Introducing Howards End
E.M. Forster was born in 1879. He spent part of his childhood in Hertfordshire, in a house known as the Rook’s Nest; this house and the town around it (not far from London) would become the model for the Howards End house he would depict in the novel we are reading. (Forster lived there from 1883-1893 – with his widowed mother Lily Forster; there were also two servant girls who looked after him and helped raise him.)
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| Rook's Nest House, Hertfordshire, England |
Forster attended Cambridge between 1897 and 1901, where he came into contact with a group of philosophers, artists, and writers who were going to be quite influential in 20th century intellectual life. That group, after graduate, moved to a neighborhood in center-west London called Bloomsbury; later, they would come to be known as the “Bloomsbury Group.” (In addition to the artistic and philosophical members of the group, the group also had as a member the famous economist John Maynard Keynes. Other members included the writers Virginia Woolf and Lytton Strachey, as well as painters Duncan Grant, Vanessa Bell, and Roger Fry.) The intellectual and artistic world-view of the Schlegel sisters in Forster’s Howards End, published in 1910, resemble quite closely that of the Bloomsbury Group that he knew. Besides Howards End, Forster wrote several other novels, including A Room With a View and A Passage to India. After that last novel was published in 1924, he would settle into life as an academic at Cambridge, where he taught literature for many years. He kept writing, most nonfiction, until well into the 1950s, but never published another novel. (After his death, his novel describing a same-sex love affair, Maurice, was finally published.)
Around this group of artists was a massive city, then the largest in the world (approximately 7 million people lived in greater London in 1910; this is more than six times the population it had a century earlier). In addition to being a major center for manufacturing, London was also the hub of finance capital, the British legal community, journalism, and many other occupations. London was also the hub of a massive global empire, with colonies in India, Africa, the Middle East, and the Caribbean, and spheres of influence in Asia. The British Empire in the early 20th century was the largest in the world, covering 1/3 of the earth’s landmass. Some of that imperial money will be evident in the novel (keep an eye on where the Wilcox fortune comes from).
Two overlapping ‘maps’ in the novel: What are the ‘cognitive maps’ we might draw when trying to understand the sense of space and place in Howards End? On the one hand, there’s the map of London and the surrounding countryside. These areas are accessible fairly rapidly by 1910. Most people can reach most parts of England in a few hours by rail. Howards End, for instance, is either in the countryside or the outer suburbs, and appears to be reachable via an hour-long train ride from King’s Cross Station. The Wilcoxes are also part of the new generation of automobile owners — and they routinely drive around the English countryside at high speeds (at one point, they complain that they keep getting stopped by police for speeding! and Mrs. Wilcox defensively states that “we are not road-hogs”). With the advent of rapid transit, the mental map of England grows smaller, and remote spaces no longer seem actually inaccessible or all that distant. Time and space become more homogeneous.
There’s also a second map in the novel — the outer world consisting of the Empire beyond British shores. Paul Wilcox is a relatively minor character in the novel in some ways: we mainly see him in his interactions with Helen early on, as a terrified and confused young man who approaches her and kisses her under the Wych-Elm tree at Howards End. But then he is off to Nigeria to work for the family business — rubber plantations. (Following Margaret's point of view, we later visit Henry Wilcox's office, the "Imperial Rubber Company," in London.)
What was the global rubber industry like in 1910? Well, for starters, at the time, it was largely operating in Brazil and in Southeast Asia. Naturally growing rubber trees are found in Brazil; in the 1870s, a British entrepreneur smuggled 70,000 rubber tree seeds out of Brazil, and soon founded new rubber plantations in Ceylon (Sri Lanka), Singapore/Malaysia, and Burma. These new rubber trees could be tapped much more efficiently than could trees in Brazil. There were also rubber plantations in west Africa, though I haven’t found as much about them (in any case, the choice of Nigeria seems somewhat arbitrary in the novel — at one point, Margaret is actually confused about whether Paul is going to Nigeria or India!).
The demand for rubber in Europe and the U.S. grew rapidly in the late 19th century with the spread of the bicycle. (Earlier, it had mainly been used for waterproofing — galoshes and jackets.) The invention of the pneumatic tire (i.e., filled with air) made bicycles safer, faster, and easier to ride — there was a major boom in production in the 1890s. The next big area of growth was of course the automobile, and the latter industry's rapid growth coincided with the explosion of demand for colonial-plantation rubber from the British colonies, as the chart below indicates.
As we read Forster’s novel with knowledge of these two maps and changing understandings of space and place, we can ask ourselves to consider how well-developed his cognitive maps are. The map of England seems developed and specific — with Howards End as a primary reference point outside of London, and London (specifically Wickham Place in west London) itself as the other. There are highly specific comments about the various train stations around London (King’s Cross, Euston Station, Waterloo Station, etc.), and places to see music (Covent Garden). The map of the Empire, by contrast, is vague and undeveloped. Which city in Nigeria is Paul going to — Lagos? Ibadan? The eastern low country – where the oil industry would later develop? What does life look like for him there? Forster doesn’t really say.
