The Essence And Representation Of Anxiety In E.M. Forster's Novels

“Anxiety” is not only a psychological and philosophical term,but has become a key word of social and cultural study with its profound and pervasive influence in modern society.Being in a transitional era,Forster,a novelist displaying a mixture of optimism and pessimism,idealism and skepticism,is constantly mediating between the preservation of traditional culture and the embracing of modern civilization while contemporary writers are devoted to the innovation with the form of fiction.Not only the content of Forster's novels present the anxiety in the swiftly changing social and cultural context,but the form of his fiction also takes on the traits of fissures and fractures.This dissertation analyzes his primary works from the perspective of “anxiety” and explores the possibility of coexisting with anxiety in the modern society on the textual level,which is not only meaningful in deepening the academic research of Forster's writings but also makes some practical contribution to a better adaptation to the commercial and consumerist age.The dissertation holds that “essence and representations of anxiety” are the key words concerning the theme and art of Forster's fictions.Based on theories of anxiety proposed by Freud,Kierkegaard,R.D.Laing,and Rolly May,this dissertation probes into the anxiety confronting the possibility of freedom,anxiety for existence and moral belief crisis in the modernized transformation,and the cross-cultural anxiety in a universe of mystery and diversity in Forster's three major novels: A Room with a View,Howards End and A Passage to India,and then analyzes Forster's application of unique artistic form to deal with these anxieties and its significance in the textual and social psychological level.Chapter one is devoted to exploring the captive individual's “dizziness” and ambivalence in the face of possibilities of freedom from the psychological and spiritual perspective in A Room with a View.Different characters and surroundings in the novel take on paradoxical traits of freedom and discipline which allude to the V conflict between id,ego and superego,presenting the “ reality anxiety” and “moral anxiety” in Edwardian age.In the novel,Forster applies the artistic form of romance;yet the ambiguity of the ending disconnects itself from a conventional romantic love story.Forster's parody of romance does not only symbolize his dilemma of choices,but also indicates his attempt to discover a compromise between freedom and discipline.Chapter two explores existential and moral anxiety of different classes in the age of transformation on the level of value orientation in Howards End.The conflict between the material and cultural pursuit,the rural civilization and urban civilization indicates the anxiety of maladaptation in an urbanized society with imbalanced and unstable moral standards.Howards End manifests Forster's ideal to construct a promising and positive national allegory in theme and content;yet meantime it is suffused with quantities of ironic and ambivalent symbols to subvert the promising allegory,and the ending hasn't presented an ultimate meaning.The agnostic and deconstructive narration suggests Foster's Forster's pessimistic yet positive anxiety towards the rising modernity and the expanding urbanization.Chapter three examines different cultural subjects' anxiety triggered by the incompetence of establishing stable order of values and belief in a cultural muddle and the failure of communication between human world and nonhuman world on the level of cosmology in A Passage to India.Divergences in understanding perceptual culture system and intellectual culture system between Indians and British lead to their ontological insecurity and “division of self”,bringing about the interweaving of anxiety and imagination.Through plenty of fantasies Forster constructs a world of mystery,which turns dynamic due to the internally tripartite and cyclic structure.With a dynamic vision,Forster tries to find new order and durable values in our chaotic and multifarious world with diverse cultural identities.The three works on one hand indicate the evolution of Forster's creation process;on the other hand,they present Forster's concern of anxiety from three different perspectives of individual,society,and a larger scope of universe.Forster employs increasingly dynamic text to express his aspiration for a loosely knit and creative world of multiplicity and flexibility.The dissertation holds that Forster's novels both manifest types of anxiety in modern society and generate the cures on the text level to some extent as well.Forster's artistic representation,with its characteristics of dissonance and ambivalence,is a textual metaphor of human beings' coexistence with anxiety and equanimity in modern society.