Edward Morgan Forster

(1879-1970)

• Born in a well-to-do professional family

• He went to Cambridge

• He became one of the leading members of the Bloomsbury Group

• He remained an independent liberal throughout his life

Early Life

• Italy inspired his earliest novels.

• Where Angels Fear to Tread (1905)

English gentility vs. Italian vitality;

• The Longest Journey (1907)

a satire of the public school system and the English notions of

respectability;

• A Room with a View (1908)

the contradictions of love;

• Howards End (1910)

the difficult relationship between what people feel and the way they

act.

The Trip to Italy

• 1912 he went to India and spent some months travelling with an

Indian friend.

• Maurice (1971) homosexual experience.

• During World War I, he was a Red Cross worker in Alexandria,

Egypt.

• 1921-22 he revisited India and was the personal secretary to the

Maharajah of Dewas Senior for some time.

• A Passage to India (1924) relationships between the British and

the Indians.

• He lectured in Cambridge.

• Aspects of the Novel (1927) critical work.

Travels to India

• With the Modernists he shared:

the inability to believe in accepted values;

the conviction that reality is elusive and many-faceted;

unconventional themes (ex anti-imperialism, homosexuality);

• From a technical point of view, on the other hand, he:

has little in common with the experimenters of the modern novel

form;

uses clear language and style;

does not reproduce the chaotic flow of thoughts in the human mind.

A Modernist or a Traditional Writer?

A Passage to India

• Mrs Moore and Adela Quested have come to Chandrapore to visit

Ronald Heaslop, Mrs Moore son and Adela’s future husband.

• They are full of enthusiasm for Indian culture, but soon find out

that the ‘real’ India is exactly what Anglo-Indians

do not want to know.

• Mr Fielding is the only British resident who is interested in the

Indians and their culture.

• Fielding is an English liberal who is friends with Dr Aziz, a Muslim

Indian, anxious to establish warm personal contacts with the British.

The Story

• Aziz invites the two English women to visit the Marabar Caves, a

sacred Hindu site.

• Once there, Adela accuses Aziz of having attempted to rape her.

• During her testimony at the trial which follows, she retracts

her accusation and Aziz is acquitted.

The Story

• The trial proves to be the turning point in the characters’ lives:

• Adela is deserted by the British colony and has to return to England

with all her ideals shattered.

• Heaslop’s career is ruined because of the scandal.

• Aziz and Fielding’s friendship is finished.

• Aziz now hates the British and thinks that

being friends with one of them would be

the ultimate weakness for an Indian.

The Story