NCERT Textbook: Essays: The Story | Class 11 English Woven Words - Humanities/Arts PDF Download

 Page 1


182 Woven Words
The Story
E.M. Forster
F F F F F Look for these expressions and guess their meaning from the context
atavistic shock-heads ingenious
We shall all agree that the fundamental aspect of the novel
is its story-telling aspect, but we shall voice our assent in
different tones, and it is on the precise tone of voice we
employ now that our subsequent conclusions will depend.
Let us listen to three voices. If you ask one type of
man, ‘What does a novel do?’ he will reply placidly, ‘Well—
I don’t know—it seems a funny sort of question to ask—a
novel’s a novel—well, I don’t know—I suppose it kind of
tells a story, so to speak’. He is quite good tempered and
vague, and probably driving a motor-bus at the same time
and paying no more attention to literature than it merits.
Another man, whom I visualise as on a golf-course, will be
aggressive and brisk. He will reply, ‘What does a novel do?
Why, tell a story of course and I’ve no use for it if it didn’t.
I like a story. Very bad taste, on my part, no doubt, but I
like a story. You can take your art, you can take your
literature, you can take your music, but give me a good
story. And I like a  story to be a story, mind, and my wife’s
the same.’ And a third man, he says in a sort of drooping
regretful voice, ‘Yes—oh dear yes—the novel tells a story.’ I
respect and admire the first speaker. I detest and fear the
second. And the third is myself. Yes—oh dear yes—the novel
tells a story. That is the fundamental aspect without which
it could not exist. That is the highest factor common to all
novels, and I wish that it was not so, that it could be
something different—melody, or perception of truth, not
this low atavistic form.
6
Rationalised 2023-24
Page 2


182 Woven Words
The Story
E.M. Forster
F F F F F Look for these expressions and guess their meaning from the context
atavistic shock-heads ingenious
We shall all agree that the fundamental aspect of the novel
is its story-telling aspect, but we shall voice our assent in
different tones, and it is on the precise tone of voice we
employ now that our subsequent conclusions will depend.
Let us listen to three voices. If you ask one type of
man, ‘What does a novel do?’ he will reply placidly, ‘Well—
I don’t know—it seems a funny sort of question to ask—a
novel’s a novel—well, I don’t know—I suppose it kind of
tells a story, so to speak’. He is quite good tempered and
vague, and probably driving a motor-bus at the same time
and paying no more attention to literature than it merits.
Another man, whom I visualise as on a golf-course, will be
aggressive and brisk. He will reply, ‘What does a novel do?
Why, tell a story of course and I’ve no use for it if it didn’t.
I like a story. Very bad taste, on my part, no doubt, but I
like a story. You can take your art, you can take your
literature, you can take your music, but give me a good
story. And I like a  story to be a story, mind, and my wife’s
the same.’ And a third man, he says in a sort of drooping
regretful voice, ‘Yes—oh dear yes—the novel tells a story.’ I
respect and admire the first speaker. I detest and fear the
second. And the third is myself. Yes—oh dear yes—the novel
tells a story. That is the fundamental aspect without which
it could not exist. That is the highest factor common to all
novels, and I wish that it was not so, that it could be
something different—melody, or perception of truth, not
this low atavistic form.
6
Rationalised 2023-24
The Story 183
For, the more we look at the story (the story that is a
story, mind) the more we disentangle it from the finer
growths that it supports, the less shall we find to admire.
It runs like a backbone—or may I say a tape-worm—for its
beginning and end are arbitrary. It is immensely old—goes
back to Neolithic times, perhaps to Palaeolithic.
Neanderthal man listened to stories, if one may judge by
the shape of his skull. The primitive audience was an
audience of shock-heads, gaping round the campfire,
fatigued with contending against the mammoth or the woolly
rhinoceros, and only kept awake by suspense. What would
happen next? The novelist droned on and, as soon as the
audience guessed what happened next, they either fell
asleep or killed him. We can estimate the dangers incurred
when we think of the career of Scheherazade in somewhat
later times. Scheherazade avoided her fate because she
knew how to wield the weapon of suspense—the only
literary tool that has any effect on tyrants and savages.
Great novelist though she was—exquisite in her
descriptions, tolerant in her judgements, ingenious in her
incidents, advanced in her morality, vivid in her delineations
of character, expert in her knowledge of three Oriental
capitals—it was yet on none of these gifts that she relied
when trying to save her life from her intolerable husband.