Social Class: Because of changing laws and social norms, early 20th century England was a much more democratic place than it was 50 years earlier. After the Reform Bill of 1832, a series of further reforms to the electoral system led to full male enfranchisement by 1870. The 1870s also saw the creation of a national public education system in England, with the goal of universal literacy and the creation of a much larger middle class. The character Leonard Bast, who is only around 19 or 20 years old at the beginning of the novel, is a product of that system (30 or 40 years earlier, he would have been an illiterate working class person, working in a factory or cotton mill). That said, evidence of the old aristocratic system were still present – you could tell a good deal about someone’s class background based on their accent, their clothes, their knowledge of literature or music, etc. (The class/accent issue is still a live one in England – more more than here in the U.S.) Leonard Bast, as we’ll see in chapters 5-6 feels his lack of culture acutely, and hopes to “get hold of the ropes” so as to live a better life.
Howards End is fundamentally a London novel; the house in its title represents all of the old aspects of English life that are disappearing for the main characters in the novel. But the house, despite all of the changes occurring around it (the town in which it is located, once part of the English countryside, has been absorbed into the broader London suburbs by the time of the novel).
Chapters 1-2
We are introduced to the main characters in the novel a bit obliquely. There are two sisters, Helen and Margaret Schlegel, and we’ll find out a bit later that they are eight years apart (Helen is in her early 20s, Margaret is just about to turn 30), and that their parents are dead. They also have a younger brother named Tibby (age 16), who we learn in this opening letter (from Helen’s note of frustration) tends towards the sickly (perhaps he is a hypochondriac?).
Helen is writing her sister her observations of the Wilcox family, with whom she is staying at their country house (this is Howards End). Helen writes:
It isn't going to be what we expected. It is old and little, and altogether delightful--red brick. We can scarcely pack in as it is, and the dear knows what will happen when Paul (younger son) arrives tomorrow.
What did they expect? Can we extrapolate from these opening paragraphs a hint of what the Schlegel sisters thought they would find at Howards End? What can we make of what the house actually looks like? We’ll learn in chapter 3 that they met the Wilcoxes on a trip to Germany. They do not know them at all well – they are hardly old friends.
We get a little more in the way of expectations vs. reality in the second paragraph:
Then there's a very big wych-elm--to the left as you look up--leaning a little over the house, and standing on the boundary between the garden and meadow. I quite love that tree already. Also ordinary elms, oaks--no nastier than ordinary oaks--pear-trees, apple-trees, and a vine. No silver birches, though. However, I must get on to my host and hostess. I only wanted to show that it isn't the least what we expected. Why did we settle that their house would be all gables and wiggles, and their garden all gamboge-coloured paths? I believe simply because we associate them with expensive hotels--Mrs. Wilcox trailing in beautiful dresses down long corridors, Mr. Wilcox bullying porters, etc. We females are that unjust.
A Wych elm (Wych is pronounced with a long “I” as in “pie”) is a classic English / Scottish elm tree. Very stately and very English. “Gamboge” is a yellow pigment derived from a tree in Asia (it would have to be extracted and imported to England). It would have been a new color and an expensive one at the time. I also think “gables and wiggles” is a telling comment here – again, Helen is expecting showy ornaments and decorative motifs designed to make a house look ‘fancy’. The actual Howards End is much more of a traditional country house – a little on the small side for the six or seven adults all staying there. We’ll learn later that this is Mrs. Wilcox’s old family farmhouse; she grew up there.
We know enough now to have some adjectives to describe how the Schlegels think of the Wilcoxes: rich, bossy, entitled. Perhaps: nouveau riche (new money).
Some of the material regarding hay-fever allergies is also interesting. All of the Wilcoxes seem to have hay fever type allergies except Mrs. Wilcox (again, she grew up at this house; Mr. Wilcox grew up in a city, as did all of the Wilcox children):
I looked out earlier, and Mrs. Wilcox was already in the garden. She evidently loves it. No wonder she sometimes looks tired. She was watching the large red poppies come out. Then she walked off the lawn to the meadow, whose corner to the right I can just see. Trail, trail, went her long dress over the sopping grass, and she came back with her hands full of the hay that was cut yesterday--I suppose for rabbits or something, as she kept on smelling it. The air here is delicious.
