Style of E.M. Forster

Style of E.M. Forster E.M. Forster (1879-1970) is difficult writer to classify. An Edwardian modernist, he criticized Victorian middle class mores in formally traditional novels; a writer who idealized connection and sincerity above all else, he kept his own homosexuality hidden from view.   As an author, E.M. Forster is notable for his unique perspective on society as a whole. His ability to place himself in the situation of any subject was crucial in writing many of his finest novels including A Passage to India, A Room With a View, and Howards End. His use of narrative voice, literary devices, descriptions, vocabulary, and dialogue all combine to create an incomparable style all Forster’s own.    Apart from homosexuality, another notable factor in Forster’s writing is symbolism as a technique and mysticism. In his book ‘Howards End’ there is a certain tree and in ‘A Passage to India’ the characters have this ability to connect to unknown people. Forster's first novel is called Where Angels Fear to Tread, and it was published in 1905. In it, there is an English widow named Lilia Herriton, and she falls in love with a younger Italian man while - yup - traveling. The two marry and have a child, but Lilia dies in childbirth - that's great. Her in-laws, a haughty upper middle-class family, are scandalized by these events. They're really obsessed with public appearance, and they don't like the way that this looks, so they decide to travel to Italy, and they're going to take the child from, what they consider to be, an uncivilized life. A Room with a View: He also wrote a comic novel named ‘A Room with a View’ in 1908. This was the most optimistic of all his novels and was also made into a film in 1985. The style Forster employs in A Room with a View is unforgettable – it’s unpretentious, almost conversational, good humored, and funny. At the same time, though, it manages to throw in moments of lyrical beauty that totally catch us off guard. Forster takes on a lot of different angles here – social criticism, sympathetic views of individual characters, romance, and comedy among other things – and manages to balance them all masterfully. Forster also takes this opposition of Medieval versus Renaissance out of the context of art and into the broader world of social systems. He classifies the stratified society that Lucy lives in as Medieval; Cecil in particular sums up a system of gender relations that’s “feudal” in nature. The author also plays upon the image of the medieval period as the Dark Ages; he frequently notes that a mysterious “darkness” threatens to overtake Windy Corner, Lucy, and George as Lucy’s happy ending seems less and less likely. However, light and rebirth win out in the end: Chapter Twenty’s title, “The End of the Middle Ages,” suggests that Lucy and George have finally broken through to the Renaissance by leaving the restrictive social world of England behind them. Howards End: There are three principle families in the novel: the wealthy Wilcoxes, the middle-class Schlegels and then the poor family - the Basts. The Schlegels, particularly the oldest sister Margaret, act as a link between the classes as they deal with issues, like inheritance, the working life and infidelity, which make it pretty exciting. When Forster's characters isolate themselves from the other classes, they suffer; but when they embrace the other classes, it gets better. Forster's style is just so characteristically…Forster. His distinctive voice is unmistakable in its directness and ambition; we can practically see him straining to get across the philosophical angst he so clearly feels at times, and he reaches out towards us with such urgency, hoping to get us to reevaluate our lives and human relationships. He does this through both direct address and sneakier ways. His depictions of character are simultaneously sympathetic and unforgiving, and the realistic, sometimes cuttingly blunt detail with which he reveals his players to us communicates both tenderness and objectivity. His style as a whole might be summed up in those two words – he's tender without measure to his characters, and, in an interesting way, to us, his readers. But at the same time, he's not afraid to show them, and us, where they've gone wrong, and to sometimes come down quite harshly on them. Forster used symbolism, imagery and allegory in this novel. A passage to india: In Forster's final book published during his lifetime, he takes a sharp critique of the British class system and takes it on an international scale, embracing racial issues while he's at it. Forster's narrative style is straightforward; events follow one another in logical order. Structurally, his sentence style also is relatively uncomplicated, and he reproduces accurately the tones of human conversation; his handling of the idiom of the English-speaking Indian is especially remarkable. However, Forster's rhetorical style is far from unsubtle. His descriptions of the landscape, however unattractive it may be, frequently have a poetic rhythm. He makes lavish use of both satire and irony, and the satire is especially biting in his treatment of the English colonials, particularly in the events before the trial in the "Caves" section. But he is also capable of gentle humor, notably in his depiction of the high-spirited and volatile Aziz. As has been noted earlier, there are numerous themes and symbols — such as the wasp, the echo, the "Come come" of Godbole's song — which recur throughout the novel; these are not introduced in an obvious fashion, and it is not until the end of the book that their full significance is apparent. Some of the statements in the book are in the form of questions to which answers are obvious; but for many of them no answers are suggested or even implied — an indication of the philosophical nature of the novel. Forster is not the man with all the answers, and perhaps he is implying that he himself is not certain whether life is (in the terms he frequently uses) "mystery or muddle" — or both.  