My View of Forster

Beverley E Steichen
English 546- Dr. Janet Winston
Analytical Essay #1
29 October 2009

The Fragmented Connections of Howards End

"Only connect..." is the statement beneath the frontispiece of my personal copy of Howards End by E. M. Forster, and indeed it is the thesis statement of this entire novel about class division in turn-of-the-century-England. The Schlegel sisters are a centrifugal force and we can observe the various ways in which they affect, and attempt to make connections between, the characters who surround them. While it is easy to see the "otherness" of Leonard Bast as a lowly clerk with no independent means, I would like to examine the ways in which ethnicity, social status and gender create a state of otherness for almost everyone in this novel, focusing on the "vital disconnection"(5) both socially, sexually and economically, within the sphere of community surrounding Howards End. Margaret's "sermon" thesis of "only connect" is Forster's own social hope for a connection between many opposing forces, which were prevalent in civilized English society in the early 20th century and continue in capitalist societies today.

Forster himself felt a sense of disconnection in his personal life and it is easy to recognize his views and social message spoken vicariously through his character of Margaret Schlegel. According to Henry S. Turner, in his article (1) entitled, "Empires of Objects: Accumulation and Entropy in E. M. Forster's Howards End:" "Forster received 8000 pounds when he was eight years old [and had a] lifelong preoccupation with the morality of living on unearned income." Forster underscores this sentiment in a biography written about his great-aunt about his dilemma of "how to uphold the civic and cultural virtues intrinsic to the rentier way of life, yet avoid complicity with commerce or technology."

"Forster is often portrayed as a writer at odds with the incipient modernism of contemporaries such as Joyce or Woolf."(2) and according to Leslie White (5) Forster was vexed by the problem of "maintaining and extending aristocracy in the midst of democracy." He struggled with the fact that he was inherently independent and justified this status in his essay "Art For Art's Sake," about the intrinsic value of what an artist (who does not hold down a traditional job) offers to society. Binary oppositions which plagued his own life seem to be what Forster wished to connect in Howards End. In his attempts to connect the male/female, the wealthy/impoverished, the ignorant/educated, the homeless/landed, or the aesthetic vs. pragmatic characters in this book, Forster’s efforts may be valiant, but his success is questionable at best.

The disconnection of the dominant male and disenfranchised female, particularly between the first Mrs. Wilcox and her husband and eldest son, is well illustrated by the introduction of the motor car. This masculine machine is thrust into a space which had previously been a paddock belonging to and revered by the late Mrs. Wilcox. "[Charles Wilcox] and his father--what trouble they had had to get this very garage! With what difficulty had they persuaded her to yield them the paddock for it--the paddock that she loved more dearly than the garden itself!" (HE 67) An enclosed small field or meadow, this space represents the pastoral or perhaps "virginal" purity of classic English life. An enclosure for the protection of the men's motor car is forced upon this previously recognized woman's space for the purpose of men driving their motor car in and out of this newly man-claimed space whenever they choose. This resonates of rape (with suggestions of Oedipal overtones), which not only divides the wishes of men from those of women, but also divides the savage from the civilized; the profane from the sacred. It is progress, which sacrifices connection. Industrial progress at the expense of social well-being is precisely one of the social issues that Forster wrestled with and never resolved.

Andrew Thacker, of the University of Ulster states in his article, “E. M. Forster and the Motor Car”

Connection ... is not merely a trope for fulfilling human relationships in the novel. We should take it at times in a brutal and literal fashion: this is a novel about making connections between different forms of space, and about the experience of moving between these spaces in the process of making connections.”(2)

The living spaces represented in Howards End and the valuing or devaluing of these spaces give us more examples of disconnection. The removal of the Schlegel family from Wickham Place at the end of their lease period forces of them into nomadic existence, separating them from the life of leisure to which they have grown accustomed. The tender feelings for Howards End which are only felt by Mrs. Ruth Wilcox form a sort of disconnection between her and the rest of the Wilcox family, who often find fault with the house.

When Henry does not want Helen Schlegel--in her dishonored state of premarital pregnancy--to spend even one night in the house, he gives his first indication of fondness for the house or his concern about the wishes of his departed wife. This false concern, which is nothing more than a lie to serve his present agenda, widens the gulf of social and moral division that exists throughout the novel between Henry and Helen, and creates a rift between Henry and Margaret, his new wife.

