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E. M. Forster
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E. M. Forster
born Jan. 1, 1879, London
died June 7, 1970, Coventry, Warwickshire,
Eng.
British novelist, essayist, and social
and literary critic. His fame rests largely
on his novels Howards End (1910) and A
Passage to India (1924) and on a large body
of criticism.
Forster’s father, an architect, died when
the son was a baby, and he was brought up by
his mother and paternal aunts. The
difference between the two families, his
father’s being strongly evangelical with a
high sense of moral responsibility, his
mother’s more feckless and generous-minded,
gave him an enduring insight into the nature
of domestic tensions, while his education as
a dayboy (day student) at Tonbridge School,
Kent, was responsible for many of his later
criticisms of the English public school
(private) system. At King’s College,
Cambridge, he enjoyed a sense of liberation.
For the first time he was free to follow his
own intellectual inclinations; and he gained
a sense of the uniqueness of the individual,
of the healthiness of moderate skepticism,
and of the importance of Mediterranean
civilization as a counterbalance to the more
straitlaced attitudes of northern European
countries.
On leaving Cambridge, Forster decided to
devote his life to writing. His first novels
and short stories were redolent of an age
that was shaking off the shackles of
Victorianism. While adopting certain themes
(the importance of women in their own right,
for example) from earlier English novelists
such as George Meredith, he broke with the
elaborations and intricacies favoured in the
late 19th century and wrote in a freer, more
colloquial style. From the first his novels
included a strong strain of social comment,
based on acute observation of middle-class
life. There was also a deeper concern,
however, a belief, associated with Forster’s
interest in Mediterranean “paganism,” that,
if men and women were to achieve a
satisfactory life, they needed to keep
contact with the earth and to cultivate
their imaginations. In an early novel, The
Longest Journey (1907), he suggested that
cultivation of either in isolation is not
enough, reliance on the earth alone leading
to a genial brutishness and exaggerated
development of imagination undermining the
individual’s sense of reality.
The same theme runs through Howards End,
a more ambitious novel that brought Forster
his first major success. The novel is
conceived in terms of an alliance between
the Schlegel sisters, Margaret and Helen,
who embody the liberal imagination at its
best, and Ruth Wilcox, the owner of the
house Howards End, which has remained close
to the earth for generations; spiritually
they recognize a kinship against the values
of Henry Wilcox and his children, who
conceive life mainly in terms of commerce.
In a symbolic ending, Margaret Schlegel
marries Henry Wilcox and brings him back, a
broken man, to Howards End, reestablishing
there a link (however heavily threatened by
the forces of progress around it) between
the imagination and the earth.
The resolution is a precarious one, and
World War I was to undermine it still
further. Forster spent three wartime years
in Alexandria, doing civilian war work, and
visited India twice, in 1912–13 and 1921.
When he returned to former themes in his
postwar novel A Passage to India, they
presented themselves in a negative form:
against the vaster scale of India, in which
the earth itself seems alien, a resolution
between it and the imagination could appear
as almost impossible to achieve. Only Adela
Quested, the young girl who is most open to
experience, can glimpse their possible
concord, and then only momentarily, in the
courtroom during the trial at which she is
the central witness. Much of the novel is
devoted to less spectacular values: those of
seriousness and truthfulness (represented
here by the administrator Fielding) and of
an outgoing and benevolent sensibility
(embodied in the English visitor Mrs.
Moore). Neither Fielding nor Mrs. Moore is
totally successful; neither totally fails.
The novel ends in an uneasy equilibrium.
Immediate reconciliation between Indians and
British is ruled out, but the further
possibilities inherent in Adela’s
experience, along with the surrounding
uncertainties, are echoed in the ritual
birth of the God of Love amid scenes of
confusion at a Hindu festival.
The values of truthfulness and kindness
dominate Forster’s later thinking. A
reconciliation of humanity to the earth and
its own imagination may be the ultimate
ideal, but Forster sees it receding in a
civilization devoting itself more and more
to technological progress. The values of
common sense, goodwill, and regard for the
individual, on the other hand, can still be
cultivated, and these underlie Forster’s
later pleas for more liberal attitudes.
During World War II he acquired a position
of particular respect as a man who had never
been seduced by totalitarianisms of any kind
and whose belief in personal relationships
and the simple decencies seemed to embody
some of the common values behind the fight
against Nazism and Fascism. In 1946 his old
college gave him an honorary fellowship,
which enabled him to make his home in
Cambridge and to keep in communication with
both old and young until his death.
