DVD)A Passage to India – DVD This adaptation by David Lean is something of a mixed bag. It’s well organised, reasonably true to the original, and has some visually spectacular scenes. James Fox is convincing as the central character Fielding. But it has tonal inconsistencies, and to cast Alec Guinness as the Indian mystic Godbole is verging on the ridiculous. Nevertheless there is some good cameo acting, particularly Edith Evans as Mrs Moore. Watch out for the Indian signpost half way through that looks as if it’s made out of cardboard.
E.M. Forster greatest works A Passage to India Buy the DVD at Amazon UK

 

MauriceMaurice, (1967) is something from Forster’s bottom drawer. It was written in 1913-14, but not published until after his death. It’s an autobiographical novel of his gay university days which is explicit enough that couldn’t be published in his own lifetime. It’s light, amusing, and fairly inconsequential compared to the novels he wrote whilst pretending to be straight. This poses an interesting critical problem, when you would imagine he could have been more honest and therefore more successful.

E.M.Forster greatest works Buy the book at Amazon UK
E.M.Forster greatest works Buy the book at Amazon US

 

Aspects of the NovelAspects of the Novel (1927) was originally a series of lectures on the nature of fiction. Forster discusses all the common elements of novels such as story, plot, and character. He shows how they are created, with all the insight of a skilled practitioner. Drawing on examples from classic European literature, he writes in a way which makes it all seem very straightforward and easily comprehensible. This book is highly recommended as an introduction to literary studies.

E.M.Forster greatest works Buy the book at Amazon UK
E.M.Forster greatest works Buy the book at Amazon US

 

E.M.Forster - Collected StoriesCollected Short Stories is like a glimpse into Forster’s workshop – where he tried out ideas for his longer fictions. This volume contains his best stories – The Story of a Panic, The Celestial Omnibus, The Road from Colonus, The Machine Stops, and The Eternal Moment. Most were written in the early part of Forster’s long career as a writer. Rich in irony and alive with sharp observations on the surprises in life, the tales often feature violent events, discomforting coincidences, and other odd happenings that throw the characters’ perceptions and beliefs off balance.
E.M.Forster greatest works Buy the book at Amazon UK
E.M.Forster greatest works Buy the book at Amazon US

 

E.M.Forster: A LifeE.M.Forster: A Life is a readable and well illustrated biography by P.N. Furbank. This book has been much praised for the sympathetic understanding Nick Furbank brings to Forster’s life and work. It is also a very scholarly book, with plenty of fascinating details of the English literary world during Forster’s surprisingly long life. It has become the ‘standard’ biography, and it is very well written too. Highly recommended.
E.M. Forster Buy the book at Amazon UK

 

© Roy Johnson 2004


More on E.M. Forster
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Filed Under: E.M.Forster Tagged With: A Passage to India, A Room with a View, Aspects of the Novel, Bloomsbury Group, E.M.Forster, Howards End, Literary studies, Maurice, Modernism, The Longest Journey, Where Angels Fear to Tread

EM Forster and Cinema

May 16, 2016 by Roy Johnson

film adaptations of E.M. Forster’s novels

The novels of E.M. Forster have proved a very fruitful source for writers and directors adapting his work for the cinema. All his major works have been turned into very successful films which capture the spirit and the atmosphere of Edwardian England in which they are set. They have also profited from first rate actors, some of whom (such as Helena Bonham Carter) have made their names via performances in these films.


Where Angels Fear to Tread (novel 1902 – film 1991)

This film version is not a Merchant-Ivory production, although it’s done very much in their style. But it is accurate and entirely sympathetic to the spirit of the novel, possibly even stronger in satirical edge, well acted, and superbly beautiful to watch. Much is made of the visual contrast between the beautiful Italian setting and the straight-laced English capital from which the prudery and imperialist spirit emerges. The lovely Helena Bonham-Carter establishes herself as the perfect English Rose in this production, and she carried it through to several more. Helen Mirren is wonderful as the spirited Lilia who defies English prudery and narrow-mindedness and marries for love – with results which manage to upset everyone.

1991 Charles Sturridge film adaptation

Director: Charles Sturridge. Screenplay: Tim Sullivan. Starring – Rupert Graves (Philip Herriton), Helen Mirren (Lilia Herriton), Barbara Jefford (Mrs Herriton), Judy Davis (Harriet Herriton), Helena Bonham Carter (Caroline Abbott), Giovanni Guidelli (Gino Carella). Filmed in London and San Gimignano and Montepulciano, Italy.

EM Forster and Cinema Where Angels Fear to Tread – film adaptation on DVD – Amazon UK

EM Forster and Cinema Reviews of the film – at the Internet Movie Database

EM Forster and Cinema Where Angels Fear to Tread – a tutorial and study guide

EM Forster and Cinema Where Angels Fear to Tread – Penguin Classics – Amazon UK

EM Forster and Cinema Where Angels Fear to Tread – Penguin Classics – Amazon US


Howards End (novel 1910- film 1992)

The novel is arguably Forster’s greatest work, and this film adaptation by Merchant-Ivory lives up to it as an achievement. It is well acted, with very good performances from Emma Thompson and Helena Bonham Carter as the Schlegel sisters, and Anthony Hopkins as the bully Wilcox. Veteran luvvie and Trotskyist Vanessa Redgrave plays the mystic Mrs Willcox. The locations and details are accurate, and it gives an accurate rendition of the critical, poignant scenes in the original – particularly the conflict between the upper middle-class Wilcoxes and the working-class aspirant Leonard Bast. This is an adaptation I have watched several times over, and always been impressed.

