In the novel's sixth chapter, a large group from the Pension go on an outing to Fiesole with Mr. Eager. They are divided between two carriages, one of which the narrator claims is driven by Phaethon:
It was Phaethon who drove them to Fiesole that memorable day, a youth all irresponsibility and fire, recklessly urging his master’s horses up the stony hill. Mr Beebe recognized him at once. Neither the Ages of Faith nor the Age of Doubt had touched him; he was Phaethon in Tuscany driving a cab. And it was Persephone whom he asked leave to pick up on the way, saying that she was his sister — Persephone, tall and slender and pale, returning with the spring to her mother’s cottage, and still shading her eyes from the unaccustomed light.
In Greek mythology, Phaethon was the son of Helios, the god of the sun. The boy convinces his father to let him drive the chariot of the sun, but loses control of the horses, which sets the world ablaze and results in his own death. The allusion to Phaethon thereby evokes the catastrophic potential of youthful hubris. By declaring that the Italian cab driver is Phaethon, the narrator both makes fun of him for his juvenile boldness and makes fun of Mr. Eager for his stuffy fear of the driver's youth.
The passage contains another mythical allusion, as the narrator writes that Phaethon picks up Persephone on the way. In Greek myth, Persephone becomes the goddess of the underworld after being abducted by Hades from her mother Demeter. She shields her eyes because she has presumably just come back to the earth's surface. Although Phaethon and Persephone never encounter one another in the world of Greek myth, it is fitting to pair Phaethon with Persephone in this chapter, as she is associated with spring.
Needless to say, Phaethon is not literally driving the cab, and he does not literally pick up Persephone on the way. The role of this extended metaphor is to emphasize the mythical mood of the excursion and to suggest that the British tourists primarily see the Italians they encounter as characters in the stories they tell about their own lives.
Phaethon plays an important role in the rest of the sixth chapter, as it is he who leads Lucy to George when the two kiss; the narrator suggests that this mythical character recognizes the love brewing between the two and brings them together. He also returns in the twentieth chapter, when George and Lucy spend their honeymoon back in Florence. As George looks out at the view, he spots a man who reminds him of their cab driver from a year ago:
The cab-driver, who at once saluted him with the hiss of a serpent, might be that very Phaethon who had set this happiness in motion twelve months ago. A passion of gratitude — all feelings grow to passions in the South — came over the husband, and he blessed the people and the things who had taken so much trouble about a young fool.
This passage again underlines the British tourist's romanticism of Italy and association of its people with mythology. The cab driver "might" be the same, but it ultimately doesn't really matter if he is. George and Lucy prove to be two of the novel's most critically minded characters, yet they still encounter the world as tourists who are more intent on myth than on truly seeing the people around them.
In the tenth chapter, Lucy finds out that Cecil has obstructed her efforts to get the Miss Alans to rent one of Sir Harry Otway's villas and instead prompted him to rent it out to a father and son with the familiar name Emerson. She asks Freddy what he knows about them, and Mrs Honeychurch joins the conversation, making an allusion to the transcendentalist philosopher Ralph Waldo Emerson:
I was merely going to remark, Freddy, that I trusted they were no relations of Emerson the philosopher, a most trying man. Pray, does that satisfy you?
Associated with Ralph Waldo Emerson and Henry David Thoreau, transcendentalism was a philosophical and social movement that developed in the 1830s. A reaction against rationalism, the movement was built on the core belief that society inhibits the inherent goodness of human beings and nature.
Forster likely had fun when writing this line, as it is no coincidence that Mr. Emerson and Emerson the philosopher share the same name. Ralph Waldo Emerson championed individualism and the power of nature; Mr. Emerson is guided by very similar principles. His adherence to this view of the world comes to be reinforced when Mr. Beebe and Freddy pay the Emersons a visit at the start of the twelfth chapter. Looking through their books and things, they discover a wardrobe that bears an inscription:
On the cornice of the wardrobe the hand of an amateur had painted this inscription: ‘Mistrust all enterprises that require new clothes.’
This inscription is another allusion to transcendentalism, as it cites Henry David Thoreau's Walden. Thoreau, a friend of Ralph Waldo Emerson's and fellow transcendentalist, believed in leading a simple life that is in touch with nature. Soon after Mr. Beebe and Freddy come across this inscription, they are frolicking naked around a pond that calls to mind Thoreau's Walden Pond.
