Where Angels Fear to Tread by E.M. Forster.

“You told me once that we shall be judged by our intentions, not by our accomplishments. I thought it a grand remark. But we must intend to accomplish - not sit intending on a chair.” 

I'm not sure how long this "review" is going to be for a few reasons. 1. While I just finished this book last weekend, the details are already fuzzy, which should give you the indication that 2. I didn't love this one because 3. It seemed unpolished and not quite there, at least in comparison to the one other novel I've read by Forster, A Room with a View. Granted, I read that one fairly early in my blogging career, so details are fuzzy, but I do remember wanting to keep reading and flying through the book because I loved it. 

It's not that Where Angels Fear to Tread is poorly written...I just didn't get into the story and it took me too long to finish for how slim of a novel it is. There were aspects I liked (it has some funny moments), but is just seemed...overly dramatic and drawn out.

The book opens with Lilia Herriton, a widow, goes off to Italy some some vacation time at the bidding of her in-laws. Back in Uppity Edwardian England, the in-laws were disapproving of Lilia's choices and felt that she needed some time away. They kept her daughter while she traveled with a companion in town. Imagine their horror and dismay when they receive word that Lilia has met an Italian and is considering marrying him. 

To try and prevent scandal from descending on their family, Lilia's brother in law, Philip rushes to Italy to bring her home and stop all the foolishness. Well, it's too late-Lilia is married to the Italian and has brought disgrace on her in-laws. Philip returns home in despair and Lilia begins her life with her new husband. She quickly becomes pregnant, then realizes her mistake. Gino is not who he said he was, her life is lonely, and she doesn't actually love him. He becomes verbally and emotionally abusive and shortly after giving birth, she dies. 

The Herritons believe they need to rescue Lilia's son and so Philip, his sister Harriet, and a friend, Miss Abbott go back to Italy in hopes of retrieving the baby. And it all falls apart.

Overall, the story is intriguing. I mean, it sounds interesting, right? Perhaps it was my mental state as I was reading, but I just could not get into caring about any of the characters. Philip is pretty pompous and opinionated (don't even get me started on his mother), Harriet is one of those hysterical women who is just a stereotype, and Miss Abbott, well, she's just kind of there. 

I know Forster was making some kind of commentary about the snobbish nature of the English towards other countries, and that came through pretty clearly as he depicted Gino and the small Italian town most of the novel took place in. As the reader...I just didn't care. I didn't find any of the characters to be relatable...or likeable, and that really prevented me from wanting to pick the book up after setting it down. 

I will give props to Forster for the beauty of his language. He writes some beautiful passages. But that wasn't enough for me. I'm just too picky. This was his first novel, and I'm glad I have a positive experience with one of his works under my belt so I'm not too discouraged. The only other Forster on my shelf is A Passage to India, but it'll be some time before I give that a go.

However, this did mark book 3 on my TBR Challenge list for 2018. I'm kind of rocking that challenge! I'm going to take a little break from my challenge list, but I'll be back in March!

“All a child's life depends on the ideal it has of its parents. Destroy that and everything goes - morals, behavior, everything. Absolute trust in someone else is the essence of education.”

Book 144: A Passage to India and Book Stats.

Title: A Passage to India
Author: E.M. Forster (1879-1970)

First Published: 1924

My Edition: Houghton Mifflin Harcourt (seen at left)

Pages:368

Other Works Include: A Room with a View, Howard's End, Where Angels Fear to Tread, The Longest Journey, Maurice

My first and only other experience with E.M. Forster took place when I read book #3 on my list, A Room with a View. I was blown away by the story and the writing, so I have been anxious to read the only other title by Forster on my 250 project list.

Well folks, the time has come. For some reason, I had the hardest time locating a copy of A Passage to India. It was one of the books I always looked for at the book store, but I never could get my hands on a copy. Instead, I had slowly collected his other works, so I have them ready for future reading. Then, magically, there was a huge stack of this one on a display table, so I snatched up a pretty one and have been waiting to read it ever since.

I think it is about time I get on that, so reading my second work by Forster is talking place right now. I'm not going to lie, I already started it, but I'm anxious to get a little deeper. It seems like an interesting work, and I like that it takes place in India-a far cry from the settings and locales in A Room with a View. I think it'll be a good comparison! I'm also hoping it'll help me tackle Kim, which I started last year and never got into (I often find that books with similar locales, themes, or in the same time period connect together in a way to help me get through ones I'm not that big a fan of).

If you're curious, here are a couple of my posts on A Room with a View. I am somewhat embarassed to link them, since they were at the very beginning of this project, but, who cares, right? :)

•  Women's Roles
• Mrs. Honeychurch
• Finished

Thoughts on Forster? Love him, hate him? Plan to read any of his work?

Book 4: Author Criticisms.

I like knowing how authors view the work of other authors. I think what they have to say about another’s work reflects on their own. I also find it humorous to see whether I agree or disagree with what they have to say about books and plays that I consider to be my favorites.

