According to Foster's own diagnosis, the English "underdeveloped heart" reflects the gap between people. It should be said that when Foster bowed his head to diagnose the British in the industrial age, his eyes were sharp and he observed the symptoms. But when he looked up and pointed out the maze for his compatriots, the prescription was always unable to prescribe the right medicine: as long as other cultures were regarded as the panacea for external use rather than internal use, Italian kindred culture and ancient villages. The direction he is looking for is always divorced from history and reality, and the mismatch between diagnosis and prescription is inevitable. In fact, the culture of the other can't make Foster, who has dual cultural identity and consciousness, really dissociate from different cultures and face the "panic and emptiness" of the British middle class as a "person who lives safely on the edge of cultural transition". He can only look at the general alienation of the world from the viewpoint of bourgeois freedom and humanitarianism. The inherent contradiction of his cultural identity forces him to go against the logic of life and culture and turn "connection" into a diagram of his subjective wishes, which is the immanence of his works.
As a representative of the "traveling class", Foster takes English culture as the reference point and starting point, and looks at the countries and people he visited from a certain perspective. The brand of British centralism expanded with the extension of his imagination as an Englishman, and also spread with his anxiety about the future and destiny of the British Empire.
Foster is not opposed to the humanistic spirit rooted in the core of European culture for thousands of years from ancient Greece and Rome. From the standpoint of the middle-class cultural elite, he hopes to transform the humanistic tradition, make it elegant and interesting, express the spiritual needs and interests of the middle-class cultural elite, and reflect their voices. Foster vividly and profoundly reproduces the life of the British middle class in his works of art. He is not concerned with the country or politics or economy, but with the friendship between people, the value of people, the perfection of human nature and the communication between different cultures. In other words, he is interested in "interpersonal relationships and conflicts, estrangements, deviations and differences reflected through these relationships". Foster called on people to abandon blind obedience to British moral concepts and social traditions and customs, eliminate personal, gender, class and racial prejudices and barriers, and look for similarities between human beings.
Foster advocates infinite and inclusive love in a multicultural world, regardless of nationality, religion, class and belief. While calling for "connection", he always realized the difficulty of connection. The embarrassment and failure of the connection between the Middle East and the West in A Passage to India made Foster doubt and confused about the reality of integration. These doubts and puzzles are also reflected in the novel creation. For example, the marriage between Margaret and Henry in Don't Leave Howard is not credible. Margaret chose Henry as her "contact" object because of the need of the plot of the novel, and the focus of the novel narrative was originally to express the profound estrangement; Another example is that the mental state of the characters under colonial rule in A Passage to India has distinct personality characteristics. "Aziz, his attitude towards Indians is that humiliation is mixed with hospitality, hatred is mixed with helplessness, and anesthesia is mixed with awakening; Fielding is the continuation of Foster's desire to connect and the embodiment of his ideal. Therefore, in the novel text, readers often feel the contradiction and entanglement between Foster's idealism complex and knowing that the connection is not feasible.
As a famous British critic and theorist, Foster occupies an important position in the history of western literature, which is inevitably influenced by the special social and cultural conditions at that time. Foster's unique life experience, secret homosexual tendency and deep feeling of the opposing background between the East and the West after his three trips to India made him construct a utopian dream that "connects" different nationalities, different countries and different strata in the world with beautiful wishes.
Foster's novels are famous for their complicated and obscure themes. Throughout Foster's novels, we can find that their themes are not clear and single, and even they are mixed, which constitutes its characteristics. Therefore, in the process of reading, it can not only provide readers with new reading horizons, but also bring them more confusion about the content and significance of the works. "About Adela's experience in the cave, the author is no longer omnipotent and omniscient, but as ignorant as the reader ... The mystery of prophecy is not for people to uncover, but for people to marvel. This narrative method has left a great imagination space for readers and effectively reflected the multi-level theme of the work. " The theory of intertextuality coincides with his creative purpose, which opens up a new way for his research by excavating intertextuality in his novels. On this road, we can find that the seemingly chaotic theme actually contains the same meaning, that is, responding to the spiritual dilemma of English intellectuals in Edwardian era, trying to find a new ethical standard and explore the road to perfection. Foster inherited the social and moral themes of realistic writers such as Jane Austen and Dickens in the 9th century when creating novels. His novels all reflect the social reality at that time and have a strong sense of social responsibility. Through A Passage to India, Foster mercilessly exposed British colonial rule and strongly criticized the racism of "white supremacy". Through A Room with a View, he criticized the marriage with property as the password, and praised the love of choosing a spouse from the perspective of human nature and love between men and women. In Where Angels Dare Not Tread, Foster criticizes the conservative, closed and selfish British culture and praises the open and enthusiastic Italian culture by comparing the British and Italian cultures. Reading Foster's novels, we can feel the author's deep concern for people. An important theme that runs through all Foster's works is to expose the stale and hypocritical moral concepts and social norms of the British middle class, and to expose the social customs and traditional prejudices that imprison people's minds and hearts.
