Characters:
- Caroline Abbott
- Lilia Herriton
Plot summary:
- while traveling with companion Caroline Abbott to Tuscany, widowed Lilia Herriton falls in love with a handsome Italian much younger than herself
- furious, her dead husband's family send Lilia's brother-in-law and sister to Italy to prevent a misalliance but they arrive too late
- Lilia marries the Italian and becomes pregnant but dies giving birth
- Herritons consider it their duty to obtain infant so he can be raised as Englishman
A Room with a View
Characters:
- Charlotte Bartlett
- Lucy Honeychurch
- Mr. Emerson
- Mr. Beebe
- Eleanor Lavish
- Cecil Vyse
Plot summary:
- story of young Englishwoman whose encounter with handsome young man in Florence interferes with her marriage plans
Howard's End
Characters:
- Margaret Schlegel
- Helen Schlegel
- Tibby Schlegel
- Henry Wilcox
- Paul Wilcox
- Evie Wilcox
- Charles
Plot summary:
- the Schlegels are concerned with civilized living, music, literature and conversation with their frends, whereas the Wilcoxes are concerned with the business side of life and distrust emotions and imagination
- Helen falls in and out of love with Paul Wilcox
- Margaret marries Henry Wilcox because she acknowledges the debt of intellectuals to men of affairs
- Howards End is the house that belonged to Henry Wilcox's first wife, and is a symbol of human dignity and endurance
A Passage to India
Characters:
- Adela Quested
- Dr. Aziz
- The Marabar Caves
Plot summary:
- deals with tensions between natives of India and British colonials when a white woman, Adela Quested, accuses a native man, Dr. Aziz, of attempted rape
The Road to Colonus
Characters:
- Mr. Lucas
- Ethel Lucas
Plot summary:
- Mr. Lucas visits Greece accompanied by his unmarried daughter
- There, he becomes restless and resistant to the idea of an expected passive death from old age - he wants to "die fighting"
- He finds a hollow tree from which a spring of water flows. He climbs in and experiences an epiphany, suddenly seeing all things as "intelligible and good."
- Back in England, Ethel is now about to be married. Lucas has become a perpetually disgruntled old man who is going to be taken care of by his sister, Julia, once Ethel is married.
- A gift arrives from a friend in Greece wrapped in newspaper, and Ethel reads from it that on the night they left, the old tree was blown down and fell on the family who kept the inn nearby, killing them all. Ethel is glad they hadn't decided to stay there after all but Mr. Lucas dismisses the story without interest.
- The story is a retelling of Oedipus.
"What I Believe"
- outlines his creed as a secular humanist
- begins by saying he does not believe in creeds, but one is necessitated to form one out of self-defence because there are so many around
- tolerance, good temper and sympathy are important values to him
- cautiously welcomes democracy because
- it places importance on the individual
- allows criticism
- thus he calls for "two cheers for democracy"
- argues that although the state ultimately rests on force, the intervals between the use of force are what make life worth living - some people may call the absence of force decadence, but Forster calls it civilization
Aspects of the Novel
- idea that there are "flat" characters and "round" characters
- believed that Dickens was a strong writer of both types
- asserts that novels should strive to be more than just stories
- differentiates between "form" and "content"
- differentiates between "story" ("the king died") and plot ("the queen then died of grief.")
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