In my edition of Pride and Prejudice, there are a number of quotes in the back from other authors about her work (this is a fun addition to the Barnes and Noble Classics Editions, of which I own many and really like). Austen is obviously well-known and her work is loved. So in addition to the praise, I also wanted to post some of the more…scandalous things that other authors had to say about her work. Many of these authors are on my list and whether I have read their work or not, their words will be on my mind when I finally get around to their pieces.

Enjoy.

Lady Byron:

"I have finished the Novel called Pride and Prejudice, which I think a very superior work. It depends not on any of the common resources of novel writers, no drownings, no conflagrations, nor runaway horses, nor lap-dogs and parrots, nor chambermaids and milliners, nor rencontres [duels] and disguises. I really think it is the most probable I have ever read. It is not a crying book, but the interest is very strong, especially for Mr. Darcy. The characters which are not amiable are diverting, and all of them are consistently supported."

Charlotte Bronte:

“Anything like warmth or enthusiasm, anything energetic, poignant, heartfelt, is utterly out of place in commending these works: all such demonstrations the authoress would have met with a well-bred sneer, would have calmly scorned as outré or extravagant. She does her business of delineating the surface of the lives of genteel English people curiously well. There is a Chinese fidelity, a miniature delicacy, in the painting. She ruffles her reader by nothing vehement, disturbs him with nothing profound. The passions are perfectly unknown to her: she rejects even a speaking acquaintance with that stormy sisterhood ... What sees keenly, speaks aptly, moves flexibly, it suits her to study: but what throbs fast and full, though hidden, what the blood rushes through, what is the unseen seat of life and the sentient target of death--this Miss Austen ignores....Jane Austen was a complete and most sensible lady, but a very incomplete and rather insensible (not senseless woman), if this is heresy--I cannot help it.”

Walter Allen:

“More can be learnt from Miss Austen about the nature of the novel than from most any other writer.”

Sir Walter Scott:

“Also read again, and for the third time at least, Miss Austen's very finely written novel of Pride and Prejudice. That young lady had a talent for describing the involvement and feelings and characters of ordinary life which is to me the most wonderful I ever met with. The big Bow-wow strain I can do myself like any now going, but the exquisite touch which renders ordinary commonplace things and characters interesting from the truth of the description and the sentiment is denied to me. What a pity such a gifted creature died so early!”

Anthony Trollope:

“"Miss Austen was surely a great novelist. What she did, she did perfectly. Her work, as far as it goes, is faultless. She wrote of the times in which she lived, of the class of people with which she associated, and in the language which was usual to her as an educated lady. Of romance, -- what we generally mean when we speak of romance -- she had no tinge. Heroes and heroines with wonderful adventures there are none in her novels. Of great criminals and hidden crimes she tells us nothing. But she places us in a circle of gentlemen and ladies, and charms us while she tells us with an unconscious accuracy how men should act to women, and women act to men. It is not that her people are all good; -- and, certainly, they are not all wise. The faults of some are the anvils on which the virtues of others are hammered till they are bright as steel. In the comedy of folly I know no novelist who has beaten her. The letters of Mr. Collins, a clergyman in Pride and Prejudice, would move laughter in a low-church archbishop."

Ralph Waldo Emerson:

"I am at a loss to understand why people hold Miss Austen's novels at so high a rate, which seem to me vulgar in tone, sterile in artistic invention, imprisoned in their wretched conventions of English society, without genius, wit, or knowledge of the world. Never was life so pinched and narrow. ... All that interests in any character [is this]: has he (or she) the money to marry with? ... Suicide is more respectable."

E.M. Forster (who wrote A Room with a View which I just finished and loved):

“I am a Jane Austenite, and therefore slightly imbecile about Jane Austen. My fatuous expression, and airs of personal immunity — how ill they sit on the face, say, of a Stevensonian! But Jane Austen is so different. She is my favorite author! I read and reread, the mouth open and the mind closed. Shut up in measureless content, I greet her by the name of most kind hostess, while criticism slumbers.”

Mark Twain (who has many things to say about many authors—remind me to mention his hatred of Cooper when I get to it):

“To me his prose is unreadable -- like Jane Austin's [sic]. No there is a difference. I could read his prose on salary, but not Jane's. Jane is entirely impossible. It seems a great pity that they allowed her to die a natural death.”

“I haven't any right to criticize books, and I don't do it except when I hate them. I often want to criticize Jane Austen, but her books madden me so that I can't conceal my frenzy from the reader; and therefore I have to stop every time I begin. Every time I read 'Pride and Prejudice' I want to dig her up and beat her over the skull with her own shin-bone.”

And my favorite, from W. Somerset Maugham:

“Nothing very much happens in her books, and yet, when you come to the bottom of a page, you eagerly turn it to learn what will happen next. Nothing very much does and again you eagerly turn the page. The novelist who has the power to achieve this has the most precious gift a novelist can possess."

Book 3: Finished.

I finished A Room with a View this morning and I absolutely loved it. The story is light and fluffy and everything you would expect, but the writing is beautiful. There are many, many lines that I marked for sheer wit, or because they made my heart ache (in a good way).