Although the later Forster is an
important figure in mid-20th-century
culture, his emphasis on a kindly,
uncommitted, and understated morality being
congenial to many of his contemporaries, it
is by his novels that he is more likely to
be remembered, and these are best seen in
the context of the preceding Romantic
tradition. The novels sustain the cult of
the heart’s affections that was central to
that tradition, but they also share with the
first Romantics a concern for the status of
man in nature and for his imaginative life,
a concern that remains important to an age
that has turned against other aspects of
Romanticism.
In addition to essays, short stories, and
novels, Forster wrote a biography of his
great-aunt, Marianne Thornton (1956); a
documentary account of his Indian
experiences, The Hill of Devi (1953); and
Alexandria: A History and a Guide (1922; new
ed., 1961). Maurice, a novel with a
homosexual theme, was published posthumously
in 1971 but written many years earlier.
John Bernard Beer
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A PASSAGE TO INDIA
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Type of work: Novel
Author: E. M. Forster (1879-1970)
Type of plot: Social criticism
Time of plot: About 1920
Locale: India
First published: 1924
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A Passage to India can be read on two levels: political and
mystic. Politically it deals with the tension between the British and
the native Indians, as well as with the tension between Hindus and
Muslims. Mystically it is concerned with the search for the infinite and
eternal so characteristic of Oriental religion, and with the illogical
and inexplicable in human life. The visit to the Marabar Caves
illustrates the malignant side of mysticism, the Temple-Festival at the
close, its benignity. Forster divides the novel into three sections
which correspond to the three seasons of the Indian year: the Cold
Weather, the Hot Weather, and the Rains.
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Principal Characters
Dr. Aziz (a-zez'), an amiable, sensitive, and intelligent young Muslim
doctor in Chandrapore, India. Ignored and snubbed by the English colony,
he nevertheless becomes friendly with three English newcomers to India—
Mr. Fielding, Mrs. Moore, and Miss Quested. When he takes them on a tour
of the sinister Marabar Caves, Miss Quested becomes separated from the
party and later she accuses him of attempted rape. Jailed and
humiliated, he becomes markedly anti-British. After Miss Quested
withdraws her charge at his trial, he wants to collect damages, but
Fielding dissuades him. Suspicious of Fielding's motives, he breaks off
the friendship. Two years later the two men meet again and each realizes
that any true communion between them is impossible because of their
racial differences.
Cecil Fielding, the principal of the government college, a middle-aged,
maverick intellectual who resists the herd instinct of his fellow
Englishmen. He has Indian friends; he defends Aziz against the English
bigots, and when Miss Quested is ostracized after the trial he offers
her the protection of his home. Tired of the whole situation, he takes a
trip to England, marries, and then returns to India, where he finds Aziz
less cordial than before.
Adela Quested, the priggish young woman who goes to India to marry
Ronald Heaslop, the City Magistrate; she announces that she is eager to
see the real India. Her trip to the Marabar Caves proves disastrous.
Thinking that she has been the victim of an attempted attack, she
accuses Aziz; however, she shows courage by retracting the charge at his
trial. The scandal ruins her prospective marriage and causes her to be
avoided by almost everyone. She returns to England alone.
Mrs. Moore, Ronald Heaslop's mother, a lovely, sensitive old woman who
accompanies Miss Quested to India. She has great regard for Dr. Aziz,
but at the Marabar Caves she has a strange psychic experience, an
unhappy intuition that life is worthless. When she irritably defends Dr.
Aziz to her son, he sends her home and she dies on the way.
Ronald Heaslop, the self-righteous city magistrate, a man coarsened by
life in India. Wishing his mother and fiancee to have nothing to do with
the natives, he finds himself in a position where he must reject both to
preserve his own standards and vanity.
Professor Godbole, a gentle old teacher at the college, a friend of Dr.
Aziz and Fielding. He represents the Hindu mystical aspects of India as
opposed to the narrower nationalisms of the Muslims and British.
The Nawab Bahadur, a wealthy Muslim who, acting as an unofficial
diplomat between the Muslims and English, does favors for the whites.
When Dr. Aziz is tried, he rejects the British.
Hamidullah, Dr. Aziz' well-to-do, Anglophobic uncle, a Cambridge
barrister who conducts his nephew's defense.