A Passage to India, often considered to be Forster’s “finest novel”, is told through a third-person omniscient point of view. This helps a reader to better understand all of the characters and their motivations. It also creates a greater opportunity to connect with the characters on an emotional level. For example, when Aziz is frantically planning out how exactly he will entertain the English women, the reader actually feels the doctor’s frustration and anxiety. Forster’s choice of narration, especially in this story, is very effective overall.  E.M. Forster’s writing in A Passage to India is full of literary devices, all used to their fullest extent to add to the overall tone of the book. The narration abounds with similes, metaphors, personification, and symbolism. In fact, one of the most important recurring elements in the book is the haunting “bou-oum” and “ou-boum” which Mrs. Moore thinks causes the cave to seem to be “stuffed with a snake composed of many small snakes”. This noise, an onomatopoeia, is integral to the occurrences in the story. Without this noise, Ms. Quested would not have been exposed to the opportunity that allowed the guide to take advantage of her, sparking a controversy that affects the characters for years to come. Forster’s descriptions are highly typical of the time period. His descriptions are very verbose, sometimes too much so. He spends the initial portions of each successive section of A Passage to India giving a detailed description of the location in which the portion of the story takes place. Though sometimes overdone, Forster’s writing is nevertheless stirring and beautiful. It is obvious throughout the book that he had reached the height of his career as a novelist, which is ironic considering A Passage to India is the last full piece of fiction Forster penned. Long accounts of how “the mountains rose, their debris silted up the ocean, the gods took their seats on them and contrived the river, and the India we call immemorial came into being” are common and continue into long, drawn-out sections of flowery prose. His use of detail is exceptional, and though India was not his homeland, one gets the feeling Forster knows his setting well.  The vocabulary in Forster’s best-known work is sometimes highly sophisticated. Other times, the vocabulary, though old-fashioned, is easy to understand. Because of the liberal peppering of high-level vocabulary, Forster is difficult to understand. There are times, even, where the pacing of the plot suffers because of the author’s insistence on beefing up the vocabulary as much as possible. Overall, though Forster’s vocabulary is undisputedly large,  its usage does nothing to add to the effectiveness of his style as an author. Forster showed throughout his career a preference for writing about human nature, especially where society as a whole is concerned. His fiction was mainly “conservative in form”.  Basic human interaction and the subtleties involved especially seem to have intrigued him. This is especially true in A Passage to India, which concerns colonialism and the effects on all involved. Forster seemed to take great pleasure in dissecting the various effects of imperialism and colonialism in native and invading societies. He was a comic moralist, a writer interested in exploring conflicts between ideologies that oftentimes resulted in melodrama. In Howards End, for instance, Forster used the tension between the Schlegel family, exemplars of liberalism and bohemianism, and the Wilcoxes, plutocratic businessmen, as a means to structure his plot and subtly explore the various possible stances towards life of the modern period. His 1938 essay “Two Cheers for Democracy” reveals Forster at his best: gently ironic, tolerant yet chiding, willing to take a principled stand in defense of liberal values. Forster’s style is, overall, fairly typical of the time period in which he wrote. He used some elements of his style unusually well though, and through his narrative voice, use of literary devices, descriptions, vocabulary, and theme, he communicated the basic ideas of human nature he was most concerned with. _________________________ Bibliography: http://www.cliffsnotes.com/literature/p/a-passage-to-india/critical-essays/forsters-writing-technique https://sites.google.com/site/katig08/e.m.forster'sstyle http://modernism.research.yale.edu/wiki/index.php/E.M._Forster http://www.shmoop.com/howards-end/writing-style.html http://eic.oxfordjournals.org/content/XIX/3/292.extract