Is it a romance or a coming of age novel? Critique of Edwardian manners? Forster’s novel plays a lot of parts for being relatively short length. To add, it feels like a victorian novel that’s been torn back and loosened up a little (not quite modernist).
I guess it’s really a novel of conflicts modulated by manners. Lucy is in conflict with her mother, Charlotte, Cecil, and George but not really with her philosopher Mr. Emerson. Charlotte and Mrs. Honeychurch are in conflict with George and Cecil. All of their conflicts have to go through Edwardian customs and concerns of what others may think.
Maybe I came in expecting a little bit of a lighter, lusher novel based on the descriptions of the book (and film). This has some weight to it which I wasn’t really expecting.
Maybe this is more for the spring than the summer, or maybe my criticism is that LP Hartley’s “The Go-Between” exists.
Leave a Reply