In the tenth chapter, Lucy finds out that Cecil has obstructed her efforts to get the Miss Alans to rent one of Sir Harry Otway's villas and instead prompted him to rent it out to a father and son with the familiar name Emerson. She asks Freddy what he knows about them, and Mrs Honeychurch joins the conversation, making an allusion to the transcendentalist philosopher Ralph Waldo Emerson:
I was merely going to remark, Freddy, that I trusted they were no relations of Emerson the philosopher, a most trying man. Pray, does that satisfy you?
Associated with Ralph Waldo Emerson and Henry David Thoreau, transcendentalism was a philosophical and social movement that developed in the 1830s. A reaction against rationalism, the movement was built on the core belief that society inhibits the inherent goodness of human beings and nature.
Forster likely had fun when writing this line, as it is no coincidence that Mr. Emerson and Emerson the philosopher share the same name. Ralph Waldo Emerson championed individualism and the power of nature; Mr. Emerson is guided by very similar principles. His adherence to this view of the world comes to be reinforced when Mr. Beebe and Freddy pay the Emersons a visit at the start of the twelfth chapter. Looking through their books and things, they discover a wardrobe that bears an inscription:
On the cornice of the wardrobe the hand of an amateur had painted this inscription: ‘Mistrust all enterprises that require new clothes.’
This inscription is another allusion to transcendentalism, as it cites Henry David Thoreau's Walden. Thoreau, a friend of Ralph Waldo Emerson's and fellow transcendentalist, believed in leading a simple life that is in touch with nature. Soon after Mr. Beebe and Freddy come across this inscription, they are frolicking naked around a pond that calls to mind Thoreau's Walden Pond.
In the novel's sixth chapter, a large group from the Pension go on an outing to Fiesole with Mr. Eager. They are divided between two carriages, one of which the narrator claims is driven by Phaethon:
It was Phaethon who drove them to Fiesole that memorable day, a youth all irresponsibility and fire, recklessly urging his master’s horses up the stony hill. Mr Beebe recognized him at once. Neither the Ages of Faith nor the Age of Doubt had touched him; he was Phaethon in Tuscany driving a cab. And it was Persephone whom he asked leave to pick up on the way, saying that she was his sister — Persephone, tall and slender and pale, returning with the spring to her mother’s cottage, and still shading her eyes from the unaccustomed light.
In Greek mythology, Phaethon was the son of Helios, the god of the sun. The boy convinces his father to let him drive the chariot of the sun, but loses control of the horses, which sets the world ablaze and results in his own death. The allusion to Phaethon thereby evokes the catastrophic potential of youthful hubris. By declaring that the Italian cab driver is Phaethon, the narrator both makes fun of him for his juvenile boldness and makes fun of Mr. Eager for his stuffy fear of the driver's youth.
The passage contains another mythical allusion, as the narrator writes that Phaethon picks up Persephone on the way. In Greek myth, Persephone becomes the goddess of the underworld after being abducted by Hades from her mother Demeter. She shields her eyes because she has presumably just come back to the earth's surface. Although Phaethon and Persephone never encounter one another in the world of Greek myth, it is fitting to pair Phaethon with Persephone in this chapter, as she is associated with spring.
Needless to say, Phaethon is not literally driving the cab, and he does not literally pick up Persephone on the way. The role of this extended metaphor is to emphasize the mythical mood of the excursion and to suggest that the British tourists primarily see the Italians they encounter as characters in the stories they tell about their own lives.
Phaethon plays an important role in the rest of the sixth chapter, as it is he who leads Lucy to George when the two kiss; the narrator suggests that this mythical character recognizes the love brewing between the two and brings them together. He also returns in the twentieth chapter, when George and Lucy spend their honeymoon back in Florence. As George looks out at the view, he spots a man who reminds him of their cab driver from a year ago:
The cab-driver, who at once saluted him with the hiss of a serpent, might be that very Phaethon who had set this happiness in motion twelve months ago. A passion of gratitude — all feelings grow to passions in the South — came over the husband, and he blessed the people and the things who had taken so much trouble about a young fool.
This passage again underlines the British tourist's romanticism of Italy and association of its people with mythology. The cab driver "might" be the same, but it ultimately doesn't really matter if he is. George and Lucy prove to be two of the novel's most critically minded characters, yet they still encounter the world as tourists who are more intent on myth than on truly seeing the people around them.
