Sexuality and National Containment: E.M. Forster

Abstract

E.M. Forster was born during the popular cultural sensation made by Henry James’ Daisy Miller. That novel inaugurated a structure which James worked for several years, marketing stories in which young women at that ‘interesting time of life’ were moved from one national culture to another. In these fictions the romance plot, as a vehicle for the problem of feminine will, is used to extend commentary on national difference. The unruly behaviour of characters such as Daisy both throws the relative cultural rules of sexual regulation into relief, and uses sexual behaviours and tensions to produce national/cultural difference.