1992 Merchant-Ivory production

Director: James Ivory. Screenplay: Ruth Prawer Jhabvala. Starring – Anthony Hopkins (Henry Wilcox), Vanessa Redgrave (Ruth Wilcox), James Wilby (Charles Wilcox), Helena Bonham Carter (Helen Schlegel), Emma Thompson (Margaret Schlegel), Prunella Scales (Aunt Juley), Samuel West (Leonard Bast). Filmed in Henley-on-Thames and central London

EM Forster and Cinema Howards End – Merchant-Ivory film on DVD – Amazon UK

EM Forster and Cinema Reviews of the film – at the Internet Movie Database

EM Forster and Cinema Howards End – a tutorial and study guide

EM Forster and Cinema Howards End – Penguin Classics -Amazon UK

EM Forster and Cinema Howards End – Penguin Classics -Amazon US


A Room with a View (novel 1905 – film 1985)

This is a production which takes one or two minor liberties with the original novel. But it’s beautifully acted, with the deliciously pouting Helena Bonham Carter as the heroine Lucy, plus Denholm Eliot as Mr Emerson, Daniel Day-Lewis as a wonderfully pompous Cecil Vyse, and Maggie Smith as the poisonous hanger-on Charlotte. The settings are delightfully poised between Florentine Italy and the home counties stockbroker belt. I’ve watched it several times, and it never ceases to be visually elegant and emotionally well observed. This film was nominated for eight Academy awards when it appeared, and put the Merchant-Ivory team on the cultural map.

Merchant-Ivory 1985 film adaptation

Director: James Ivory. Screenplay: Ruth Prawver Jhabvala. Starring – Maggie Smith (Charlotte Bartlett), Helena Bonham Carter (Lucy Honeychurch), Denholm Elliott (Mr Emerson), Julian Sands (George Emerson), Judi Dench ((Eleanor Lavish), Daniel Day-Lewis (Cecil Vyse) Rupert Graves (Freddy Honeychurch), Simon Callow (Reverend Beeb). Filmed in Florence and Fiesole, Italy, East Sussex, and London.

EM Forster and Cinema A Room with a View – Merchant-Ivory film on DVD – Amazon UK

EM Forster and Cinema Reviews of the film – at the Internet Movie Database

EM Forster and Cinema A Room with a View – a tutorial and study guide

EM Forster and Cinema A Room with a View – Penguin Classics – Amazon UK

EM Forster and Cinema A Room with a View – Penguin Classics – Amazon US


A Passage to India (novel 1924 – film 1984)

This was David Lean’s last film, and possibly his most successful. It received eleven nominations at the Academy Awards. At seventy-seven years of age, Peggy Ashcroft became the oldest actress to win Best Supporting Actress award, and Maurice Jarre won his third Academy award for the original music score.

After more than a quarter of a century, one aspect of the film will strike contemporary viewers as controversial if not politically incorrect. That is the casting of Alec Guinness as Godbole, the Indian mystic. This sort of racial insensitivity was fairly common at that time. The film also lacks some of the anti-Imperialist bite that is present in Forster’s original text, though Lean compensates with spectacular pro-India visuals.

1984 David Lean film adaptation

Director: David Lean. Screenplay: Santha Rama Rau and David Lean. Starring – Judy Davis (Adela Quested), Victor Banerjee (Dr Aziz), Peggy Ashcroft (Mrs Moore), James Fox (Fielding), Alec Guinness (Godbole), Nigel Havers (Ronny), Richard Wilson (Turton). Filmed in Kashmir and Bangalore, India, and Shepperton and Pinewood studios, England.

EM Forster and Cinema A Passage to India – David Lean film on DVD – Amazon UK

EM Forster and Cinema Reviews of the film – at the Internet Movie Database

EM Forster and Cinema A Room with a View – Penguin Classics – Amazon UK

EM Forster and Cinema A Room with a View – Penguin Classics – Amazon US


Maurice (novel 1913 – film 1987)

This is the coming out as gay novel that E.M. Forster wrote in 1913-1914 but that remained unpublished during his own lifetime. He had reservations about its literary merits, feelings shared by Kings College Cambridge, who owned the rights to the novel. The College was eventually persuaded to give permission for the film adaptation by the powerful advocacy of its producer, Ismail Merchant.

1987 Merchant-Ivory film adaptation

Director: James Ivory. Screenplay: Ivory and Kit Hesketh-Harvey. Starring – James Wilby (Maurice Hall), Hugh Grant (Clive Durham), Rupert Graves (Alec Scudder), Denholm Elliott (Doctor Barry), Simon Callow (Mr Ducie), Billie Whitelaw (Mrs Hall), Barry Foster (Dean Cornwallis), Ben Kingsley (Lasker-Jones). Filmed at Kings College Cambridge and various locations in London.

EM Forster and Cinema Maurice – film on DVD – Amazon UK

EM Forster and Cinema Maurice – Penguin Classics – Amazon UK

E.M.Forster and Cinema Maurice – Penguin Classics – Amazon US

© Roy Johnson 2016


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Filed Under: E.M.Forster Tagged With: Cinema, E.M.Forster, English literature, Film, The novel

Howards End

March 13, 2010 by Roy Johnson

tutorial, video, study resources, further reading

Howards End, (1910) is what’s called a ‘a State of England’ novel, and is possibly Forster’s greatest work – though that’s just my opinion. Two families are contrasted: the intellectual and cultivated Schlegels, and the capitalist Wilcoxes. A marriage between the two leads to spiritual rivalry over the possession of property. Following on their social coat tails is a working-class would-be intellectual who is caught between two conflicting worlds. The outcome is a mixture of tragedy and resignation, leavened by hope for the future in the young and free-spirited.