Helen complains to her cousin Frieda that "the Wilcox's collect houses as your Victor collects tadpoles," and goes on to list the eight homes owned or occupied by the Wilcox family while she and her siblings are temporarily homeless. This reemphasizes the social disparity of excess juxtaposed with lack of basic necessities, which is most easily seen in the case of Leonard and Jacky Bast.

In the Forster's representation of the Basts, it is interesting to note that the greatest number of revisions he made while writing Howards End were the changing of simple pronouns. According to Mary Pinkerton(6), "a total of 794 changes involving pronouns" were made by Forster in his revisions of this novel; "601 are insertions and 193 are deletions. Forster inserts pronouns more than three times as often as he deletes them." Many of these pronoun changes turn a general object into an object which is undoubtedly owned by a particular character (i.e. when Margaret argues that spending one night at Howards End would do Helen good, Forster first wrote it to say, "one night in the house," then he revised three times, from "our house" to "that house" and finally to "your house.") These revisions create significant changes in meaning.

Forster employs this simple technique to dehumanize the Basts and set them outside of society, in the realm of others. Pinkerton states, "Instead of describing Leonard greeting "her" (Jacky), Forster revised the passage to read, "greeting the apparition with much spirit, and helping it off with its boa?" and "Instead of using personal pronouns to refer to Leonard, he becomes 'the boy,' 'a nice creature,' 'the victim,' 'the father,' 'the missing article,' and 'the fellow:'" all impersonal pronouns, "and in so doing he conveys their intensified alienation from each other, from other characters in the novel, and from society at large." (Pinkerton)

In Margaret's obsession with the conditions of the Basts we are given a glimpse of one of Forster's greatest unresolved dichotomies: the binary oppositions of independence and intervention. Kim Shirkhani(3) notes that Margaret "articulates a position similar to Forster's in 'The Challenge of Our Time' while believing in an inner, the subjective realm that must be protected from political intervention, she at the same time sees a connection between this inner realm and societal condition, and advocates intervention when it comes to the latter."

The lack of intimate connection imposed by the author between the objectified Leonard and Jacky is easy to observe. I suggest that there is an equivalent lack of personal connection among the Schlegel family which is not a focal point, because the Schlegels are standing firmly on their individual fortunes and therefore do not necessarily require connection for survival. The desire for practicality, which Margaret possesses is nothing like the impulsive and impetuous nature of Helen or the stoic reticence of Tibby. The Schlegels rotate, each within her/his own separate and disconnected universe. Within the intersecting communities of the three families of Wilcox, Schlegel and Bast, there exists in the personal character of each individual, tendencies and character traits, which keep them disconnected one from another and without the ability to understand or relate.

Within the Wilcox family we see greater singularity of personality (aside from Dolly--a vapid, yet entertaining, twit) in that they are somewhat dull (albeit dependable), traditional, spiritless characters who entertain themselves with expensive hobbies and accoutrements. They lack the ambition of Leonard Bast and the cosmopolitan spirit of the Schlegels and are therefore very like one another, but without the social “mortar” to connect to each other; they seem alone even when they are crowded together in one room.

In Forster’s uncomfortably forced resolution at the end of the story, when Helen’s illegitimate son is announced as the eventual heir to Howards End, it is not easy to see how the Henry Wilcox of this scene is in any way connected to the Henry we have come to know throughout the novel. In an article by Leslie White (5) it is stated that “In the final scenes of Howards End, Schlegels are ascendant and Wilcoxes shamed and acquiescent.” White asserts that many readers find this “conclusion forced and implausible, and the novel’s achievement undermined by plot contrivances.” White cites a claim made “nearly 40 years ago” by a Wilfred Stone, who said that “Forster does not want connection at all” and that

"Margaret and Helen Schlegel are domineering, destructive elitists who, having established at Howards End and idyllic sanctuary of “personal relations” and “the inner life,” permit the devastated, uncomprehending Henry Wilcox to reside there."

