Auteur's library

E. M. Forster

A Room with a View

1908

À coups de comparisons and not-so-subtle metaphors, Forster tells of the young upper-middle class Lucy's discovery of herself, by means of first discovering Italy. Through what have now become clichés of romance fiction, he diffuses a feminist analysis which refuses to pass equality off as superiority. If it's not Forster's best novel, it certainly is him at his best as a funny moralist. The novel is so pleasant to read, so curt, that you don't see yourself turning the pages. It could have been a play for the shortness of the narrative and the amount of dialogues but, then, let's forgive him, the dialogues can be so good, nothing is missing, nothing seems to miss and nothing needs to go. Little event after little event, you realise how it is all very well scripted.

Tags: early 20th century or perhaps even before, two places, same people, one drama, feminist approach to romance fiction and social satire, funny funny!, romantic interests all mixed up, social satire of the English at home and abroad, Italy vs. England, George Emerson's question mark 

Auteur's library

E. M. Forster

A Passage to India

1924

This is only a passage, indeed, one route at the end of which there is no single truth to rely on. There is no British India without Indians in this work and you are asked to empathise with their multiple faces as Indians and as people, rather than revealed "the truth" about India under the British Raj.
Though ever so present, the writer never takes over the story but lets the characters play it for you. Forster creates a fantastical, yet subtle, Dr. Aziz that he clearly loves. You respect him, you feel for him after the first few sentences and you know it's his shine that will carry the story. With an uncomplicated, slightly ironic style, A Passage delivers beauty of form and content that is at times subdued, at times overt, a mélange of spirituality and profound realism, a balance between the Oneness that belittles our performances and the importance of those little selves. A balance between Forster's message 'Only connect...' and the road of racial prejudices and ambivalences it takes to get there. 'Only connect' but do not negotiate the underlying truth of colonialism. A Passage to India judges without saying so.

P.S. Forster's 'Only Connect...' was the epigraph of Howards End.

Tags: feminist representation of the housewife, early 20th century, a little of that ladies & gents' courtship dance, social castes of British India, racial intercourse under the British Raj, hypocrisy of codes of conduct, drama in close quarters, mystical take on destiny, religion, Islam, Hinduism and India, hints of more than platonic homosociality, colonialism and independence, religious mysticism, national identity and Britishness, race and friendship, Oneness vs. selves..., or is it?, Overpowering nature