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E.M. Forster Biography

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“If human nature does alter it will be because individuals manage to look at themselves in a new way. Here and there people — a very few people, but a few novelists are among them — are trying to do this. Every institution and vested interest is against such a search: organized religion, the State, the family in its economic aspect, have nothing to gain, and it is only when outward prohibitions weaken that it can proceed: history conditions it to that extent. Perhaps the searchers will fail, perhaps it is impossible for the instrument of contemplation to contemplate itself, perhaps if it is possible it means the end of imaginative literature — [...] anyhow—that way lies movement and even combustion for the novel, for if the novelist sees himself differently, he will see his characters differently and a new system of lighting will result.”

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“Mrs. Wilcox, though a loving wife and mother, had only one passion in life—her house—and that the moment was solemn when she invited a friend to share this passion with her. To answer “another day” was to answer as a fool. “Another day” will do for brick and mortar, but not for the Holy of Holies into which Howards End had been transfigured. Her own curiosity was slight. She had heard more than enough about it in the summer. The nine windows, the vine, and the wych-elm had no pleasant connections for her, and she would have preferred to spend the afternoon at a concert. But imagination triumphed. While her brother held forth she determined to go, at whatever cost, and to compel Mrs. Wilcox to go, too.”

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“He whispered: ‘Is is this? Is this possible? I’ll put a marvel to you. That your cousin has always hoped. That from the very first moment we met, she hoped, far down in her mind, that we should be like this — of course, very far down. That she fought us on the surface, and yet she hoped. I can’t explain her any other way. Can you? Look how she kept me alive in you all the summer; how she gave you no peace; how month after month, she became more eccentric and unreliable. The sight of us haunted her — or she couldn’t have described us as she did to her friend. There are details — it burned. I read the books afterwards. She is not frozen, Lucy, she is not withered up all through. She tore us apart twice, but in the rectory that evening she was given one more chance to make us happy. We can never make friends with her or thank her. But I do believe that, far down in her heart, far below all speech and behaviour, she is glad.”

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Book:A Room with a View
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“He whispered: ‘Is it this? Is this possible? I’ll put a marvel to you. That your cousin has always hoped. That from the very first moment we met, she hoped, far down in her mind, that we should be like this — of course, very far down. That she fought us on the surface, and yet she hoped. I can’t explain her any other way. Can you? Look how she kept me alive in you all the summer; how she gave you no peace; how month after month, she became more eccentric and unreliable. The sight of us haunted her — or she couldn’t have described us as she did to her friend. There are details — it burned. I read the books afterwards. She is not frozen, Lucy, she is not withered up all through. She tore us apart twice, but in the rectory that evening she was given one more chance to make us happy. We can never make friends with her or thank her. But I do believe that, far down in her heart, far below all speech and behaviour, she is glad.”

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Book:A Room with a View
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“Perhaps anything that he did would have pleased Lucy, but his awkwardness went straight to her heart: men were not gods after all, but as human and as clumsy as girls; even men might suffer from unexplained desires, and need help. To one of her upbringing, and of her destination, the weakness of men was a truth unfamiliar, but she had surmised it at Florence, when George threw her photographs into the river Arno.”

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“I foresaw at Florence that her quiet, uneventful childhood must end, and it has ended. I realised dimly enough that she might take some momentous steps. She has taken it. She has learned — you will let me talk freely, as I have begun freely — she has learned what it is to love: the greatest lesson, some people will tell you, that our earthly life provides. She has learned through you.”

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“I foresaw at Florence that her quiet, uneventful childhood must end, and it has ended. I realised dimly enough that she might take some momentous steps. She has taken it. She has learned — you will let me talk freely, as I have begun freely — she has learned what it is to love: the greatest lesson, some people will tell you, that our earthly life provides.’ It was now time for him to wave his hat at the approaching trio. He did not omit to do so. ‘She has learned through you,’ and if his voice was still not clerical, it was now also sincere; ‘let it be your care that her knowledge is profitable to her.”

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“Italy had quickened Cecil, not to tolerance, but to irritation. He saw that the local society was narrow, but instead of saying, ‘Does this very much matter?’ he rebelled, and tried to substitute for it the society he called broad. He did not realise that Lucy had consecrated her environment by the thousand little civilities that create a tenderness in time, and that though her eyes saw its defects, her heart refused to despite it entirely. Nor did he realise a more important point — that if she was too great for this society, she was too great for all society, and had reached the stage where personal intercourse would alone satisfy her. A rebel, she was, but not the kind he understood — a rebel who desired, not a wider dwelling-room, but equality beside the man she loved. For Italy was offering her the most priceless of all possessions — her own soul.”

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“Have you ever talked to Vyse without feeling tired?’ ‘I can scarcely discuss —’ ‘No, but have you ever? He is the sort who are all right so long as they keep to things — books, pictures — but kill when they come to people. That’s why I’ll speak out through all this muddle even now. It’s shocking enough to lose you in any case, but generally a man must deny himself joy, and I would have held back if your Cecil had been a different person. I would never have let myself go. But I saw him first in the National Gallery, when he winced because my father mispronounced the names of great painters. Then he brings us here, and we find it is to play some silly trick on a kind neighbour. That is the man all over — playing tricks on people, on the most sacred form of life that he can find. Next, I meet you together, and find him protecting and teaching you and your mother to be shocked, when it was for you to settle whether you were shocked or no. Cecil all over again. He daren’t let a woman decide. He’s the type who’s kept Europe back for a thousand years. Every moment of his life he’s forming you, telling you what’s charming or amusing or ladylike, telling you what a man thinks is womanly; and you, you of all women, listen to his voice instead of to your own. So it was at the rectory, when I met you both again; so it has been the whole of this afternoon. Therefore — not “therefore I kissed you”, because the book made me do that, and I wish to goodness I had more self-control. I’m not ashamed. I don’t apologise. But it has frightened you, and you may not have noticed that I love you. Or would you have told me to go, and dealt with a tremendous thing so lightly? But therefore — therefore, I settled to fight him.”

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“I’m the same kind of brute at bottom. This desire to govern a woman — it lies very deep, and men and woman must fight it together before they shall enter the Garden. But I do love you — surely in a better way than he does.’ He thought. ‘Yes — really in a better way. I want you to have your own thoughts even when I hold you in my arms.’ He stretched them towards her. ‘Lucy, be quick — there's no time for us to talk now — come to me as you came in the spring, and afterwards I will be gentle and explain. I have cared for you since that man died. I cannot live without you. “No good,” I thought: “she is marring someone else”; but I meet you again when all the world is glorious water and sun. As you came through the wood, I saw that nothing else mattered. I called. I wanted to live and have my chance of joy.”

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“Healthy and muscular, he yet gave her the feeling of greyness, of tragedy that might only find solution in the night. The feeling soon passed; it was unlike her to have entertained anything so subtle. Born of silence and of unknown emotion, it passed when Mr Emerson returned, and she could re-enter the world of rapid talk, which was alone familiar to her.”

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“The young man named George glanced at the clever lady, and then returned moodily to his plate. Obviously he and his father did not do. Lucy, in the midst of her success, found time to wish they did. It gave her no extra pleasure that anyone should be left in the cold; and when she rose to go, she turned back and gave the two outsiders a nervous little bow.”

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