They were but incidental. She only survived because she
managed to keep the king wondering what would happen
next. Each time she saw the sun rising she stopped in the
middle of a sentence, and left him gaping. ‘At this moment
Scheherazade saw the morning appearing and, discreet,
was silent.’ This uninteresting little phrase is the backbone
of the One Thousand and One Nights, the tape-worm by
which they are tied together and by which the life of a
most accomplished princess was preserved.
We are like Scheherazade’s husband in that we want
to know what happens next. That is universal and that is
why the backbone of a novel has to be a story. Some of us
want to know nothing else—there is nothing in us but
primeval curiosity and, consequently, our other literary
judgements are ludicrous. And now the story can be defined.
It is a narrative of events arranged in their time sequence—
Rationalised 2023-24
Page 3


182 Woven Words
The Story
E.M. Forster
F F F F F Look for these expressions and guess their meaning from the context
atavistic shock-heads ingenious
We shall all agree that the fundamental aspect of the novel
is its story-telling aspect, but we shall voice our assent in
different tones, and it is on the precise tone of voice we
employ now that our subsequent conclusions will depend.
Let us listen to three voices. If you ask one type of
man, ‘What does a novel do?’ he will reply placidly, ‘Well—
I don’t know—it seems a funny sort of question to ask—a
novel’s a novel—well, I don’t know—I suppose it kind of
tells a story, so to speak’. He is quite good tempered and
vague, and probably driving a motor-bus at the same time
and paying no more attention to literature than it merits.
Another man, whom I visualise as on a golf-course, will be
aggressive and brisk. He will reply, ‘What does a novel do?
Why, tell a story of course and I’ve no use for it if it didn’t.
I like a story. Very bad taste, on my part, no doubt, but I
like a story. You can take your art, you can take your
literature, you can take your music, but give me a good
story. And I like a  story to be a story, mind, and my wife’s
the same.’ And a third man, he says in a sort of drooping
regretful voice, ‘Yes—oh dear yes—the novel tells a story.’ I
respect and admire the first speaker. I detest and fear the
second. And the third is myself. Yes—oh dear yes—the novel
tells a story. That is the fundamental aspect without which
it could not exist. That is the highest factor common to all
novels, and I wish that it was not so, that it could be
something different—melody, or perception of truth, not
this low atavistic form.
6
Rationalised 2023-24
The Story 183
For, the more we look at the story (the story that is a
story, mind) the more we disentangle it from the finer
growths that it supports, the less shall we find to admire.
It runs like a backbone—or may I say a tape-worm—for its
beginning and end are arbitrary. It is immensely old—goes
back to Neolithic times, perhaps to Palaeolithic.
Neanderthal man listened to stories, if one may judge by
the shape of his skull. The primitive audience was an
audience of shock-heads, gaping round the campfire,
fatigued with contending against the mammoth or the woolly
rhinoceros, and only kept awake by suspense. What would
happen next? The novelist droned on and, as soon as the
audience guessed what happened next, they either fell
asleep or killed him. We can estimate the dangers incurred
when we think of the career of Scheherazade in somewhat
later times. Scheherazade avoided her fate because she
knew how to wield the weapon of suspense—the only
literary tool that has any effect on tyrants and savages.
Great novelist though she was—exquisite in her
descriptions, tolerant in her judgements, ingenious in her
incidents, advanced in her morality, vivid in her delineations
of character, expert in her knowledge of three Oriental
capitals—it was yet on none of these gifts that she relied
when trying to save her life from her intolerable husband.
They were but incidental. She only survived because she
managed to keep the king wondering what would happen
next. Each time she saw the sun rising she stopped in the
middle of a sentence, and left him gaping. ‘At this moment
Scheherazade saw the morning appearing and, discreet,
was silent.’ This uninteresting little phrase is the backbone
of the One Thousand and One Nights, the tape-worm by
which they are tied together and by which the life of a
most accomplished princess was preserved.
We are like Scheherazade’s husband in that we want
to know what happens next. That is universal and that is
why the backbone of a novel has to be a story. Some of us
want to know nothing else—there is nothing in us but
primeval curiosity and, consequently, our other literary
judgements are ludicrous. And now the story can be defined.
It is a narrative of events arranged in their time sequence—
Rationalised 2023-24
184 Woven Words
dinner coming after breakfast, Tuesday coming after
Monday, decay after death, and so on. Qua story, it can
only have one merit; that of making the audience want to
know what happens next. And, conversely, it can have only
one fault: that of making the audience not want to know
what happens next. These are the only two criticisms that
can be made on the story. It is the lowest and simplest of
literary organisms. Yet it is the highest factor common to
all the very complicated organisms known as novels.