E.M.Forster - portrait

E.M.Forster

E.M. Forster is a bridge between the nineteenth and the twentieth century novel. He documents the Edwardian and Georgian periods in a witty and elegant prose, satirising the middle and upper classes he knew so well.

He was a friend of Virginia Woolf, with whom he worked out some of the ground rules of literary modernism. These included the concept of ‘tea-tabling’ – making the substance of serious fiction the ordinary events of everyday life. He was also a member of The Bloomsbury Group.

His novels grew in complexity and depth, until he eventually gave up fiction in 1923. This was because he no longer felt he could write about the subject of heterosexual love which he did not know or feel. Instead, he turned to essays – which are well worth reading.


Howards End – plot summary

Howards EndThe book is about two families in England at the beginning of the twentieth century: the Wilcoxes, who are rich capitalists with a fortune made in the Colonies, and the half-German Schlegel sisters (Margaret and Helen), who have a lot in common with the real-life Bloomsbury Group. Running alongside as a narrative strand are the Basts, a couple who are struggling members of the lower-middle class. The Schlegel sisters try to help the poor Basts and try to make the Wilcoxes less prejudiced. The motto of the book is “Only connect…”

Only connect! That was the whole of her sermon. Only connect the prose and the passion and both will be exalted, and human love will be seen at its height. Live in fragments no longer.

The Schlegels frequently encounter the Wilcoxes. The eldest, Margaret Schlegel, becomes friends with Ruth Wilcox, whose most prized possession is her family house at Howards End. She wishes that Margaret could live there, as she feels that it might be in good hands with her.

Ruth’s own husband and children do not value the house and its rich history, because notions of spiritual affinities are lost on them. Since Margaret and her family are about to be evicted from their London home by a developer, Ruth bequeaths the cottage to Margaret in a handwritten note on her deathbed. This is delivered to her husband from the nursing home, causing great consternation among the Wilcoxes. Mrs Wilcox’s widowed husband Henry and his children burn the note without telling Margaret about her inheritance.

Over the course of several years, Margaret becomes friends with Henry Wilcox and eventually becomes engaged to him. The more free-spirited Margaret tries to get Henry to open up more, to little effect. Henry’s elder son Charles and his wife meanwhile try to keep Margaret from taking possession of Howards End, even though she is going to be married to its owner.

Gradually, Margaret becomes aware of Henry’s dismissive attitude towards the lower classes. On Henry’s advice, Helen tells Leonard Bast to quit his respectable job as a clerk at an insurance company, because the company stands outside a protective group of companies and thus is vulnerable to failure. A few weeks later, Henry casually reverses his opinion, having entirely forgotten about Bast. But it is too late, and Bast has lost his tenuous hold on financial solvency.

Bast lives with Jacky, a former prostitute for whom he feels responsible and whom he eventually marries. Helen continues to try to help young Leonard Bast, but Henry will not countenance helping him. Then it is suddenly revealed that Basts’s wife had previously been Henry’s mistress in Cyprus. He had abandoned her, an expatriate English girl on foreign soil with no way to return home.

Margaret confronts Henry about his ill-treatment, and he is ashamed of the affair but unrepentant about his harsh treatment of her. In a moment of pity for the poor, doomed Bast, Helen has an affair with him. Finding herself pregnant, Helen leaves England to travel through Germany to conceal her condition, but eventually returns to England when she receives news of her Aunt Juley’s illness.

She refuses a face-to-face meeting with Margaret in an effort to hide her pregnancy but is fooled by Margaret – acting on the advice of Henry – into a meeting at Howards End. Henry and Margaret plan an intervention with a doctor, thinking Helen’s evasive behavior is a sign of mental illness. When they come upon Helen at Howards End, they also discover the pregnancy.

Margaret tries in vain to convince Henry that if he can countenance his own affair, he should forgive Helen hers. Mr Bast arrives having been tormented by the affair wishing to speak with Helen and reconcile however, Henry’s son, Charles, attacks Bast for the dishonor he has brought to Helen, and accidentally kills him. Charles is charged with manslaughter and sent to jail for three years.

The ensuing scandal and shock cause Henry to re-examine his life and he begins to connect with others. He bequeaths Howards End to Margaret, who states that it will go to her nephew – Helen’s son by Bast – when she dies. Helen reconciles with her sister and Henry, and decides to raise her child at Howards End.


Study resources

Howards End Howards End – Penguin Classics -Amazon UK

Howards End Howards End – Penguin Classics -Amazon US

Howards End Howards End – Kindle eBook edition

Howards End Howards End – Blackstone audio books edition – Amazon UK

Howards End Howards End – Merchant-Ivory film on DVD – Amazon UK

Howards End Howards End – eBook versions at Gutenberg

Howards End Howards End – audioBook version at LibriVox

Howards End Howards End – Brodie’s Notes – Amazon UK

Howards End Howards End – York Notes – Amazon UK

Red button The Cambridge Companion to E.M.Forster – Amazon UK

Red button E.M. Forster – biographical notes

Red button E.M.Forster at Wikipedia – biographical notes, links

Red button E.M.Forster at Mantex – tutorials, web links, study resources


Howards End – film version

The novel is arguably Forster’s greatest work, and this film adaptation by Merchant-Ivory lives up to it as an achievement. It is well acted, with very good performances from Emma Thompson and Helena Bonham Carter as the Schlegel sisters, and Anthony Hopkins as the bully Willcox. Veteran luvvie and Trotskyist Vanessa Redgrave plays the mystic Mrs Willcox. The locations and details are accurate, and it gives an accurate rendition of the critical, poignant scenes in the original – particularly the conflict between the upper middle-class Wilcoxes and the working-class aspirant Leonard Bast. This is an adaptation I have watched several times over, and always been impressed.

