Stuck in the Middle
I wish that I were coming to you tonight with a raving, crazy lady, read this book now, review. Unfortunately, it cannot be so, because I just finished my trudge through Howards End by E. M. Forster, as teased last week. While I did end up liking this novel, I did not love it. This being the case, it will not be quite as much fun to write about, so without further ado, I will skip the extra rumination and tell you why I liked it but did not love it.
I had never read anything by E. M. Forster until this novel, and honestly he wasn’t really on my radar as an author. I had heard of A Passage to India and Howards End certainly rang a bell when I saw it at The Strand, but it wasn’t on my list. I bought it because the back blurb (I know, I know, I broke my own rule and read it), sounded like a fun social comedy, something Jane Austen-esque but roughly a century later. In some ways it was, but in others not so much. Let’s get into it.
The basic plot, as outlined in said blurb is that two families, the Schlegels and the Wilcoxes meet on vacation and strike up a friendship. The latter group (or rather Mrs. Wilcox) invites the former pair (orphaned sisters Margaret and Helen) to come and stay with them at Howards End. When Mrs. Wilcox dies, later on but fairly early on in the novel so I don’t really consider it a spoiler, she leaves her beloved home to Margaret. In the midst of this, the Schlegels develop a relationship (strained though it might be) with a poor clerk named Leonard Bast. He and his questionable wife are clinging on to the last rung of the middle-class ladder, and become increasingly entangled with the Schlegels and Wilcoxes as the tale progresses.
Basically, it sounded like fun. The blurb, perhaps in an effort not to give much away, or perhaps assuming that people would know what to expect because it’s a classic, does not even touch upon what felt to me like the real crux of the novel. Before I get into that though, I will say that parts of this novel were fun and were also truly funny, particularly in the beginning. Namely, the opening of the novel, where Helen goes to visit the Wilcoxes at Howards End, and finds herself in love with their younger son, Paul, fancies that he will marry her, writes to Margaret to announce that they are in love, shares a kiss with Paul that night, discovers the next morning that he won’t look at her across the breakfast table, is heartbroken, writes to Margaret that it is all over, but it’s too late because the Schlegel girls’ Aunt Juley is already on the way there to meet this family, only to run into the elder Wilcox son, Charles, at the train station, only to end up explaining why she’s there, which creates a good deal of confusion and drama when they show up at the house shouting and raving at each other. I realize that sentence (if you can call it that) was a wild ride, but so were the opening chapters in which these events took place, so I’ll just say I’m trying to capture the energy and get away with it. Anyway, this along with other early incidents such as Helen accidentally stealing Leonard Bast’s umbrella at the music hall, or Margaret sending a rude note to Mrs. Wilcox only to be embarrassed by a chastising reply, demonstrate Forster’s knack for humor.
At a certain point, the social comedy falls away a bit, and things become more serious. In my opinion, the aforementioned crux of the novel, is the interplay between the liberal intelligentsia and the capitalist bourgeoisie as represented by the Schlegels and Wilcoxes respectively. Both Schlegel girls, but particularly Helen, are idealistic and progressive - interested in answering “social questions.” The Wilcoxes are traditional, generally unconcerned with others, with minds turned towards “business in the empire.” These very different viewpoints come up against each other around the figure of Leonard Bast. What ensues forms the primary debate of the novel, although the burden to formulate the debate falls on the reader since the characters who represent each side never actually engage in any productive discussion.
Essentially, Helen (and Margaret) want to help Leonard Bast out of his near-poverty because they see something special in him - something more of their intellectual ilk. In wondering what the best course of action is to provide assistance, they consider giving money, giving him books, and sending him (and his wife) on a yearly vacation. They pose the question to Mr. Wilcox during a chance encounter, and he does not weigh in but to say that the company Leonard works for is about to go under. With this, the Schlegel girls have found their way to help poor Leonard. Except it doesn’t end up helping. What follows is rather essential to the plot and would be a spoiler. It will have to suffice for me to say that the version of help offered by Mr. Wilcox does not work, and Helen in particular, feeling responsible for the ills that befall Leonard as a result of her passing on a bad piece of advice, tries to help again. The “help” she offers worse than fails.
I feel myself getting caught in the weeds on this a little bit, but what I really want to highlight is the fact that Forster raises some interesting questions, but provides very little in the way of solutions. The reader is asked to consider how the rich can help the poor, and how the gap between progressivism and conservatism can be bridged. On the first question Forster tries out multiple options, none of which work, and on the latter, he is even more unsatisfying - the gap is bridged but in a way that feels inauthentic to the characters who bridge it and without any real signposts or directions on how the effect can be replicated. Particularly disappointing in a time where it feels like many gaps could use some bridging (not to exhaust the metaphor, or whatever).
