Book contents
- E. M. Forster and Music
- E. M. Forster and Music
- Copyright page
- Contents
- Acknowledgements
- Abbreviations
- Introduction
- Chapter 1 The Rhythm of the Racial Other
- Chapter 2 The Queering of Musical Instruments
- Chapter 3 From Literary Heritage to National Character
- Chapter 4 The Problem of the Wagnerian Hero
- Chapter 5 Amateurism, Musicology, and Gender
- Postlude
- Bibliography
- Index
Chapter 5 - Amateurism, Musicology, and Gender
Published online by Cambridge University Press: 22 April 2021
- E. M. Forster and Music
- E. M. Forster and Music
- Copyright page
- Contents
- Acknowledgements
- Abbreviations
- Introduction
- Chapter 1 The Rhythm of the Racial Other
- Chapter 2 The Queering of Musical Instruments
- Chapter 3 From Literary Heritage to National Character
- Chapter 4 The Problem of the Wagnerian Hero
- Chapter 5 Amateurism, Musicology, and Gender
- Postlude
- Bibliography
- Index
Summary
The fifth chapter examines Forster’s ironic representations of musical scholarship in its institutional form, analysing his negative portrayals of two rarely discussed women characters, Vashti in ‘The Machine Stops’ and Dorothea in Arctic Summer, as his championing of musical amateurism and his criticism of the professionalization of musicology. The chapter analyses Forster’s satirizing of early twentieth-century academia’s antiquarian interest in folk revival. What problematizes his satire, the chapter argues, is Forster’s conception of gender: on the one hand, Forster exposes that professionalism is often constructed by gendered discourses that depend on the conventionalism mind–body dualism of patriarchal culture; but on the other, he casts professional women in roles against which his narratives rebel. Asking whether the portrayals of the two women hide his misogyny, the chapter explores how Forster’s advocacy of musical amateurism is at the same time an attempt to negotiate women’s place in his often homoerotically charged envisioning of companionship.
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- E. M. Forster and Music , pp. 132 - 158Publisher: Cambridge University PressPrint publication year: 2021