Dr John Attridge

My project aims to utilise current discourses surrounding identity politics to re-examine the representation of class in E. M. Forster’s fiction – particularly the working-class characters with whom the author seems to identify.

Often considered an outsider by his peers and biographers, Forster nevertheless belonged firmly to the middle-classes of English society. He had the benefit of a Cambridge education, inherited £8000 from his great-aunt, travelled abroad many times, and lived comfortably between multiple properties. As a result, his working-class characters have received a mixed reception, often faulted for their unconvincing dialect and frequently dismissed as caricatures. Yet Forster was also shy and reserved among large groups of friends; is rarely thought of as a modernist innovator; and his homosexuality and longing for companionship put him in perpetual danger of criminal persecution.

Today these feelings of “otherness” are regularly defined in debates around identity politics – in social and academic discussions centred around the value of “authentic voices” and “lived experiences” which have historically been side-lined or ignored by social and cultural establishments.

My research is therefore built the specific anxieties and tensions that are elicited in intersections of working-class experience and those feelings of “otherness” which to this day define the author as a peripheral figure. By applying concepts borne out of identity politics (including the utilisation of “safe-spaces” and the dissection of “culture wars”) to his texts, I hope to illuminate how Forster’s status as an outsider is crucial to understanding his conception of working and lower-middle class lives during the Edwardian period.