Mahmoud AH, a family friend of Hamidullah and Dr. Aziz. Cynical and
embittered toward the English, he makes an emotional, histronic defense
of Dr. Aziz at the trial.
Mohammed Latif, a poor, sneaky relative of Hamidullah and Aziz.
Major Callendar, the civil surgeon, Dr. Aziz's brutal superior, who
believes that "white is right."
Mr. Turton, a white official who is willing to extend courtesy to the
native and nothing more; a man who has succumbed to power and race
snobbery.
Mrs. Turton, his haughty wife, who comforts Adela Quested after the
incident at the Marabar Caves.
Mr. McBryde, the chief of police, an intelligent man who treats Dr. Aziz
decently but at the same time supervises the prosecution. He is
provincial in his attitudes.
Miss Derek, a selfish young woman who takes advantage of her Indian
employers.
Amritrao, Dr. Aziz' defense lawyer, imported from Calcutta, who gets
Miss Quested to withdraw her charges.
Mr. Das, Heaslop's subordinate, the judge at the trial, a Hindu who
later becomes friendly with Dr. Aziz.
Ralph Moore, Mrs. Moore's odd son, a boy who finally gets Cecil Fielding
and Dr. Aziz together again.
Stella Moore, Mrs. Moore's daughter, a sensitive girl who marries Cecil
Fielding.
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The Story
Dr. Aziz had been doubly snubbed that evening. He had been summoned to
the civil surgeon's house while he was at supper, but when he arrived,
he found that his superior had departed for his club without bothering
to leave any message. In addition, two Englishwomen emerged from the
house and took their departure in the hired tonga without even thanking
him.
The doctor started back toward the city of Chandrapore afoot. Tired, he
stopped at a mosque to rest and was furiously angry when he saw a third
Englishwoman emerge from behind its pillars with, as he thought, her
shoes on. Mrs. Moore, however, had gone barefoot to the mosque, and in a
surge of friendly feelings, Dr. Aziz engaged her in conversation.
Mrs. Moore had newly arrived from England to visit her son, Ronald
Heaslop, the City Magistrate. Dr. Aziz found they had common ground when
he learned that she did not care for the civil surgeon's wife. Her
disclosure prompted him to tell of the usurpation of his carriage. The
doctor walked back to the club with her, although as an Indian, he
himself could not be admitted.
At the club, Adela Quested, Heaslop's prospective fiancee, declared she
wanted to see the real India, not the India which came to her through
the rarified atmosphere of the British colony. To please the ladies, one
of the members offered to hold what he whimsically termed a bridge party
and to invite some native guests.
The bridge party was a miserable affair. The Indians retreated to one
side of a lawn and although the conspicuously reluctant group of
Anglo-Indian ladies went over to visit the natives, an awkward tension
prevailed.
There was, however, one promising result of the party. The principal of
the Government College, Mr. Fielding, a man who apparently felt neither
rancor nor arrogance toward the Indians, invited Mrs. Moore and Adela to
a tea at his house. Upon Adela's request, Mr. Fielding also invited
Professor Godbole, a teacher at his school, and Dr. Aziz.
At the tea, Dr. Aziz charmed Fielding and the guests with the elegance
and fine intensity of his manner. The gathering, however, broke up on a
discordant note when the priggish and suspicious Heaslop arrived to
claim the ladies. Fielding had taken Mrs. Moore on a tour of his school,
and Heaslop was furious at him for having left Dr. Aziz alone with his
prospective fiancee.
Adela was irritated by Heaslop's callous priggishness during her visit
and informed him that she did not wish to become his wife; but before
the evening was over, she changed her mind. In the course of a drive into the Indian
countryside, a mysterious figure, perhaps an animal, loomed out of the
darkness and nearly upset the car in which they were riding. Their
mutual loneliness and a sense of the unknown drew them together, and
Adela asked Heaslop to disregard her earlier rejection.
The one extraordinary aspect of the city of Chandra-pore was a
phenomenon of nature known as the Marabar Caves, located several miles
outside the city. Mrs. Moore and Adela accepted the offer of Dr. Aziz to
escort them to the caves; but the visit proved catastrophic for all.
Entering one of the caves, Mrs. Moore realized that no matter what was
said, the walls returned only a prolonged booming, hollow echo.
Pondering that echo while she rested, and pondering the distance that
separated her from Dr. Aziz, from Adela, and from her own children, Mrs.