1992 – screenplay by Ruth Prawer-Jhabvala

Red button See reviews of the film at the Internet Movie Database


Principal characters
Margaret Schlegel cultured eldest sister, aged 29
Helen Schlegel romantic sister, in her early 20s
Tibby Schlegel their younger brother
Henry Willcox a rich industrialist
Ruth Willcox his first wife, who owns Howards End
Charles Willcox their priggish eldest son
Dolly Willcox lightweight fertile wife to Charles
Paul Willcox middle child, who goes to Nigeria
Evie Willcox youngest child
Leonard Bast young autodidactic clerk
Jacky Bast a former prostitute
Aunt Juley sister of deceased Mrs Schlegel
Percy Cahill Dolly’s uncle, who marries Evie

Howards End

first edition – Arnold 1910


Further reading

Red button David Bradshaw, The Cambridge Companion to E.M. Forster, Cambridge University Press, 2007

Red button Richard Canning, Brief Lives: E.M. Forster, London: Hesperus Press, 2009

Red button G.K. Das and John Beer, E. M. Forster: A Human Exploration, Centenary Essays, New York: New York University Press, 1979.

Red button Mike Edwards, E.M. Forster: The Novels, London: Palgrave Macmillan, 2001

Red button E.M. Forster, Aspects of the Novel, London: Penguin Classics, 2005

Red button P.N. Furbank, E.M. Forster: A Life, Manner Books, 1994

Red button Frank Kermode, Concerning E.M. Forsterl, London: Weidenfeld and Nicolson, 2009

Red button Rose Macaulay, The Writings of E. M. Forster, New York: Barnes and Noble, 1970.

Red button Nigel Messenger, How to Study an E.M. Forster Novel, London: Palgrave Macmillan, 1991

Red button Wendy Moffatt, E.M. Forster: A New Life, London: Bloomsbury Publishing, 2010

Red button Nicolas Royle, E.M. Forster (Writers and Their Work), Northcote House Publishers, 1999

Red button Jeremy Tambling (ed), E.M. Forster: Contemporary Critical Essays, London: Palgrave Macmillan, 1995

 


Other works by E.M. Forster

The Longest JourneyThe Longest Journey (1907) is one for specialists, and is widely regarded as Forster’s ‘problem’ novel. That is, it deals with important personal issues, but does not seem so well executed as his other works. Rickie Elliot sets out from Cambridge with the intention of writing. In order to marry the beautiful but shallow Agnes, however, he becomes a schoolmaster instead. This abandonment of personal values for those of the world leads him gradually into a living death of conformity and spiritual hypocrisy from which he eventually redeems himself – but at a tragic price.
E.M.Forster greatest works Buy the book at Amazon UK
E.M.Forster greatest works Buy the book at Amazon US

A Passage to IndiaA Passage to India, (1923) was started in 1913 then finished partly in response to the Amritsar massacre of 1919. Snobbish and racist colonial administrators and their wives are contrasted with sympathetically drawn Indian characters. Dr Aziz is groundlessly accused of assaulting a naive English girl on a visit to the mystic Marabar Caves. There is a set piece trial scene, where she dramatically withdraws any charges. The results strengthen the forces of Indian nationalism, which are accurately predicted to be successful ‘after the next European war’ at the end of the novel. Issues of politics, race, and gender, set against vivid descriptions of Chandrapore and memorable evocations of the surrounding landscape. This is generally regarded as Forster’s masterpiece.
E.M.Forster greatest works Buy the book at Amazon UK
E.M.Forster greatest works Buy the book at Amazon US

© Roy Johnson 2010


More on E.M. Forster
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Filed Under: E.M.Forster Tagged With: E.M.Forster, English literature, Howards End, Literary studies, Study guides, The novel

The Longest Journey

January 25, 2013 by Roy Johnson

tutorial, commentary, study resources, and web links

The Longest Journey (1907) was Forster’s second novel, and one of which he said “I am most glad to have written”. But its reputation has not fared so well as his other novels. It is probably the least known of his major works, and unlike the other novels it has not be made into a film. In one sense, it is a Bildungsroman in ironic reverse, because the protagonist is wiser at the outset than he is at the end of the book.

E.M.Forster - portrait

E.M.Forster


The Longest Journey – critical commentary

The Second Novel

It is often observed that novelists who produce a successful first novel sometimes find it difficult to produce a follow-up work of similar quality. It is certainly true that the consensus of critical opinion on The Longest Journey is that it is regarded as something of a failure following Forester’s success with Where Angels Fear to Tread. It is certainly a more structurally ambitious work – but the problem is that its parts do not hang together successfully.

We are being offered Rickie’s story as a sort of positive lesson despite the fact that he is killed at its conclusion. He sees himself as a failure, but he has re-united meaningfully with his own brother; he has rejected the moral values of Sawston school and his brother-in-law; he has seen his own wife for the shallow creature that she is; and he has also restored the relationship with his bosom Cambridge friend Ansell. Moreover, the stories he has composed during his short life as an adult turn out to be successful after all – a posthumous tribute to the aesthetic values he worked out in his Cambridge days.