This view of the do-good Schlegel sisters is not without foundation. It is valid to wonder how devastating the “breakdown” that Henry has over the incarceration of his eldest son, Charles, would be. If Henry has simply been overcome and subdued by the zealous sisters Schlegel, then it is bad form to chalk it up as successful “connection” of values. In fact, although she is famous for the “only connect” soliloquy, White suggests that “in the final chapters, to cite but one example, Margaret appears to have transmuted into an imperialistic materfamilias, a female Henry in effect, who autocratically 'straightens tangles,' adjusts 'lopsidedness,' is 'unable to forgive' and 'who has charged straight through these Wilcoxes and broken up their lives'.” The implication is that rather than ending the patriarchal structure it critiques, the novel simply restructures the power figure and the Schlegels are as domineering at the end as are the Wilcoxes at the start: only inverting the hierarchy of the novel’s characters.

In two cases we brush refreshingly close to possible real connection. One of these is thwarted and then cut off prematurely, while the other remains--leaving us with some reason to hope for a better, more connected future. It is evident that Leonard Bast, before the good-intentioned interference of Margaret and Helen, is trying to better himself educationally and socially. He has an adequate job and some measure of time to read and go to the occasional musical performance. Leonard is trying to connect the beast with the monk within himself. He has a tender heart toward his unloved wife, Jacky, and a genuine desire to make of himself a better man. As an interesting project, in their spare time the Schlegels manage to take helpful steps which eventually ruin, and bring the untimely end to, his life. Leonard's inner desire to improve within society is something that we are not allowed to see to its proper end. It is never known if Leonard would have failed or succeeded in connecting the base man with the refined man within himself.

The second ray of hope we have to view is the friendship between the son of Helen Schlegel, who is to inherit Howard’s End and the son of the farm hand. These boys are children and play together and have formed a bond as the last scene closes in this statement narrative of Mr. Forster. Again, we are not privileged to see this possibility to its natural end. I think this is because despite his own hope and unrecognized personal naïveté, Forster just did not know if it could be. So, in the spirit of hopefulness, he leaves us with an open ended conclusion. Optimistically, I would like to say that it will work. The two boys, neither one from the top of the social ladder of English society may forge ahead toward a new and better connected society. I also do not know.

White asserts in her essay(5) that after closely studying the artistry of Forster's works, it is "immediately evident in the famous epigraph of Howards End, removed from its position within the narrative [by Forster] presumably to declare thematic intention" that Forster recognizes his own failure to prove that connection is possible. By punctua- ting "Only connect..." with ellipses, Forster points out the admitted incompleteness of his hope that connection can be made. According to White's sources (Duckworth and Wilde) this betrays Forster's "chagrined realization of his limited ability to correct society's problems or improve human life."

My conclusion is that the message of Forster, delivered in the sermon of Margaret Schlegel, fails; there is greater fragmentation within spaces and relationships the more intimately we examine each one, and the peaceful resolution we see at the end of the novel is actually the result of acceptance of difference where no connection could be made. Forster leaves us with hope for peace, but through means of a different sermon. The conclusion may better be stated as “Only accept."


Sources Cited:

1. Turner, Henry S. Empires of Objects: Accumulation and Entropy in E. M. Forster's Howards End. Twentieth Century Literature, Fall2000, Vol. 46 Issue 3, p328 18p;(AN 3995536)

2. Thacker, Andrew. E. M. Forster and the Motor Car. Literature & History, 2005 , pp 37-52, 16p; (AN 7697537)

3. Shirkhani, Kim. The Economy of Recognition in Howards End. Twentieth Century Literature, Summer 2008, Vol. 54 Issue 2, p193-216 (AN3692006)

4. Lorentzen, Eric. Review of Education, Pedagogy & Cultural Studies, Oct-Dec2004, Vol. 26 Issue 4, p289-311, 23p; DOI: 10.1080/10714410490905357; (AN 15631317)

5. White, Leslie. Vital Disconnection in Howards End. Twentieth Century Literature, Vol. 51, No 1 Spring, 2005, pp 43-63

6. Pinkerton, Mary. Ambiguous Connections: Leonard Bast's Role in Howards End. Twentieth Century Literature, Vol. 31, No. 2/3, E. M. Forster Issue (Summer-Autumn, 1985), pp. 23... Hofstra University (not one of my 5 resources since 2000)