594
PARTISAN REVIEW
desire." That this solution was not automatic is interestingly shown in
the second " Lucy" manuscript, forerunner
to
the final version of
Forster's first begun but third completed novel, where George Emer–
son, about to elope with Lucy, is killed when his bicycle is hit by a
falling tree. But Forster averted this catastrophe and made
A Room
With a View
an unequivocal victory for personal relationships. The
ending symbolizes fruition, as the happy lovers return to their Floren–
tine room with a view of the Arno. Detachment and celibacy, personi–
fied in the antihero, Cecil Vyse, are seen as negations of humanistic
values, and Forster's castigation extends into
Howards End ,
where,
trying to turn her languid brother Tibby to active pursuits, Margaret
Schlegel cites Cecil as a deplorable example of sterility and idleness .
Yet even the Italian victory exacts a price. A delightful tour de
force,
A Room With a View
is (always excepting
Maurice)
the least
complex of Forster's novels. Interestingly, Forster's dissatisfaction with
his single Lawrentian resolution became explicit many years later,
when with depressed charm he speculated for the
New York Times
Book Review
on the mundane postmarital fates of George and Lucy
and revealed the truth of his affection for Cecil, who heroically affirms
the universality of art by playing Beethoven on the gramophone to
British troops during World War II.
Forster kept his sympathy for Cecil from the light of artistic day.
But its implications are instructive if we wish
to
explore the ambiguity
in the "familiar ideal" and suggest its consequences in the novels. For
Cecil, rejected though he is in
A Room With a View,
is a recognizable
version of Forster's archetypal protagonist, the sensitive, intelligent,
and perceptive character, whose education in "connection " should lead
him to self-realization. The crux of that realization is the necessity for
contact with what in
The Longest Journey
Forster termed " the spirit
of life," affirmed through inheritance. But here the crucial ambiguity
in Forster's ideal becomes manifest, for the tension that he eased in
A Room With a View
by Cecil 's graceful withdrawal pervades the
other major novels, from
Where Angels Fear to Tread
through his
final and luminous fictional creation,
A Passage to India.
Forster 's first protagonist is Philip of
Where Angels Fear to Tread .
Philip is aesthetic, condescending, repelled by vulgarity, disinclined to
action except where directed by a powerful mother who represents the
repressive force of convention. Philip undertakes a journey to Italy
which Forster soon reveals as a voyage of the soul no less central in its
more congenial context than the quest that animates
A Passage to
India.
The young hero of this first novel comes
to
accept responsibility
