Prisoner of Privilege

Because Forster sounds so much like a contemporary when he speaks about the death of the novel, it seems worth pointing out that what he saw as a problem with the form of the novel was a problem created by his understanding of the form of the novel. He foreshadowed the dilemma of the contemporary writer in pursuing personal happiness while ignoring the structure of privilege that made this possible. He was, in spite of doubts, content to accept the world as it was even as he accused it of having changed so much that it had made the novel an outmoded form. But it was not the novel that abandoned Forster as much as that he abandoned the novel. Forster forgot what he himself had shown so brilliantly in his last great work: that the novel is not merely the stronghold of individualism—a place for love affairs and social nuances—but that it also exists in a larger sphere where sometimes even the horses and the birds speak, telling us to abandon the fake consolation of coming together for harder truths about the world that we have made.