A Study Of Marginality On Female Characters In E.M. Forster’s Novels With Exotic Settings From The Perspective Of Spatial Theory

As a member of British middle class,Forster didn’t regard himself as superior to others as most middle-class people did.Indeed,he firmly upheld humanistic thoughts.As a liberal humanist,he realized the hidden crisis of his era and British’s defection in disposition,so he volunteered to find ways to save his beloved motherland.Due to various travel experiences in his youth,which made him detect essential parts in foreign cultures that British people may resort to,he put his hope on foreign cultures,expecting to save the falling empire out of spiritual dilemma with the influence of foreign cultures.Forster’s works are mainly created in the late of Victorian era and the early of Edwardian era,against the background of which the dominant social model is middle class patriarchal society,which also serves as the furnace to smelt the “undeveloped heart” of the British middle class.In his three novels with exotic settings,respectively A Room with a View,Where Angels Fear to Tread and A Passage to India,three female characters Lucy,Lilia and Adela represent opposite images of the British middle class that own the “undeveloped heart”.Though treated unfairly in the middle-class patriarchal society and repressed by patriarchal thoughts,thus inevitably becoming marginal social existences in the mainstream society,they always remain optimistic,have great passion for life and bravely fight against oppression.This study is carried out under the help of spatial theory to analyze the marginality of female characters in his three exotic novels.In these novels,three heroines all travel to exotic places and are edified and influenced by different cultural environments.Each country has its unique physical spaces and different physical spaces give birth to their own social,historical and cultural environment(social spaces),which exert great influences on the characters’ mental spaces.The author of this thesis will first have thorough analyses about three different types of spaces: physical space,mental space and social space,gradually revealing three heroines’ marginal social existences.At last,by analyzing their behaviors of actively building third spaces of their own,it shows that female self-awareness has already awakened inside them,their determination to get rid of shackles of patriarchal society is growing strong,and they further turn to seek mental independence.From previous studies on Forster and his works by other scholars,it’s not difficult to find out that there are indeed many researches centering on marginal characters in his novels,but seldom is under the guidance of spatial theory.The author mainly focuses on the marginality of British middle-class females who drift away on the margin of middle-class patriarchal society,which gives a more specific research orientation.To take spatial theory as the theoretical basis of this thesis also contributes to a more comprehensive perspective of marginal research on Forster.