In chapter 2 we start to get introduced to some of the key social issues that will be discussed in the novel:
He says the most horrid things about women's suffrage so nicely, and when I said I believed in equality he just folded his arms and gave me such a setting down as I've never had. Meg, shall we ever learn to talk less? I never felt so ashamed of myself in my life. I couldn't point to a time when men had been equal, nor even to a time when the wish to be equal had made them happier in other ways. I couldn't say a word. I had just picked up the notion that equality is good from some book--probably from poetry, or you. Anyhow, it's been knocked into pieces, and, like all people who are really strong, Mr. Wilcox did it without hurting me.
4
What do we learn about Helen and about Mr. Wilcox here?
In chapter 3 we are introduced to Helen and her aunt Juley (also known as Mrs. Munt). They live in central London, but their house is a little bit back from a main road, and so relatively quiet:
Their house was in Wickham Place, and fairly quiet, for a lofty promontory of buildings separated it from the main thoroughfare. One had the sense of a backwater, or rather of an estuary, whose waters flowed in from the invisible sea, and ebbed into a profound silence while the waves without were still beating. Though the promontory consisted of flats--expensive, with cavernous entrance halls, full of concierges and palms--it fulfilled its purpose, and gained for the older houses opposite a certain measure of peace. These, too, would be swept away in time, and another promontory would rise upon their site, as humanity piled itself higher and higher on the precious soil of London.
You get a clear sense here of the sense of urban growth and the interest in scale in Forster’s novel (“humanity piled itself higher and higher on the precious soil of London”). In this novel Forster is very interested in trying to consider how human beings might relate to each other as people in the face of an increasingly urbanized environment where the old social rules and social hierarchies seem to be losing their meaning.
The progress of real estate – the sense that everything will eventually be torn down and replaced by something bigger – is a bit demoralizing.
Chapter 3:
Aunt Juley takes the morning train out to Howards End to talk to Helen about the possibility of an engagement. Along the way we get some bits of description regarding what she sees as she makes her journey.
The train sped northward, under innumerable tunnels. It was only an hour’s journey, but Mrs. Munt had to raise and lower the window again and again. She passed through the South Welwyn Tunnel, saw light for a moment, and entered the North Welwyn Tunnel, of tragic fame. She traversed the immense viaduct, whose arches span untroubled meadows and the dreamy flow of Tewin Water. She skirted the parks of politicians. At times the Great North Road accompanied her, more suggestive of infinity than any railway, awakening, after a nap of a hundred years, to such life as is conferred by the stench of motor-cars, and to such culture as is implied by the advertisements of antibilious pills. To history, to tragedy, to the past, to the future, Mrs. Munt remained equally indifferent; hers but to concentrate on the end of her journey, and to rescue poor Helen from this dreadful mess.
The station for Howards End was at Hilton, one of the large villages that are strung so frequently along the North Road, and that owe their size to the traffic of coaching and pre-coaching days. Being near London, it had not shared in the rural decay, and its long High Street had budded out right and left into residential estates. For about a mile a series of tiled and slated houses passed before Mrs. Munt’s inattentive eyes, a series broken at one point by six Danish tumuli that stood shoulder to shoulder along the highroad, tombs of soldiers. Beyond these tumuli, habitations thickened, and the train came to a .standstill in a tangle that was almost a town
There’s a lot going on here in terms of the geography Forster puts forward. First, it’s important to note that this is Aunt Juley’s perspective — she is much more conventionally ‘English’ than are the Schlegel sisters.
Second, note the mix of historic and new places mentioned here. The “Great North Road” and the “viaduct” are ancient constructions, and at least through the late 19th century the Great North Road would have been superseded by the railway. But here Forster suggests the road has been reawakened “by the stench of motor-cars.” People are using the road again — though now it’s going to be paved (macadamized) to make it more sturdy for automobiles.
Finally, note the way Hilton station is described above — as a town outside of London, but not too far. Its proximity has protected it from “rural decay.”
In the second half of the chapter, we get Mrs. Munt riding in the car with Charles Wilcox, who she mistakenly thinks is the brother who had the affair with Helen. There’s also some confusion about letters and telegrams — Helen had sent a letter informing her sister she had fallen in love with Paul Wilcox, but the telegram indicating the engagement was off didn’t reach London in time for Mrs. Must to see it. Only after she’s revealed the affair does she learn she’s talking to the wrong Wilcox brother. There’s a quarrel in the car; when they reach the house, Mrs. Wilcox gently diffuses it.
Chapter 4.
Here we get some background as to why Helen enjoyed her time at the Wilcoxes’:
She had liked giving in to Mr. Wilcox, or Evie, or Charles; she had liked being told that her notions of life were sheltered or academic; that Equality was nonsense, Votes for Women nonsense, Socialism nonsense, Art and Literature, except when conducive to strengthening the character, nonsense. One by one the Schlegel fetiches had been overthrown, and, though professing to defend them, she had rejoiced. When Mr. Wilcox said that one sound man of business did more good to the world than a dozen of your social reformers, she had swallowed the curious assertion without a gasp, and had leant back luxuriously among the cushions of his motor-car.