I also loved the characters, especially Mrs. Honeychurch. She was snarky and overbearing and pretentious and so caring that I just loved her. She stole the scene away whenever she popped up. I prattled on about her in an earlier post, but I have one more example of her conversational skills to share:

“’Very well. Take your independence and be gone. Rush up and down and round the world, and come back as thin as a lath with the bad food. Despise the house that your father built and the garden that he planted, and our dear view—and then share a flat with another girl,’” (194).

Simply amazing. It’s just how a mother should speak after hearing their daughter wants to leave.

I also like this passage because it mentions the “view.” The concept of a “view” comes up often within the novel, and in the title. The word view is used in lots of different contexts in the story—from a view from a hotel room, to a view down the street, to how one individual can have a different view than another about someone else—and that word really adds to the depth and power of the story.

The story ended the way it should. The ending fit with the light feeling of the novel as a whole and really just captured everything the author was trying to say about love and how we view love. These next few passages are from the very end of the novel. I chose many of them simply because of how beautifully they are written. I hope you enjoy them as much as I did.

“’You love the boy body and soul, plainly, directly, as he loves you, and no other word expressed it’” (202).

“’I have no time for the tenderness, and the comradeship, and the poetry, and the things that really matter, and for which you marry. I know that, with George, you will find them, and that you love him. Then be his wife. He is already a part of you…It isn’t possible to love and to part. You will wish that it was. You can transmute love, ignore it, muddle it, but you can never pull it out of you. I know by experience that poets are right: love is eternal,’” (202).

“She ‘never exactly understood,’ she would say in after years, ‘how he managed to strengthen her. It was as if he had made her see the whole of everything at once,’” (205).

“’How do you like this view of ours Mr. Emerson?’
‘I never notice much difference in views.’
‘What do you mean?’
‘Because they’re all alike. Because all that matters in them is distance and air,’” (159).

Book 3: Mrs. Honeychurch.

I absolutely love the character interactions in A Room with a View. As I am nearing the end, I am finding even more things about these characters to love. The mother, Mrs. Honeychurch, just makes me laugh.

In the first scene that the reader meets her, she is writing a letter and part of the conversation goes as such;

“Where was I? Oh yes—‘Young people must decide for themselves. I know that Lucy likes your son, because she tells me everything, and she wrote to me from Rome when he asked her first.’ No, I’ll cross that last bit out—it looks patronizing. I’ll stop at ‘because she tells me everything.’ Or shall I cross that out, too?” (87)

I just find her commentary amusing.

I also love this gem…

“’She was a novelist,’ said Lucy craftily. The remark was a happy one, for nothing roused Mrs. Honeychurch so much as literature in the hands of females. She would abandon every topic to inveigh against those women who (instead of minding their houses and their children) seek notoriety by print,” (140).

*snicker*

I can laugh at it now, even though I know that there are still many, MANY people who feel that way—that a woman’s place is in the home and their success is measured by having children and making sure their husband comes home to a clean house.

I believe a main reason I find this more amusing than anything, is that the male characters feel the same way. Cecil, one of Lucy’s suitors, is very clear about his opinions—to the point that he openly mocks Lucy’s mother (which I also find amusing). I’m just glad that the males in my own life don’t have those kinds of opinions, and neither does my mother.

If anyone ever tells me that I can’t have literature in my hands because I am a female…they just better think twice.



On another note, it looks like I am going to finish this in the very near future. Any suggestions for my next book?

Book 3: Women's Roles.

When I had my first poll, A Room with a View by E.M. Forster placed in second behind Crime and Punishment so; it makes sense that it’s my next novel.

I started it this morning and am already 50 pages in (its only 210 pages long), so I am sure I will finish it rather quickly.

So far it seems rather light, especially in comparison to its predecessor. The main premise of the story is that Lucy, the main character, has to choose between passion and convention—a man her family will approve of and who she would rather be with. I have only met one of the male characters thus far but I am already pretty sure who she will choose.

Who really listens to their parents anyway when it comes to love? ;)

I jest, but it used to be that way not too long ago. Its funny how things have changed so much in regards to dating and how we choose our husbands and wives. I would have already been married off long ago and most likely to a man I didn’t like.

Thank goodness I got to pick.

The book reflects that view of women and is very true to the times in which it was first published—1908.

Here is a prime example:

“It was not that ladies were inferior to men; it was that they were different. Their mission was to inspire others to achievement rather than to achieve themselves. Indirectly, by means of tact and a spotless name, a lady could accomplish much. But if she rushed into the fray herself she would be first censured, then despised, and finally ignored” (39).

I also like to think about how that above attitude would have been interpreted by women around the turn of the century. True, there were many movements for women’s suffrage and rights emerging and going strong, but the greater sentiment was this attitude—that women were there to support men and to help their men become accomplished and successful.

I am glad that now I can make my own success and Matt will support and help me get there. However, I can also help him and support him in his own achievements. I think that kind of balance is much better than that alternative from the early 1900s.

This is a case where I can say, “Yay for progress!” It seems as if everyone has benefited from that change in attitude.

Anyway, it is time to get back to reading. If you haven’t yet, please vote in the Shakespeare poll!