[Arctic Summer is] not of very great interest except to Forster enthusiasts. Becoming a Forster enthusiast is luckily not difficult, and anyone reading or rereading P. N. Furbank's [E. M. Forster: A Life], in particular, would find it worthwhile to look at these fragments for the light they throw on Forster's themes and preoccupations. Being unfinished, they can show at what points he became blocked in his writing and why….
["Nottingham Lace" and "Ralph and Tony"] are about philistinism, sensibility, loneliness, and rescue; they are dominated by the conflict between Forster's two versions of masculinity, the sensitive and the strong. "Ralph and Tony" is an odd and rather confused account of a threesome on holiday in the Alps (the woman of the three, however, is an irrelevancy). Tony is the mountain-climbing hearty, Ralph the agonized aesthete who deeply disgusts him. Tony saves the frail Ralph's life in the mountains but suffers a heart attack as a result; it is the strong man who proves the weaker. Tony will never climb again; but he has a dream which is a kind of revelation of the Forsterian values—a crowd of people struggling to get to the top of a mountain, while he calls out to dissuade them….
This is a free excerpt of 204 words. There are 392 words (approx.
1 page at 300 words per page) in the full critical essay.
Read the rest of this Criticism with our Forster, E(dward) M(organ) 1879–1970: Critical Essay by Rosemary Dinnage Access Pass.