Death

The passage of events in novel depends upon an extraordinary number of deaths. Rickie’s uncle Mr Failing dies intestate, which leaves inheritance a large issue, and is certainly a source of conflict between Rickie and his wife. Agnes wants Rickie to befriend his eccentric aunt so that she will favour him in her will. Rickie is outraged at this greediness, and feels that Stephen should inherit the money.

Both Rickie’s parents die in rapid succession, leaving a convenient void to cover up the issue of Stephen’s parentage. And Stephen’s father (Robert) dies only seventeen days after eloping with Rickie’s mother.

Rickie and Agnes’s daughter dies shortly after being born, and Rickie himself is killed on the railway, which earlier in the novel has also claimed the life of a young child.

Spirit of place

Forster was quite interested in what we now call ‘spirit of place’ – the idea that certain geographic locations have a quasi-mystical aura which is detectable for people sensitive enough to make themselves receptive to it. His short stories feature this phenomenon, and his novel A Passage to India has at its centre the episode in the Marabar caves on which the plot turns.

In The Longest Journey it features largely in the scenes that take place in Wiltshire, particularly in Rickie’s exploration of the Salisbury Plain and the Fisbury (Cadbury) Rings where he feels he can sense the spirits of long dead ancestors.

He saw Old Sarum, and hints of the Avon Valley, and the land above Stonehenge. And behind him he saw the great wood beginning unobtrusively, as if the down tooneeded shaving; and into it the road to London slipped, covering the bushes with white dust. Chalk made the dust white, chalk made the water clear, chalk made the clear rolling outlines of the land, and favoured the grass and the distant coronals of trees. Here is the heart of our island: the Chilterns, the North Downs, the South Downs radiate hence. The fibres of England unite in Wiltshire, and did we condescend to worship her, here we should erect our national shrine.


The Longest Journey – study resources

The Longest Journey The Longest Journey – Penguin Classics – Amazon UK

The Longest Journey The Longest Journey – Penguin Classics – Amazon US

The Longest Journey The Longest Journey – Amazon Kindle edition

The Longest Journey The Longest Journey – eBook versions at Project Gutenberg

The Longest Journey The Longest Journey – audioBook versions at LibriVox

Red button The Cambridge Companion to E.M.Forster – Amazon UK

Red button E.M.Forster at Wikipedia – biographical notes, links

Red button E.M.Forster at Mantex – tutorials, web links, study resources


The Longest Journey – plot summary

Cambridge

Rickie Elliot is an orphan and an ex public schoolboy who is in his second year at Cambridge. He is visited by family friends Agnes Pembroke and her elder brother Herbert, who is a housemaster at a school. Agnes is engaged to Gerald Dawes, who does not yet have enough money to marry her. After seeing the engaged couple embracing, Rickie offers Gerald some of his own money so that he can enjoy happiness with Agnes. He does not think he will need the money himself, since he does not wish to marry, having a hereditary disability which he does not wish to pass on to any children. But his offer is spurned as insulting.

E.M.Forster The Longest JourneyRickie falls in love with Agnes, but idolises her, feels himself an inadequate lover, and keeps alive the notion that she shared an ideal love with Gerald. He announces his engagement to her at a breakfast party at college. Ansell predicts that Rickie has been duped by a scheming Agnes and advises him against her. But Rickie merely takes this as a sign of their deep friendship, because they can be so frank with each other.

Rickie is not quite so well off as he thought, and there is therefore to be another long engagement. He takes Agnes to meet his rather eccentric aunt Emily at her estate at Cadover in Wiltshire. There he meets her protege, Stephen Wonham, a semi-educated young man. Although they have very little interest in each other, his aunt wishes to promote their friendship.

The two young men go for an excursion on horseback to Salisbury, but Rickie becomes bored and turns back, leaving Stephen to go on, get drunk and fight with a soldier he encounters. Later Rickie walks amongst ancient earthworks and feels a kinship with what he sees as dead spirits there. His aunt reveals that Stephen is Rickie’s half brother, which sends Rickie into a faint. Even though he feels it is a symbolic and important revelation, Agnes persuades him not to tell Stephen and to keep the relationship secret.

Rickie passes a year trying to place his short stories with publishers, but doesn’t get anywhere. Instead he marries Agnes and becomes a teacher at Sawston School, where her brother Herbert is trying to impose public school traditions on what was originally a grammar school.

Sawston

The marriage gives him a limited degree of satisfaction, and he becomes embroiled in petty disputes over the way the school is run. His old Cambridge friend Ansell is disappointed in Rickie’s relationship with Agnes, and refuses to visit him.

Rickie’s daughter is born with an inherited deformity and dies in infancy. The marriage goes sour. Agnes tries to heal the rift between Rickie and his aunt Emily – but he realises that she is fortune-hunting, and it fuels his resentment towards Stephen, even though he thinks Stephen should inherit his aunt’s money.

When it emerges that Stephen has been behaving badly and is being sent to Canada, Rickie realises that Agnes has been stoking prejudice against him. In an argument, he reveals to Herbert the ‘truth’ (as he sees it) about Stephen’s relationship to the Elliot family.

Meanwhile, Ansell is visiting Sawston, where he meets Stephen, who has learnt that Rickie is his half brother during an argument with Mrs Failing. Ansell is very impressed with Stephen as a ‘child of nature’. Agnes tries to buy off Stephen, who takes offence and leaves. Ansell then reveals in the school dining hall that Stephen is in fact Rickie’s mother’s illegitimate child.