Moore saw that all her Christianity, all her ideas of moral good and
bad, in short, all her ideas of life, amounted only to what was made of
them by the hollow, booming echo of the Marabar Caves.
Adela entered one of the caves alone. A few minutes later she rushed out
in a terrified state and claimed that she had been nearly attacked in
the gloom. She also claimed that Dr. Aziz was the attacker, and the
doctor was arrested.
There always had been a clear division between the natives and the
Anglo-Indian community, but as the trial of Dr. Aziz drew nearer, the
temper of each group demanded strict loyalty. When Mrs. Moore casually
intimated to her son that she was perfectly certain Dr. Aziz was not
capable of the alleged crime, he had her shipped off to a coastal port
of embarkation at once, and when Fielding expressed an identical opinion
at the club, he was promptly ostracized.
The tension that marked the opening of the trial had a strange
resolution. The first sensational incident occurred when one of Dr.
Aziz's friends pushed into the courtroom and shouted that Heaslop had
smuggled his mother out of the country because she would have testified
to the doctor's innocence. When the restless body of Indian spectators
heard the name of Mrs. Moore, they worked it into a kind of chant, as
though she had become a deity. The English colony was not to learn until
later that Mrs. Moore had already died aboard ship.
The second incident concluded the trial. It was Adela's testimony. The
effects of the tense atmosphere of the courtroom, the reiteration of
Mrs. Moore's name, and the continued presence of a buzzing sound in her
ears that had persisted since the time she left the caves, combined to
produce a trancelike effect upon Adela. She virtually relived the whole
of the crucial day as she recollected its events under the interrogation
of the prosecuting attorney. When she reached the moment of her
lingering in the cave, she faltered, dramatically changed her mind, and
withdrew all charges.
Chandrapore was at once and for several hours thereafter a great bedlam.
Anglo-India sulked while India exulted. So far as Anglo-India was
concerned, Adela had crossed the line. Heaslop carefully explained that
he could no longer be associated with her. After accepting Fielding's
hospitality for a few weeks, she returned home. Despite Dr. Aziz's
increased anglophobia, Fielding persuaded him not to press Adela for
legal damages.
Two years later, the Muslim Dr. Aziz was court physician to an aged
Hindu potentate who died on the night of the Krishna Festival. The feast
was a frantic celebration, and the whole town was under its spell when
Fielding arrived on an official visit. During the two years he had
married again, and Dr. Aziz, assuming he had married Adela Quested,
tried to avoid his old friend. When he ran into him accidentally,
however, he found out it was Mrs. Moore's daughter, Stella, whom
Fielding had married. The doctor's shame at his mistake only caused him
to become more distant.
Before they parted for the last time, Dr. Aziz and Fielding went riding
through the jungles. The misunderstanding between them had now been
resolved, but they had no social ground on which to meet. Fielding had
cast his lot with his countrymen by marrying an Englishwoman. The rocks
that suddenly loomed before them, forcing their horses to pass in single
file on either side, were symbolic of the different paths they would
travel from that time on. The affection of two men, however sincere, was
not sufficient to bridge the gap between their races.
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Critical Evaluation
E. M. Forster was a member of the intellectually select Bloomsbury
group, which flourished in London just before and after World War I.
Educated at Cambridge, as were many of the group, Forster became one of
England's leading novelists during the prewar Edwardian period. In the
Bloomsbury group, his friends included Lytton Strachey, a biographer;
Virginia Woolf, a novelist; Clive Bell, an art critic; Roger Fry, a
painter; John Maynard Keynes, an economist; and G. E. Moore, the
philosopher. The group rejected convention and authority, placing great
faith in its own intellect and good taste. Forster wrote several good
novels between 1905 and 1910: Where Angels Fear to Tread, The Longest
Journey, A Room with a View, and Howards End. After a hiatus of fourteen
years, he published A Passage to India in 1924. No other novels were
published during his lifetime. A posthumous novel, Maurice, was
published in 1970. Forster once confessed that he did not understand the
post-World War I values and had nothing more to say. A Passage to India,
however, belies this statement; it is a novel for all seasons, which is
underlined by the fact that a major motion picture was made in 1984
based on the novel.
Forster's title comes from the Whitman poem by the same name. This
choice is ultimately ironic, for Whitman's vision is of the total unity
of all people. In the novel, the attempt to unite people fails at all
levels.
