Social Values In The Writings Of E.M.Foster

Abstract

Englishness, imperialism, and liberalism are the three main categories into which  my investigation falls in order to recreate the unique genesis of these writers. I distinguish three distinct but interconnected aspects of "Englishness": (a) its dependence on a variety of cultural and social "Others," (b) its ties to liberalism (through "a capacious liberalism," and (c) its foundation in capitalism. Not only is
the construction of "Otherness," which manifests itself in a long chain of binary oppositions (such as, public/private; masculine/ feminine; rational/emotional; elite/mass), central to Forster's and Orwell's literary/political vision, but it has also been replicated in the various identity-based post-modernist critiques of liberal-humanism. Even while ethics and aesthetics aren't the only things on
Forster's mind, they're crucial to grasping his works and what might be considered his universe. They serve as pointers toward a discovery of something that, on its own, is likely too vast, rocky, and complicated to fully comprehend. A large number of A Room with a View's characters seem to prefer promoting Victorian values above "new" ones.