Wiltshire

At this dramatic crux, the narrative loops back in time to relate the circumstances of Stephen’s origins. A cultivated countryman falls in love with Mrs Elliot, and at a point where she realises that her husband no longer loves her, she runs away with him to Sweden, where he drowns in the sea. Stephen is born as a result of this brief liaison, his origins are hushed up, and he is raised by Emily Failing.

Back in the narrative present, Stephen leaves Sawston and wanders aimlessly for a while, then returns to see Rickie, who has in the meantime realised that he loves his brother and wants to help him – particularly to stop drinking. Rickie leaves Sawston with Stephen and they travel together to Salisbury then Cadover.

Rickie’s aunt Emily advises him to go back to his wife, even though they do not love each other. Rickie feels that to do so would be a sort of spiritual death, But when trying to recover Stephen from another night’s drinking, Rickie is killed by an oncoming train when pulling his brother off the tracks.

Stephen survives, gets married, and has a child. The last scene of the novel sees him haggling with Pembroke over money due to him for the publication of Rickie’s stories, which have become successful after his death.


Cambridge - King's College

Cambridge – King’s College


Principal characters
Frederick (Rickie) Elliot parentless ex public schoolboy, with deformed foot, Cambridge undergraduate
Stewart Ansell clever fellow student, Jewish
Tilliard fellow student
Agnes Pembroke young woman
Herbert Pembroke her elder brother – housemaster at Sawston school
Gerald Dawes her fiancé, a soldier
Mrs Aberdeen Rickie’s bed-maker (domestic help)
Mr Elliot Rickie’s cruel father
Mrs Elliot Rickie’s remote mother
Mrs Lewin chaperone to Agnes
Mr Failing the original owner of Cadover – a socialist
Emily Failing Rickie’s artistic and eccentric aunt
Stephen (Podge) Wonham Mrs Failing’s protege and Rickie’s half-brother (19)
Mr Jackson teacher of classics at Sawston School
Varnan the bullied schoolboy at Sawston

E.M.Forster - manuscript page

manuscript page of Forster’s The Longest Journey


Further reading

Red button David Bradshaw, The Cambridge Companion to E.M. Forster, Cambridge University Press, 2007

Red button Richard Canning, Brief Lives: E.M. Forster, London: Hesperus Press, 2009

Red button G.K. Das and John Beer, E. M. Forster: A Human Exploration, Centenary Essays, New York: New York University Press, 1979.

Red button Mike Edwards, E.M. Forster: The Novels, London: Palgrave Macmillan, 2001

Red button E.M. Forster, Aspects of the Novel, London: Penguin Classics, 2005

Red button P.N. Furbank, E.M. Forster: A Life, Manner Books, 1994

Red button Frank Kermode, Concerning E.M. Forsterl, London: Weidenfeld and Nicolson, 2009

Red button Rose Macaulay, The Writings of E. M. Forster, New York: Barnes and Noble, 1970.

Red button Nigel Messenger, How to Study an E.M. Forster Novel, London: Palgrave Macmillan, 1991

Red button Wendy Moffatt, E.M. Forster: A New Life, London: Bloomsbury Publishing, 2010

Red button Nicolas Royle, E.M. Forster (Writers and Their Work), Northcote House Publishers, 1999

Red button Jeremy Tambling (ed), E.M. Forster: Contemporary Critical Essays, London: Palgrave Macmillan, 1995


Other work by E.M. Forster

A Passage to IndiaA Passage to India, (1923) was started in 1913 then finished partly in response to the Amritsar massacre of 1919. Snobbish and racist colonial administrators and their wives are contrasted with sympathetically drawn Indian characters. Dr Aziz is groundlessly accused of assaulting a naive English girl on a visit to the mystic Marabar Caves. There is a set piece trial scene, where she dramatically withdraws any charges. The results strengthen the forces of Indian nationalism, which are accurately predicted to be successful ‘after the next European war’ at the end of the novel. Issues of politics, race, and gender, set against vivid descriptions of Chandrapore and memorable evocations of the surrounding landscape. This is generally regarded as Forster’s masterpiece.
E.M. Forster A Passage to India Buy the book at Amazon UK
E.M. Forster A Passage to India Buy the book at Amazon US

Howards End (DVD)Howards End – DVD This is arguably Forster’s greatest work, and the film lives up to it. It is well acted, with very good performances from Emma Thompson and Helena Bonham Carter as the Schlegel sisters, and Anthony Hopkins as the bully Willcox. The locations and details are accurate, and it lives up to the critical, poignant scenes of the original – particularly the conflict between the upper middle-class Wilcoxes and the working-class aspirant Leonard Baskt. This is another adaptation which I have watched several times over, and always been impressed.
E.M. Forster Buy the DVD at Amazon UK
E.M. Forster Buy the DVD at Amazon US

© Roy Johnson 2013


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Filed Under: E.M.Forster Tagged With: E.M.Forster, English literature, Modernism, The Longest Journey, The novel

The Obelisk – short stories

March 8, 2010 by Roy Johnson

tales from E.M.Forster’s reserve collection

The Obelisk is a collection of stories taken from The Life to Come (1972), works not published during Forster’s lifetime, which ended in 1970, not long after the famous trials of Lady Chatterley’s Lover and Last Exit to Brooklyn. One reason is that they all deal quite explicitly with homo-erotic topics which would not have been tolerated in print before 1970. The other reason might be that they fall so far below the artistic standards of his other work.

