EDWARD MORGAN FORSTER was born in London in 1879. His Father died soon after his birthday. He was brought up by his mother and his aunt. His aunt was well off and gave him financial help. At the age of 11, he went to study in Eastbourne and then at Tombridge School (period of spiritual imprisomnent). After he entered in Cambridge. He lived for a time in Italy, in Tuscany, background of his first and third novels (Where Angels Fear to tread; A room with a view) he explored the difference between the relaxed way of life of the Italians and the strictness of the English upper-middle-class. The longest journey, his most autobiographical novel, is about english life. His two masterpiece: Howard end and A passage to India. In 1912 he went to India to work on the novel “A passage to India”. He died in 1970, and in the following year was published Maurice, a novel about homosexuality . The novel had already been completed but had not been published because at that time homosexuality was considerated as a criminal offence. His position is a link between the late Victorian and early modern periods. In his work there aren’t tecnical virtuosity of his contemporaries. He is a writer of comedy of manners. From Victorian tradition: the plot arrangment and the omniscent narrator. The optimism about the future (that characterised modern period) is being quested throught the technique of irony. In his novels are present struggles of characters in conflict with their own societies and other cultures. His characters wish for some kind of connection to find harmony. Talent for self-scrutiny His early books are more humorous. In the last two he wants to approch to what gives meaning to life in order to understand it A PASSAGE TO INDIA (PLOT) The novel is set in the fictional town of Chandrapore, formed by the indian quarter and the british civil station. Ronny Easlop (city magistrate) is engaged with Miss Adela Quested, who decides to visit India with Ronny’s mother, Mrs Moore. Meanwhile a muslim doctor, Dr, Aziz, is dining with two of his friends, the Major Callendar, his arrogant superior calls him to the hospital. He had to go to the hospital but is delayed by a flat tyre. When he sees his favourite mosque, he enters. He sees an English womem that was respectful towards the sacred place. They become friends. Mrs Moore wants to see Indians, so the City Tax collector, invites some indians gentlemen to a party. The party was an awkward event. Adela meets Cyril Fielding, who invites Adela, Mrs Moore and Aziz to a tea party. During the party Aziz promises to take Mrs Moore and Adela to visit the Marabar Caves. The visit proves discrupting. In the first cave Mrs Moore is overcome with claustrofhobia and the echo, discrupting by the sound she declines to continue. When Aziz cames out from the caves he does n’t find Adela, He starts to search her and finally he looks down the hill and sees Adela speaking to Mr Derek. He runs down the hill but the two womem drive off without explanation. Aziz is arrested and charged with sexually assaulting Adela in a cave. The trail releases the racial tensions between the British and the Indians. The british believes that is guilty; Fielding believes that is innocent. Mrs. Moore believes that Aziz is innocent but she does nothing to help him. She return to England but she dies during the vojage. Adela becames confused on Aziz guilty. She realizes she had a shock, so she was wrong and the case is dropped. Then she is rejected by the community. After that Adela break off her engagement with Ronny, she goes to live in Fielding’s house. Aziz is ungry that Fielding befriended Adela.The men friendship’s suffers. Two years later the two meet again, during a ride on horseback, Aziz explains to him that when India will be free, they will be able to be friends again. SETTING, CHARACTERS AND THEMES INDIAN LANDSCAPE -> Challenging the western civilisation. Forster’s India has no interiors or exteriors, nothing is private. India awakens desire (->Adela will realise that she doesn’t love Ronny) Marabar Caves -> are both enclosed spaces and public spaces. There aren’t signs of human presence and Mrs Moore and Adela both have traumatic experience inside (the echo). The echo is symbol of nature’s benevolence [in literary tradition] but in Forster has a dehumanising quality. Dr.Aziz: is an intelligent muslim doctor and a widower of 3 children. Generous with his english friends (shows ospitality to Adela and Mrs Moore); but after Adela accuses him of sexual assaullting he will be antibritish and claims that India should be indipendent. He reflects the disillusionment of any Indian under the British Empire. Mrs Moore: is an elderly woman with 3 children with a cristian belief. She doesn’t like colonialism and is kind with enyone. After the experience of the Marabar Caves she becomes irritable, depressed and apathetic. Adela: is not able to have a good relationship with Indians even if she respects them. She’s the mot insicure character: her mind is destroyed by the evil of the Marabar Caves. Ronny Heaslop: the example of the English colonizer, the white burden. He has a deep sense of civilisation, duty and honour, but he is insensitive. Mr Fielding: headmaster of the local college. He’s free from prejudice. He prefers the individual and personal relationships rather the insitutions that judge and rule on people’s live. His AIM-> is the connection, the desire to overcome social and racial differences. Infacy Forster insist in personal relationships that are a fundamental value for the tollerance among people. But in the novel the belief of the goodwill remains strong. The novel deals with the dissolution of British dominion over India. Forster recorded the moment of British India’s transormation into a new country. Forster criticed imperialistic policies of discrimination, shared the no cooperation movement. Its leader Gandhi want social equality between Indians and British. The development of an Indian national consciousness is represented throught Aziz (in the final). Mosque, Caves, Temple -> represent spiritual