Surveying the novels of [D. H. Lawrence and E. M. Forster] side by side, one is struck by a common curve in their careers. Each wrote an important early novel around the theme of an attractive young girl faced with a choice between two suitors, one of whom is acceptable by the standards of her own society, the other 'unsuitable' but more deeply attractive to her physically; in each case the novel proved difficult to work. The 'Lucy novel' took various forms in Forster's mind before it was published as A Room with a View in 1908; Lawrence's The White Peacock, similarly, went through various changes before its final version of January 1911.

As one compares these two novels, on the other hand, certain resemblances and differences between the two writers begin to define themselves. In A Room with a View, the heroine's choice is between Cecil Vyse, a cultivated...