When we isolate the story like this from the nobler
aspects through which it moves, and hold it out on forceps—
wriggling and interminable, the naked worm of time—it
presents an appearance that is both unlovely and dull.
But we have much to learn from it. Let us begin by
considering it in connection with daily life.
Daily life is also full of the time sense. We think one
event occurs after or before another, the thought is often
in our minds, and much of our talk and action proceeds
from that assumption. Much of our talk and action, but
not all; there seems something else in life besides time,
something which may conveniently be called ‘value’,
something which is measured not by minutes or hours,
but by intensity, so that when we look at our past it does
not stretch back evenly but piles up into a few pinnacles
and when we look at the future it seems sometimes a wall,
sometimes a cloud, sometimes a sun, but never a
chronological chart. Neither memory nor anticipation is
much interested in Father Time, and all dreamers, artists
and lovers are partially delivered from his tyranny; he can
kill them but he cannot secure their attention and, at the
very moment of doom when the clock collected in the tower
its strength and struck, they may be looking the other way.
So daily life, whatever it may be really, is practically
composed of two lives—the life in time and the life by
values—and our conduct reveals a double allegiance. ‘I only
saw her for five minutes, but it was worth it.’ There you
have both allegiances in a single sentence. And what the
story does is to narrate the life in time. And what the entire
novel does—if it is a good novel—is to include the life by
values as well; using devices hereafter to be examined. It,
Rationalised 2023-24
Page 4


182 Woven Words
The Story
E.M. Forster
F F F F F Look for these expressions and guess their meaning from the context
atavistic shock-heads ingenious
We shall all agree that the fundamental aspect of the novel
is its story-telling aspect, but we shall voice our assent in
different tones, and it is on the precise tone of voice we
employ now that our subsequent conclusions will depend.
Let us listen to three voices. If you ask one type of
man, ‘What does a novel do?’ he will reply placidly, ‘Well—
I don’t know—it seems a funny sort of question to ask—a
novel’s a novel—well, I don’t know—I suppose it kind of
tells a story, so to speak’. He is quite good tempered and
vague, and probably driving a motor-bus at the same time
and paying no more attention to literature than it merits.
Another man, whom I visualise as on a golf-course, will be
aggressive and brisk. He will reply, ‘What does a novel do?
Why, tell a story of course and I’ve no use for it if it didn’t.
I like a story. Very bad taste, on my part, no doubt, but I
like a story. You can take your art, you can take your
literature, you can take your music, but give me a good
story. And I like a  story to be a story, mind, and my wife’s
the same.’ And a third man, he says in a sort of drooping
regretful voice, ‘Yes—oh dear yes—the novel tells a story.’ I
respect and admire the first speaker. I detest and fear the
second. And the third is myself. Yes—oh dear yes—the novel
tells a story. That is the fundamental aspect without which
it could not exist. That is the highest factor common to all
novels, and I wish that it was not so, that it could be
something different—melody, or perception of truth, not
this low atavistic form.
6
Rationalised 2023-24
The Story 183
For, the more we look at the story (the story that is a
story, mind) the more we disentangle it from the finer
growths that it supports, the less shall we find to admire.
It runs like a backbone—or may I say a tape-worm—for its
beginning and end are arbitrary. It is immensely old—goes
back to Neolithic times, perhaps to Palaeolithic.
Neanderthal man listened to stories, if one may judge by
the shape of his skull. The primitive audience was an
audience of shock-heads, gaping round the campfire,
fatigued with contending against the mammoth or the woolly
rhinoceros, and only kept awake by suspense. What would
happen next? The novelist droned on and, as soon as the
audience guessed what happened next, they either fell
asleep or killed him. We can estimate the dangers incurred
when we think of the career of Scheherazade in somewhat
later times. Scheherazade avoided her fate because she
knew how to wield the weapon of suspense—the only
literary tool that has any effect on tyrants and savages.
Great novelist though she was—exquisite in her
descriptions, tolerant in her judgements, ingenious in her
incidents, advanced in her morality, vivid in her delineations
of character, expert in her knowledge of three Oriental
capitals—it was yet on none of these gifts that she relied
when trying to save her life from her intolerable husband.