exploration in knowledge, work and love. OMNISCENT NARRATOR-> Sometimes he comment the situation. The point of view shifts from character to character. The use of negative forms emphasises the sense of ambiguity and mystery. Muddle->confusing state The indian landscape is presented as indifferent, capable of discrupting human relations (Modernist vision). Sometimes Forster enters the consciousness a characters (Adela’s thought before marabar caves). Forster approaches modernism in theme and outlook; but not in form and style. DORIS LESSING Doris Lessing was born in Persia (now Iran) in 1919 from British parents and was brought up in the British colony of Rhodesia (now Zimbabwe) where her family had moved. Her parents met in ospital, both had an unfortunately story, the father had lost a leg during the first world war. In the 1940s she joined the Communist Party and after left Rhodesia for her radical politics and went to live in England. During the post-war years, she became disillusioned with the communist movement, infact the idea of Soviet communism was different from her idea. With her first novel, The Grass Is Singing, she began her career as a professional writer. In this novel she attacked the colour bar, writing about the relationship between a white woman and her black servant. Five novels of the sequence Children of Violence. The story of Martha Quest from her childhood in Rhodesia to an apocalyptic ecological disaster in the year 2000. The Golden Notebook, a narrative experiment in which the different selves of a woman writer confronted the situation of the late 1950s and early 1960s. She dealt with the issues of the condition of women. Then Lessing’s interest shifted from the social condition of the individual, and woman in particular, to the mental condition of people in a technological society. 1970/1980 Lessing explored the genre of science fiction. In her five-novel series Canopus in Argos: Archives, she retold the story of our planet from its geological beginnings to the present day. In the last two decades of the 20 th century, Lessing returned to critical realism, to prophecy in the sense of warning, appealing to individual responsibility. In the Diares of Jane Somers, The Good terrorist, The Fifth Child and Love, Again.-> she explain that we are near to the end of the worls, so we must change and start again. In 2007 she recived the Nobel Prize for Literature. Her last novel, Alfred and Emily, tells about the life of her parents, marked by World War I. She died in London in 2013. Doris Lessing thought that the responsible artist should be ‘an architect of the soul’ working to strengthen good against evil. The artist’s responsibility is to describe the world with energy and despair. Lessing restores writing to its former importance, with the task to record the past in order to map the future. THEMES what worries the contemporary society, like: the collapse of empires and idealism, the possibility of war, the threat of the nuclear bomb, the destruction of the environment through pollution, the condition of women in relation to marriage and politics. Her style is realistic, her language is rich in symbolism. The characterisation in her novels draws on psychological introspection. Lessing’s novels are very autobiographical. Africa was her starting point. Through her childhood and her her knowledge in politics, she explored the clash of cultures, the racial inequality and the conflict between the individual conscience and the collective good. In her writing there is the tension between the realistic description in society and questioni t thourgh utopia and dystopia. THE OLD MSLANGA I think that this part is very important. It is descripted how the settlers saw the natives. The black people are not considered like human beings. Infact, in the point of view of the protagonist, the natives are considered as objects, and they were only capable of serving their chief. So, these lines are an example of the racial inequality that was present in the families of the settlers. After meeting the old Chief Mshlanga the protagonist’s ideas about the natives changes and the prejudice she had now were vanished. The Chief Mshlanga respects the settlers without losing his dignity and influence the child. Her purpose was to meet black people, to show them her greetings and exchange courtesies like a respectable person. This is connected with the cultural pluralism, where different ethical groups coexist and collaborate in the same place. Doris Lessing’s aim to inform people about the social conditions and human conditions present in Africa. In particular it describes the social division, and the imperialist system in force in Africa. THE ECHO Aziz take Mrs Moore and Adela to visit the Marabar Caves. But in the first cave she’s overcome by the echo, so she declines to continue. When Mrs Moore was alone she tries to write a letter to Stella and Ralph but she’s tormented by the echo. She could forget the smell and the crowd but the memory of the echo disturbed her most. Her experience was horrid, she had a terrified sense of emptiness. The sound of “boum” seems to reduce her entire world to nothing, she declares infact that: “everything exists, nothing has value”. Curses and poetry, misery and joy: all just end up with a “boum”. The Marabar Caves cannot be romanticised because poetry would rob infinity and eternity of the cave’s vastness. She tries to find a rational explanation for what is happening to her. She think that she was an old woman that had journed a lot and got up early in the morning. She thinks of cristianity, and even the sacred words of the bible seems to fade away into a boom. She becomes paralyzed with horror and apathy, and no longer decides to communicate with anyone. She looses every interest in life. Now she thinks that everyything is unified and indifferent. (->IDEA OF THE UNIVERSAL ONENESS: if everything is the same, all the thing have no meaning and cannot be distinguished. There is no point in communicating with each other humans, if they too are nothing more than a “boom”).