Sometimes Forster’s transitions between the lighthearted and the serious, as outlined above, don’t go terribly smoothly. It can feel a bit like he’s switching between modes, and while the more comedic aspects always went off well for me, the earnestly philosophical moments sometimes felt like forced platitudes. However, the debate between progressive and conservative, though central, was not the only serious subject tackled by Forster, and some of the others really struck me. I will provide some examples here that I feel illustrate the good in this novel:
On being trusting: “‘It’s better to be fooled than to be suspicious’ - the confidence trick is the work of man, but the want-of-confidence trick is the work of the devil” (36).
On the futility of anxiety: “Actual life is full of false clues and signposts that lead nowhere. With infinite effort we nerve ourselves for a crisis that never comes. The most successful career must show a waste of strength that might have moved mountains, and the most unsuccessful is not that of the man who is taken unprepared, but of him who has prepared and is never taken” (91).
On love: “She knew that out of Nature’s device we have built a magic that will win us immortality. Far more mysterious than the call of sex to sex is the tenderness that we throw into that call…We are evolving, in ways that science cannot measure, to ends that Theology dares not contemplate. ‘Men did produce one jewel,’ the gods will say, and, saying, will give us immortality” (205-206).
On the death of houses: “Houses have their own ways of dying, falling as variously as the generations of men, some with a tragic roar, some quietly but to an afterlife in the city of ghosts, while from others…the spirit slips before the body perishes” (219).
On the death of humans: “One death may explain itself, but it throws no light upon another; the groping inquiry must begin anew. Preachers or scientists may generalize, but we know that no generality is possible about those whom we love; not one heaven awaits them, not even one oblivion” (235).
And in this category, one note on one last running theme, not summed up in a single quote, that really struck me: Forster spends a good deal of time contemplating the spread of urbanization and resulting loss of the pastoral. Essentially, cosmopolitanism replacing a simpler, heartier, rural way of life, and the notion that what looks like progress is actually affecting a serious spiritual degradation in the population at large. In Howards End this primarily appears in the form of urban spread (to use a modern term) and the use of the automobile. Though these embodiments of progress are commonplace now, only about 100 years later, this is something I’ve been thinking about a lot recently. I allude to it often in my posts - the sense that things are moving so quickly and things are being churned out at such a terrifying rate, whether it be books, music, TV, movies. Then there’s the way that we’ve lost touch with our food because of the convenience of modern grocery stores, old sturdy buildings that are torn down in favor of quick-build, personality-less boxes for the masses to live in, etc. etc. - you could go on forever. I know all of these things have positive flip sides - people have art to consume and food to eat and places to live, but it’s easy to get stuck on the things that are lost. Or at least it is for someone like me who trends toward nostalgia.
To offer comfort, I will refer to something that I read in the introduction of my edition (Penguin Classics, 2000), written by David Lodge. He points out that the feeling that things were always better in the past was not a new idea at the turn of the 20th century, no more than it was in the previous century and certainly no more than it is now. It is possible to find examples of disillusionment with “modernity” and yearning for the good old days stretching as far back in recorded human history as you can go. It reminds me of a meme I saw the other day that included examples of newspaper clippings insisting that “no one wants to work anymore” starting in 1810 with one from every decade until now - today’s modern version of course being Kim Kardashian insisting that everybody should just “get their ass up and work.” It’s just a good reminder to not get too caught up in those kinds of thought patterns. The now is now, so it’s best to get on with it.
And finally, dragging myself across the finish line, I will comment on style: It is no surprise that Forster’s style hovers, in more ways than one, in the in between - he was writing at the turn of the century. He leans on symbolic patterns and intertextual illusion in a way that feels somewhat modernist (i.e. of his time), but he still maintains a strong connection with 19th century tradition. As mentioned above, the social comedy sometimes feels like Austen. The more earnest points sometimes feel like George Eliot (my two big points of comparison from the 19th century). I attribute these similarities to the fact that Forster tells a plot driven, chronological story, switches narrative point of view frequently, and from time to time, interjects as the author to comment on the events of the novel. To look at his peers, like Virginia Woolf or James Joyce, is to see none of this.
Much as Forster’s style doesn’t come down on one side or the other, his characters and the story he weaves with them don’t either. In pretty much every sense, we land in a middle ground, potentially unsatisfying, but perhaps all there is. Read it or don’t - I won’t be reading it again. It felt kind of pedantic or academical or something like that, but not in a fun way. That’s part of the reason why it took me so long to write this post - because I kept getting caught up in the pedantic and academical, when all I really wanted to do was just talk to you. Hopefully I was able to strike a balance - let me know how I did if you made it this far :)