In Foster's novels, we can see the contrast techniques commonly used in English traditional creation. Foster is good at expressing his views clearly by comparing characters and scenes. For example, in A Room with a View, Foster skillfully compares Italy and Britain through the arrangement of scenes, showing the differences and conflicts between the two cultures. He also made full use of the contrast between George and Cecil to show the conflict between two cultures and two concepts. Cecil is a person who refuses to admit and tries to hide his natural and sacred feelings. He is a naive and immature person and a derogatory term in Foster's works. In sharp contrast with him, George is straightforward, rough and enthusiastic. Like his father, he never hides his views and feelings.
Irony is a great tradition in English literature. Foster did not abandon this tradition, and readers can see the application of this technique in his works. For example, in A Room with a View, when Cecil was about to kiss Lucy, Foster wrote: "At this wonderful moment, he just thought everything was ridiculous. Her answer is not satisfactory. She just methodically lifted the veil. While facing her, I hope to retreat. When he touched her cheek, his gold-rimmed glasses slipped off the bridge of his nose and were tightly pressed between them. " The romantic scene turned into a farce.
Foster emphasizes the relationship between people and the value and integrity of people. Some of his characters, such as the heroine Lucy in A Room with a View, the schlegel sisters in howards end, Fielding and Adela in A Passage to India, are all spokesmen of Foster's values. In a room with a view, Lucy abandoned the chip of property and chose her Mr. Right from the perspective of human nature and feelings between men and women. Her choice represents the middle class's yearning for freedom. Foster therefore said: "Freedom is the key to enjoying life, and being bound by ideas, people or things is the destruction of life." Foster also mercilessly exposed British colonial rule through A Passage to India, and strongly criticized the racism of "white supremacy". Adela, the hero of A Passage to India, was dissatisfied with the rude attitude of British officials towards the Indian people and questioned Lonnie, the colonist. Lonnie replied, "It's no use saying these things. Let's stop here. Whether we are gods or not, this country can only accept our verdict. The arrogance and indifference of the colonists can be seen here. Through these descriptions, Foster's humanitarian thought of eliminating racial prejudice has also been fully and completely demonstrated. All his novels have complete story lines and full characters, and make extensive use of artistic creation techniques such as contrast and satire in English literary tradition.
Foster used a lot of symbolism in his works, which reached the point of being handy and perfect. Among Foster's six novels, the titles of four novels have obvious symbolic significance. For example, the title "The Longest Journey" is taken from a poem in Shelley's long poem "The Soul of the Mind". "I have never belonged to that huge clan/its dogma is that everyone should choose/a lover or a bosom friend in this world/all others, although fair or wise/are buried in ruthless forgetting-although it belongs to the norms of modern morality, the paved road/those poor slaves walked on it without telling her/walked slowly to their homes among the dead/wandered on the wide road of this world. The title of A Passage to India is taken from the poem of the same name by the American poet Whitman. 1902 The opening of the Suez Canal greatly shortened the time from Britain to India. Whitman wrote the poem Sailing to India for this purpose. The poem reads: "sail for India! Why, soul, you didn't see God's purpose from the beginning! The earth must be connected by a criss-crossing fine net, all races and neighbors must marry each other and reproduce in marriage, the oceans must cross, the distances become close, and different countries must be welded together. "The poet praised the progress of human science and technology and linked different countries together. Whitman's poems are full of relaxed, romantic, optimistic and positive emotions. It is ironic that Foster chose A Passage to India as the title of his novel.
Foster borrowed the term "rhythm" from music and successfully applied it to novel creation.
Foster's major novels have different complex rhythms, just as different music has different rhythms. For example, the circles and streams painted by Anseur in The Longest Journey, the water image in A Room with Scenery, the fire prototype and wasp image in A Passage to India, and the repeated appearance, repetition and changes of key words such as moon, flower, mending and ghost in howards end make the novel harmonious and coherent.