They were but incidental. She only survived because she
managed to keep the king wondering what would happen
next. Each time she saw the sun rising she stopped in the
middle of a sentence, and left him gaping. ‘At this moment
Scheherazade saw the morning appearing and, discreet,
was silent.’ This uninteresting little phrase is the backbone
of the One Thousand and One Nights, the tape-worm by
which they are tied together and by which the life of a
most accomplished princess was preserved.
We are like Scheherazade’s husband in that we want
to know what happens next. That is universal and that is
why the backbone of a novel has to be a story. Some of us
want to know nothing else—there is nothing in us but
primeval curiosity and, consequently, our other literary
judgements are ludicrous. And now the story can be defined.
It is a narrative of events arranged in their time sequence—
Rationalised 2023-24
184 Woven Words
dinner coming after breakfast, Tuesday coming after
Monday, decay after death, and so on. Qua story, it can
only have one merit; that of making the audience want to
know what happens next. And, conversely, it can have only
one fault: that of making the audience not want to know
what happens next. These are the only two criticisms that
can be made on the story. It is the lowest and simplest of
literary organisms. Yet it is the highest factor common to
all the very complicated organisms known as novels.
When we isolate the story like this from the nobler
aspects through which it moves, and hold it out on forceps—
wriggling and interminable, the naked worm of time—it
presents an appearance that is both unlovely and dull.
But we have much to learn from it. Let us begin by
considering it in connection with daily life.
Daily life is also full of the time sense. We think one
event occurs after or before another, the thought is often
in our minds, and much of our talk and action proceeds
from that assumption. Much of our talk and action, but
not all; there seems something else in life besides time,
something which may conveniently be called ‘value’,
something which is measured not by minutes or hours,
but by intensity, so that when we look at our past it does
not stretch back evenly but piles up into a few pinnacles
and when we look at the future it seems sometimes a wall,
sometimes a cloud, sometimes a sun, but never a
chronological chart. Neither memory nor anticipation is
much interested in Father Time, and all dreamers, artists
and lovers are partially delivered from his tyranny; he can
kill them but he cannot secure their attention and, at the
very moment of doom when the clock collected in the tower
its strength and struck, they may be looking the other way.
So daily life, whatever it may be really, is practically
composed of two lives—the life in time and the life by
values—and our conduct reveals a double allegiance. ‘I only
saw her for five minutes, but it was worth it.’ There you
have both allegiances in a single sentence. And what the
story does is to narrate the life in time. And what the entire
novel does—if it is a good novel—is to include the life by
values as well; using devices hereafter to be examined. It,
Rationalised 2023-24
The Story 185
also, pays a double allegiance. But in it, the novel, the
allegiance to time is imperative: no novel could be written
without it. Whereas, in daily life, the allegiance may not be
necessary; we do not know, and the experience of certain
mystics suggests, indeed, that it is not necessary, and that
we are quite mistaken in supposing that Monday is followed
by Tuesday, or death by decay. It is always possible for you
or me in daily life to deny that time exists and act
accordingly even if we become unintelligible and are sent
by our fellow citizens to what they choose to call a lunatic
asylum. But it is never possible for a novelist to deny time
inside the fabric of his novel: he must cling, however lightly,
to the thread of his story, he must touch the interminable
tape-worm otherwise he becomes unintelligible, which, in
his case, is a blunder.
I am trying not to be philosophic about time for it is
(experts assure us) a most dangerous hobby for an outsider,
far more fatal than place; and quite eminent metaphysicians
have been dethroned through referring to it improperly. I
am only trying to explain that as I lecture now I hear the
clock ticking, I retain or lose the time sense; whereas, in a
novel, there is always a clock. The author may dislike the
clock. Emily Bronte in Wuthering Heights tried to hide hers.
Sterne, in Tristram Shandy, turned it upside down. Marcel
Proust, still more ingenious, kept altering the hands so
that his hero was at the same time entertaining a mistress
to supper and playing ball with his nurse in the park. All
these devices are legitimate but none of them contravene
our thesis: the basis of a novel is a story and a story is a
narrative of events in time sequence.
From Aspects of the Novel : A Note
These are some lectures (the Clark Lectures) which were
delivered under the auspices of Trinity College, Cambridge,
in the spring of 1927. They were informal, indeed talkative,
in their tone and it seemed safer when presenting them in
book form not to mitigate the talk, in case nothing should
be left at all. Words such as ‘I’, ‘you’ ‘one’, ‘we’, ‘curiously
enough’, ‘so to speak’, ‘only imagine’ and ‘of course’ will
consequently occur on every page and will rightly distress
Rationalised 2023-24
Page 5


182 Woven Words
The Story
E.M. Forster
F F F F F Look for these expressions and guess their meaning from the context
atavistic shock-heads ingenious
We shall all agree that the fundamental aspect of the novel
is its story-telling aspect, but we shall voice our assent in
different tones, and it is on the precise tone of voice we
employ now that our subsequent conclusions will depend.