The book is divided into three sections: Mosque, Cave, Temple. These
divisions correspond to the three divisions of the Indian year: cool
spring, hot summer, wet monsoon. Each section is dominated by its
concomitant weather. Each section also focuses on one of the three
ethnic groups involved: Muslim, Anglo-Indian, Hindu. The Cave could also
be called "The Club." Just as the Mosque and the Temple are the Muslim
and Hindu shrines, so is the Club the true Anglo-Indian shrine. Forster,
however, is not writing a religious novel. He realizes that
religious-ethnic divisions control social modes of activity. The Muslims
are emotional; the British rely on intellect. Only the Hindus, in the
person of Godbole, have the capacity to love.
The novel is not merely a social or political commentary. Forster
belittles social forms on all sides of the conflict. He favors neither
Indians nor British. The bridge party, Fielding's tea party, and Aziz's
cave party are all failures. More important than social forms are the
relationships among individuals. The novel's theme is the search for
love and friendship. It is primarily the male-male relationships that
have the capacity for mutual understanding, and it is the male
characters that are most clearly defined. The females, Mrs. Moore and
Adela Quested, have no real possibility of finding friendship across
ethnic lines. Mrs. Moore is too old; Adela is too British. Both women
want to see the "real" India, but they are unprepared for it when the
experience comes. Mrs. Moore, at the mosque and the first cave, Adela,
at the cave and the courtroom, discover the real India, and both suffer
an almost catatonic withdrawal.
The male characters are more complex. With his Muslim sensitivity, Aziz
is determined to find humiliation no matter what the experience. He
tries to be both physician and poet—healer of body and soul, but he is
inept at both attempts. In the last section, readers see him abandoning
both. More than a type, Aziz needs love and friendship. Ultimately he is
incapable of establishing a satisfying relationship among his own
people, with the Hindus, or, more important, with Cecil Fielding. Muslim
sensitivity prevents him from accepting friendship when it is offered.
Out of the multiple failures of the first two sections of the novel
there is only the relationship between Aziz and Fielding that holds any
promise of reconciliation. Muslim and Anglo-Indian, they meet in the
final section in the Hindu province. Both men desire friendship and
understanding, but it is too late. In the final scene, the very land
seems to separate them; they are not in tune with nature, which is
renewing itself in the monsoon downpour. Neither man has come to accept
the irrational. They are not ready, in the Hindu sense of love, to
accept things as they are. Only Godbole, a Hindu, can accept India and
her people for what they are. The nothingness of the caves and the
apparent chaos of the people do not disturb the Hindu.
The most crucial scene in A Passage to India is the visit to the Marabar
Caves. These caves puzzle and terrify both Muslims and Anglo-Indians and
form the center of the novel. Only Godbole instinctively understands
them. The Hindus possessed India before either Muslims or British. The
caves are also elemental; they have been there from the beginnings of
the earth. They are not Hindu holy places, but Godbole can respect them
without fear. Cave worship is the cult of the female principle, the
Sacred Womb, Mother Earth. The Marabar Caves, both womb and grave,
demand total effacing of ego. The individual loses his identity;
whatever is said returns to him as Ommm, the holy word.
The caves are terrifying and chaotic to those who rely on the intellect.
The trip itself emphasizes the chaos that is India. Godbole can eat no
meat; Aziz can eat no pork; the British must have their whiskey and
port. The confusion of the departure epitomizes the confusion that
pervades the novel. Significantly it is Godbole, the one man who might
have helped, who is left out. Once in the caves, the party encounters
the Nothingness that terrifies. Only Mrs. Moore seems to accept it on a
limited scale, but the caves have reduced her will to live. She retreats
from the world of experience; nothing matters anymore. She has come to
India seeking peace; she finds it in death. Ironically, as her body is
being lowered into the Indian Ocean, she is being mythified into the
cult of Emiss Emoore.
The conclusion of the novel emphasizes the chaos of India, but it also
hints at a pattern that the outsider, Muslims or British, cannot
understand. The last chapters portray the rebirth of the God Shri
Krishna. It is the recycling of the seasons, the rebirth and renewal of
the earth which signals the renewal of the Hindu religious cycle.
Godbole shows that man may choose to accept and participate in the
seeming chaos, or he can fight against it. Man, however, must be in tune
with the natural rhythms of the universe in order to receive true love
and friendship. One must accept. Neither Fielding nor Aziz, products of
Western civilization, can accept the confusion without attempting to
impose order. They still rely on the rational. Although they have moved
toward the irrational in the course of the novel, they have not moved
far enough.
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