E. M. Forster's "Where Angels Fear to Tread" owes its significance to "an ironical, unforgiving attitude towards its characters," said Professor Israel Kapstein of Brown as he opened the series on the noted English novelist before the Kirkland House Forum last night. The purpose of the series is to lay the ground for a proposed talk by Forster himself when he visits the U. S. this Spring.
In discussing the novel, Kapstein considered it on its merits as a work of art, not as Forster's first book. Forster he pointed out, does not treat his characters in the traditional realism of Dreiser where the hero is trapped by his environment but shows the effect of successful battle against inhibiting surroundings.
The theme of the book is that accepting the conventions of middle class society stifles the heart. If the stifling process is incomplete the heart may yet be revived to a realization that there is something more in life than maintaining one's position in the local circle.
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