Let us listen to three voices. If you ask one type of
man, ‘What does a novel do?’ he will reply placidly, ‘Well—
I don’t know—it seems a funny sort of question to ask—a
novel’s a novel—well, I don’t know—I suppose it kind of
tells a story, so to speak’. He is quite good tempered and
vague, and probably driving a motor-bus at the same time
and paying no more attention to literature than it merits.
Another man, whom I visualise as on a golf-course, will be
aggressive and brisk. He will reply, ‘What does a novel do?
Why, tell a story of course and I’ve no use for it if it didn’t.
I like a story. Very bad taste, on my part, no doubt, but I
like a story. You can take your art, you can take your
literature, you can take your music, but give me a good
story. And I like a  story to be a story, mind, and my wife’s
the same.’ And a third man, he says in a sort of drooping
regretful voice, ‘Yes—oh dear yes—the novel tells a story.’ I
respect and admire the first speaker. I detest and fear the
second. And the third is myself. Yes—oh dear yes—the novel
tells a story. That is the fundamental aspect without which
it could not exist. That is the highest factor common to all
novels, and I wish that it was not so, that it could be
something different—melody, or perception of truth, not
this low atavistic form.
6
Rationalised 2023-24
The Story 183
For, the more we look at the story (the story that is a
story, mind) the more we disentangle it from the finer
growths that it supports, the less shall we find to admire.
It runs like a backbone—or may I say a tape-worm—for its
beginning and end are arbitrary. It is immensely old—goes
back to Neolithic times, perhaps to Palaeolithic.
Neanderthal man listened to stories, if one may judge by
the shape of his skull. The primitive audience was an
audience of shock-heads, gaping round the campfire,
fatigued with contending against the mammoth or the woolly
rhinoceros, and only kept awake by suspense. What would
happen next? The novelist droned on and, as soon as the
audience guessed what happened next, they either fell
asleep or killed him. We can estimate the dangers incurred
when we think of the career of Scheherazade in somewhat
later times. Scheherazade avoided her fate because she
knew how to wield the weapon of suspense—the only
literary tool that has any effect on tyrants and savages.
Great novelist though she was—exquisite in her
descriptions, tolerant in her judgements, ingenious in her
incidents, advanced in her morality, vivid in her delineations
of character, expert in her knowledge of three Oriental
capitals—it was yet on none of these gifts that she relied
when trying to save her life from her intolerable husband.
They were but incidental. She only survived because she
managed to keep the king wondering what would happen
next. Each time she saw the sun rising she stopped in the
middle of a sentence, and left him gaping. ‘At this moment
Scheherazade saw the morning appearing and, discreet,
was silent.’ This uninteresting little phrase is the backbone
of the One Thousand and One Nights, the tape-worm by
which they are tied together and by which the life of a
most accomplished princess was preserved.
We are like Scheherazade’s husband in that we want
to know what happens next. That is universal and that is
why the backbone of a novel has to be a story. Some of us
want to know nothing else—there is nothing in us but
primeval curiosity and, consequently, our other literary
judgements are ludicrous. And now the story can be defined.
It is a narrative of events arranged in their time sequence—
Rationalised 2023-24
184 Woven Words
dinner coming after breakfast, Tuesday coming after
Monday, decay after death, and so on. Qua story, it can
only have one merit; that of making the audience want to
know what happens next. And, conversely, it can have only
one fault: that of making the audience not want to know
what happens next. These are the only two criticisms that
can be made on the story. It is the lowest and simplest of
literary organisms. Yet it is the highest factor common to
all the very complicated organisms known as novels.
When we isolate the story like this from the nobler
aspects through which it moves, and hold it out on forceps—
wriggling and interminable, the naked worm of time—it
presents an appearance that is both unlovely and dull.
But we have much to learn from it. Let us begin by
considering it in connection with daily life.