The ObeliskSome are mild satires of middle-class snobbery and hypocrisy set in a slightly indeterminate era which might be Edwardian or Georgian at the beginning of the last century. Others are satires of Biblical and mythical subjects treated in a manner which is supposed to be amusing, but which conjure up an embarrassing attitude poised somewhere midway between lyricism and schoolboy smuttiness. If these stories belonged to Forster’s desk drawer, there might be some good arguments for having left them there.

In the title story a conventional married couple meet two slightly dubious sailors on a day out. The wife enjoys a snatched liaison with one of them, but then is shocked to discover that her husband might have done the same thing with the other.

A missionary converts a local chieftain by succumbing to his sexual advances, then feels guilty for doing so. The two men grow apart and marry, but when the chieftain is about to die there appears to be an emotional reconciliation. What actually happens is a tragedy of Imperialism.

In another story, an old country squire who is dying imagines that he is still desirable to a young man working on his estate as a hired labourer. The story is related in a lyrical, quasi-poetical manner, but it reads as a rather unconvincing piece of homo-erotic wishful thinking on the part of an older man.

Similarly, in the unfortunately titled ‘Arthur Snatchfold’ a sexual encounter between a young workman and a rich industrialist is the occasion for a critique of society’s punitive attitude to gay men, and another improbable piece of ill-sublimated wish-fulfilment about older men being sexually desirable to male youths.

Almost all these stories have in common sexual encounters between an older man from the upper echelons of society and a much younger man from the lower. It very difficult to escape the suspicion that Forster was writing these stories late in life as therapeutic exercises.

‘What does it matter?’ is a silly tale set in a Gilbert and Sullivan Ruritania-like country whose president is caught in flagrante with a handsome young guardsman. Some of the other pieces are not much more than extended jokes, using classical mythology and even religion as a vehicle for nudge-nudge remarks about fig leaved statues and well-endowed young boys.

The best story in the collection – ‘The Other Boat’ – is the only serious attempt to explore both the gay and the Imperial theme. A young British officer becomes entangled in a shipboard dalliance with his Anglo-Indian cabin mate. The forbidden passion ends in murder and suicide, but at least their relationship is explored in some depth

We know that Forster stopped writing fiction after A Passage to India because he could no longer believe in creating credible heterosexual relationships, and of course at the time it was not possible to publish fiction which was explicitly homosexual. But this leaves us with something of a conundrum, because the homosexual relationships Forster did manage to write about (even if he did not publish them) are far less credible than the heterosexual ones which were a product of his creative imagination.

So this collection The Obelisk acts as a salutary tale to those who believe that authors can only write well on subjects known from personal experience. And it also supplies evidence that even distinguished writers sometimes produce work which is well below their normal standards, even when writing on topics which are close to their hearts.

The Obelisk   Buy the book at Amazon UK

The Obelisk   Buy the book at Amazon US

© Roy Johnson 2010


E.M.Forster The Obelisk, London: Hesperus Press, 2009, pp.169, ISBN: 1843914360


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Filed Under: E.M.Forster, Short Stories, The Short Story Tagged With: E.M.Forster, English literature, Literary studies, The Obelisk, The Short Story

Where Angels Fear to Tread

February 27, 2010 by Roy Johnson

tutorial, characters, resources, video, further reading

Where Angels Fear to Tread, (1902) is Forster’s first novel and a witty debut. A spirited middle-class English girl goes to Italy and becomes involved with a local man. The English family send out a party to ‘rescue’ her (shades of Henry James) – but they are too late; she has already married him. But when a baby is born, the family returns with renewed hostility. The clash between living spirit and deadly rectitude is played out with amusing and tragic consequences.

E.M.Forster - portrait

E.M.Forster

E.M. Forster is a bridge between the nineteenth and the twentieth century novel. He documents the Edwardian and Georgian periods in a witty and elegant prose, satirising the middle and upper classes he knew so well. He was a friend of Virginia Woolf, with whom he worked out some of the ground rules of literary modernism. These included the concept of ‘tea-tabling’ – making the substance of serious fiction the ordinary events of everyday life. He was also a member of The Bloomsbury Group.

His novels grew in complexity and depth, until he eventually gave up fiction in 1923. This was because he no longer felt he could write about the subject of heterosexual love which he did not know or feel. Instead, he turned to essays – which are well worth reading.


Where Angels Fear to Tread – plot summary

Where Angels Fear to TreadLilia Herriton is a young woman whose huband has recently died. Leaving her daughter in the care of her in-laws (whose money she has inherited) she makes a journey to Tuscany with her young friend and traveling companion Caroline Abbott. She falls in love with both Italy and Gino Carella, a handsome Italian much younger than herself, and decides to stay. Furious, her dead husband’s family send Lilia’s brother-in-law to Italy to prevent a misalliance, but he arrives too late. Lilia has already married the Italian and in due course she becomes pregnant.

When she dies giving birth to a son, the Herritons learn that Lilia’s one-time traveling companion, Caroline Abbott, wishes to travel to Italy once again, this time to save the infant boy from an uncivilized life. Not wanting to be outdone – or considered any less moral or concerned than Caroline for the child’s welfare – Lilia’s in-laws try to take the lead in traveling to Italy. Philip is despatched again, but this time accompanied by his sister Harriet.

They make it known that it is both their right and their duty to travel to Monteriano to obtain custody of the infant so that he can be raised as an Englishman. Secretly, though, they have little regard for the child, only for public appearances. Both Italy and its inhabitants are presented as exuding an irresistible charm, to which eventually Caroline Abbott also succumbs.

