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Rating: Just after finishing my period as a conscientious objector, instead of compulsory military service, in Lower Piedmont in 2005, I don't remember how I stumbled upon a collection of 3 novels by the English writer Edward Morgan Forster, and 17 years later, recalling one of these before the return trip from an event with a group in Chianciano Terme (in the province of Siena), chose to stop in San Gimignano, where that novel is set.
The novel was 'Monteriano (Where Angels Fear to Tread)' which, once I arrived at that village, I managed to buy in an old bookstore at a low price.
And reread in Genoa, I remembered little of the story.
Forster (1891-1970) debuted at the beginning of the 1900s with novels that depict English society during the transition from the reign of Queen Victoria (who died in 1901), a period marked by strong morality in customs, to that of her son, King Edward VII, who was somewhat more tolerant: in his works up to the early 1920s, he tells of the incommunicability and clashes between social classes (the most famous being 'Howards End' and 'A Room with a View'), and then the same kind of condition between two peoples, a colonizer (the English) and a colonized (the Indians) in 'A Passage to India', from the 1920s.
'Monteriano (Where Angels Fear to Tread)' is his first novel, still marked by the dominant Victorian culture, inspired by a visit to the Tuscan town of San Gimignano during a European trip with his mother, and whose name 'Monteriano' is his own invention.
Departure for Lilia Theobald (widow of a man of the upper bourgeoisie, Charles Herriton, with a daughter who lived in his house for many years) from London to Italy accompanied by a chaperone, Caroline Abbott.
After visiting some places in our country, she settles with Caroline in Monteriano in a pension, where she falls in love with a young man, Gino Carella.
Informed of the deceased husband's family, his mother, Mrs. Herriton, sends the young son Philip to Italy to dissuade Lilia and Gino from marrying for cultural reasons (he is Italian, she is English), economic reasons (he is 'poor,' she is rich), and moral reasons (he is not a consistent man and she has a daughter). But the attempt fails, with Gino asserting they are already married.
Some time later, Lilia buys a large house outside the village for her and Gino: but from that moment, her life will be anything but happy due to the impossibility of leading the same kind of emancipated woman’s life and socializing with important people at home as she did in England, due to Gino’s ‘chauvinistic’ culture that sees the woman at home and his lack of knowledge of important local figures.
And Lilia will soon realize that her marriage has failed, having been married because she was wealthy and neglected by Gino, absent for entire days and sometimes even whole days from home for trivial reasons.
Not long after, Lilia falls ill while trying to fulfill Gino's desire to have a child, which she gives him at the cost of her own life.
Informed via letter of the child's existence, Mrs. Herriton discusses with Philip the necessity of bringing him to England to give him a better education than in Italy.
Failing to offer sums of money through a letter to Gino to have the child, she sends Philip to Italy, later accompanied by his sister Harriet to negotiate the matter face to face, but without success.
Determined to do anything to have the child, in one of the two carriages taking them to the station at night to return to England, Harriet, who has kidnapped the child, is involved in a collision with Caroline’s carriage, overturns, and the child slips from her grasp, only to be found later by Philip but deceased.
While the three remain in Monteriano for investigations regarding the deceased child, Philip visits Gino to tell him about the tragedy.
Gino goes mad and lunges at a sympathetic Philip, but it doesn’t take long for Philip to defend himself in a physical confrontation, both being stopped by Caroline, who arrives at Gino's house at that moment.
A few days later on the train taking them back to England, while Harriet is in the hospital suffering from the psychological consequences on her body from the tragedy of the child, during a conversation, Caroline confesses to Philip that she loves Gino for his beauty despite his lack of good manners.
A novel of ‘clash’ between two cultures, with only one winner: which one?
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