Daily life is also full of the time sense. We think one
event occurs after or before another, the thought is often
in our minds, and much of our talk and action proceeds
from that assumption. Much of our talk and action, but
not all; there seems something else in life besides time,
something which may conveniently be called ‘value’,
something which is measured not by minutes or hours,
but by intensity, so that when we look at our past it does
not stretch back evenly but piles up into a few pinnacles
and when we look at the future it seems sometimes a wall,
sometimes a cloud, sometimes a sun, but never a
chronological chart. Neither memory nor anticipation is
much interested in Father Time, and all dreamers, artists
and lovers are partially delivered from his tyranny; he can
kill them but he cannot secure their attention and, at the
very moment of doom when the clock collected in the tower
its strength and struck, they may be looking the other way.
So daily life, whatever it may be really, is practically
composed of two lives—the life in time and the life by
values—and our conduct reveals a double allegiance. ‘I only
saw her for five minutes, but it was worth it.’ There you
have both allegiances in a single sentence. And what the
story does is to narrate the life in time. And what the entire
novel does—if it is a good novel—is to include the life by
values as well; using devices hereafter to be examined. It,
Rationalised 2023-24
The Story 185
also, pays a double allegiance. But in it, the novel, the
allegiance to time is imperative: no novel could be written
without it. Whereas, in daily life, the allegiance may not be
necessary; we do not know, and the experience of certain
mystics suggests, indeed, that it is not necessary, and that
we are quite mistaken in supposing that Monday is followed
by Tuesday, or death by decay. It is always possible for you
or me in daily life to deny that time exists and act
accordingly even if we become unintelligible and are sent
by our fellow citizens to what they choose to call a lunatic
asylum. But it is never possible for a novelist to deny time
inside the fabric of his novel: he must cling, however lightly,
to the thread of his story, he must touch the interminable
tape-worm otherwise he becomes unintelligible, which, in
his case, is a blunder.
I am trying not to be philosophic about time for it is
(experts assure us) a most dangerous hobby for an outsider,
far more fatal than place; and quite eminent metaphysicians
have been dethroned through referring to it improperly. I
am only trying to explain that as I lecture now I hear the
clock ticking, I retain or lose the time sense; whereas, in a
novel, there is always a clock. The author may dislike the
clock. Emily Bronte in Wuthering Heights tried to hide hers.
Sterne, in Tristram Shandy, turned it upside down. Marcel
Proust, still more ingenious, kept altering the hands so
that his hero was at the same time entertaining a mistress
to supper and playing ball with his nurse in the park. All
these devices are legitimate but none of them contravene
our thesis: the basis of a novel is a story and a story is a
narrative of events in time sequence.
From Aspects of the Novel : A Note
These are some lectures (the Clark Lectures) which were
delivered under the auspices of Trinity College, Cambridge,
in the spring of 1927. They were informal, indeed talkative,
in their tone and it seemed safer when presenting them in
book form not to mitigate the talk, in case nothing should
be left at all. Words such as ‘I’, ‘you’ ‘one’, ‘we’, ‘curiously
enough’, ‘so to speak’, ‘only imagine’ and ‘of course’ will
consequently occur on every page and will rightly distress
Rationalised 2023-24
186 Woven Words
the sensitive reader; but he is asked to remember that if
these words were removed, others, perhaps more
distinguished, might escape through the orifices they left
and that since the novel is itself often colloquial it may
possibly withhold some of its secrets from the graver and
grander streams of criticism and may reveal them to
backwaters and shallows.
The 1001 Arabian Nights
The 1001 Arabian Nights is a collection of stories loosely
linked together, narrated by a young girl Scheherazade.
She was the daughter of the vizier, or minister, who had to
serve a peculiar king. The king married on a daily basis:
his wife was always beheaded after the wedding night.
Scheherazade tells her father that she wished to marry
the king. He reluctantly agrees. She tells the king an
interesting story on their wedding night, and makes sure
to stop at an interesting point at the crack of dawn. The
king is unwilling to execute her because he wants to hear
the end of the story. This scheme was extremely risky, but
Scheherazade is successful in continually linking stories
over many nights until, finally, the king accepts her as his
queen and stops the horrible practice of executing his wife.
ABOUT THE AUTHOR
E.M. Forster (1879–1970), a noted English
author and critic, wrote a number of short
stories, novels and essays. His first novel,
Where Angels Fear to Tread, was published
in 1905. This was followed by Howard’s End
and A Passage to India and other well-known works. The
Hill of Devi, a portrait of India with a commentary, appeared
in 1953. The essay presented here is an excerpt from
chapter two of Aspects of the Novel.
UNDERSTANDING THE TEXT
1. What do you understand of the three voices in response to the
question ‘What does a novel do’?
Rationalised 2023-24