The family manage to kidnap the child, but they bungle the event and the child is killed in an accident. Gino’s physical outburst toward Philip in response to the news makes Philip realize what it is like to truly be alive. The guilt felt by Harriet causes her to lose her mind. Finally, Philip realizes that he is in love with Caroline Abbott but that he can never have her, because she too admits to being in love with Gino.


Study resources

Where Angels Fear to Tread Where Angels Fear to Tread – Penguin Classics – Amazon UK

Where Angels Fear to Tread Where Angels Fear to Tread – Penguin Classics – Amazon US

Where Angels Fear to Tread Where Angels Fear to Tread – BBC audio books – Amazon UK

Where Angels Fear to Tread Where Angels Fear to Tread – film adaptation on DVD – Amazon UK

Where Angels Fear to Tread Where Angels Fear to Tread – eBook versions at Gutenberg

Where Angels Fear to Tread Where Angels Fear to Tread – audioBook version at LibriVox

Red button The Cambridge Companion to E.M.Forster – Amazon UK

Red button E.M.Forster at Wikipedia – biographical notes, links

Red button E.M.Forster at Mantex – tutorials, web links, study resources


Principal characters
Lilia Herriton a young widow
Caroline Abbott her friend and travelling companion
Mrs Herriton Lilia’s mother-in-law
Philip Herriton Lilia’s young brother-in-law
Gino Carella a handsome but poor Italian
Harriet Herriton Lilia’s sister-in-law
Irma Herriton Lilia’s young daughter

Where Angels Fear to Tread – film version

1991 Charles Sturridge film adaptation

This film version is not a Merchant-Ivory production, although it’s done very much in their style. But it is accurate and entirely sympathetic to the spirit of the novel, possibly even stronger in satirical edge, well acted, and superbly beautiful to watch. Much is made of the visual contrast between the beautiful Italian setting and the straight-laced English capital from which the prudery and imperialist spirit emerges. The lovely Helena Bonham-Carter establishes herself as the perfect English Rose in this production, and she carried it through to several more. Helen Mirren is wonderful as the spirited Lilia who defies English prudery and narrow-mindedness and marries for love – with results which manage to upset everyone.

Red button See reviews of the film at the Internet Movie Database


The novel title

The title Where Angels Fear to Tread is taken from Alexander Pope’s Essay in Criticism (1711). This is a verse essay written in the Horatian mode and is primarily concerned with how writers and critics behave in the new literary commerce of Pope’s contemporary age. The poem covers a range of good criticism and advice. It also represents many of the chief literary ideals of Pope’s age.

Part II of An Essay on Criticism includes a famous phrase A little learning is a dangerous thing, which is often misquoted as ‘a little knowledge is a dangerous thing’.

Part II is also the source of this famous line: To err is human, to forgive divine.


Further reading

Red button David Bradshaw, The Cambridge Companion to E.M. Forster, Cambridge University Press, 2007

Red button Richard Canning, Brief Lives: E.M. Forster, London: Hesperus Press, 2009

Red button G.K. Das and John Beer, E. M. Forster: A Human Exploration, Centenary Essays, New York: New York University Press, 1979.

Red button Mike Edwards, E.M. Forster: The Novels, London: Palgrave Macmillan, 2001

Red button E.M. Forster, Aspects of the Novel, London: Penguin Classics, 2005

Red button P.N. Furbank, E.M. Forster: A Life, Manner Books, 1994

Red button Frank Kermode, Concerning E.M. Forsterl, London: Weidenfeld and Nicolson, 2009

Red button Rose Macaulay, The Writings of E. M. Forster, New York: Barnes and Noble, 1970.

Red button Nigel Messenger, How to Study an E.M. Forster Novel, London: Palgrave Macmillan, 1991

Red button Wendy Moffatt, E.M. Forster: A New Life, London: Bloomsbury Publishing, 2010

Red button Nicolas Royle, E.M. Forster (Writers and Their Work), Northcote House Publishers, 1999

Red button Jeremy Tambling (ed), E.M. Forster: Contemporary Critical Essays, London: Palgrave Macmillan, 1995


Where Angels Fear to Tread

first edition – Blackwood 1905


Other work by E.M. Forster

A Room with a ViewA Room with a View (1905) This is another comedy of manners and a satirical critique of English stuffiness and hypocrisy. The impulsive and cultivated Lucy Honeychurch must choose between taklented but emotionally frozen Cecil Vyse and the impulsive George Emerson. The staid Surrey stockbroker belt is contrasted with the magic of Florence, where she eventually ends up on her honeymoon. Upper middle-class English tourists in Italy are an easy target for Forster in some very amusing scenes.

E.M.Forster greatest works Buy the book at Amazon UK
E.M.Forster greatest works Buy the book at Amazon US

 

Howards EndHowards End (1910) is a State of England novel, and possibly Forster’s greatest work – though that’s just my opinion. Two families are contrasted: the intellectual and cultivated Schlegels, and the capitalist Wilcoxes. A marriage between the two leads to spiritual rivalry over the possession of property. Following on their social coat tails is a working-class would-be intellectual who is caught between two conflicting worlds. The outcome is a mixture of tragedy and resignation, leavened by hope for the future in the young and free-spirited.

E.M.Forster greatest works Buy the book at Amazon UK
E.M.Forster greatest works Buy the book at Amazon US

© Roy Johnson 2010


More on E.M. Forster
More on the novella
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Filed Under: E.M.Forster Tagged With: E.M.Forster, English literature, Literary studies, study guide, The novel, Where Angels Fear to Tread

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