It’s interesting that Helen seems to like the Wilcoxes in part because they are so different from her own set. But she doesn’t mind throwing off her own beliefs (they weren’t very strongly set in any case), and she does appear to enjoy their access to luxury (note the reference to the motor car).
Are Helen and Paul actually in love?
He had drawn her out of the house, where there was danger of surprise and light; he had led her by a path he knew, until they stood under the column of the vast wych-elm. A man in the darkness, he had whispered "I love you" when she was desiring love.
Helen’s views of the Wilcoxes changes suddenly:
"Somehow, when that kind of man looks frightened it is too awful. It is all right for us to be frightened, or for men of another sort--father, for instance; but for men like that! When I saw all the others so placid, and Paul mad with terror in case I said the wrong thing, I felt for a moment that the whole Wilcox family was a fraud, just a wall of newspapers and motor-cars and golf-clubs, and that if it fell I should find nothing behind it but panic and emptiness. "
That phrase, “panic and emptiness” will come back in the novel several times. What does it mean?
Here we have some of the background of the Schlegel family – the connection to art and literature, and the idea of German Romanticism. But we also have some statements by Margaret that sound like she sympathizes more with the Wilcoxes. Where does Margaret really stand on the “Art” vs. “Money” question?
Helen and Margaret are on the same page about most things – as sisters they are very close. (Remember that both of their parents are dead, and Margaret has largely raised her sister and brother, and now is the manager of their household.) Most of the time the very modern philosophy of “personal relations” before all the old ideas of propriety, social rank, or class seems to be one that they both espouse. They prefer idealism (i.e., caring about ideas, art, and beauty) over materialism (i.e., caring about money). However, starting around this point in the novel, Margaret occasionally says things that hint at a rather more pragmatic (and sometimes even conservative) way of thinking:
"I suppose so, but it seemed wonderful. When Charles and Aunt Juley drove up, calling each other names, Mrs. Wilcox stepped in from the garden and made everything less terrible. Ugh! but it has been a disgusting business. To think that--" She sighed.
"To think that because you and a young man meet for a moment, there must be all these telegrams and anger," supplied Margaret.
Helen nodded.
"I've often thought about it, Helen. It's one of the most interesting things in the world. The truth is that there is a great outer life that you and I have never touched--a life in which telegrams and anger count. Personal relations, that we think supreme, are not supreme there. There love means marriage settlements, death, death duties. So far I'm clear. But here my difficulty. This outer life, though obviously horrid, often seems the real one--there's grit in it. It does breed character. Do personal relations lead to sloppiness in the end?"
She will say something parallel to this in chapter 7:
"But after all," she continued with a smile, "there's never any great risk as long as you have money."
"Oh, shame! What a shocking speech!"
"Money pads the edges of things," said Miss Schlegel. "God help those who have none."
"But this is something quite new!" said Mrs. Munt, who collected new ideas as a squirrel collects nuts, and was especially attracted by those that are portable.
"New for me; sensible people have acknowledged it for years. You and I and the Wilcoxes stand upon money as upon islands. It is so firm beneath our feet that we forget its very existence. It's only when we see someone near us tottering that we realize all that an independent income means. Last night, when we were talking up here round the fire, I began to think that the very soul of the world is economic, and that the lowest abyss is not the absence of love, but the absence of coin."
"I call that rather cynical."
[…]
"Call it what you like. I call it going through life with one's hand spread open on the table. I'm tired of these rich people who pretend to be poor, and think it shows a nice mind to ignore the piles of money that keep their feet above the waves. I stand each year upon six hundred pounds, and Helen upon the same, and Tibby will stand upon eight, and as fast as our pounds crumble away into the sea they are renewed--from the sea, yes, from the sea. And all our thoughts are the thoughts of six-hundred pounders, and all our speeches; and because we don't want to steal umbrellas ourselves, we forget that below the sea people do want to steal them, and do steal them sometimes, and that what's a joke up here is down there reality--"
The German background of the Schlegel family is important:
A word on their origin. They were not "English to the backbone," as their aunt had piously asserted. But, on the other band, they were not "Germans of the dreadful sort." Their father had belonged to a type that was more prominent in Germany fifty years ago than now. He was not the aggressive German, so dear to the English journalist, nor the domestic German, so dear to the English wit. If one classed him at all it would be as the countryman of Hegel and Kant, as the idealist, inclined to be dreamy, whose Imperialism was the Imperialism of the air.
We get some hint of Mr. Schlegel’s idealism in the following passage:
"You only care about the' things that you can use, and therefore arrange them in the following order: Money, supremely useful; intellect, rather useful; imagination, of no use at all. No"--for the other had protested--"your Pan-Germanism is no more imaginative than is our Imperialism over here. It is the vice of a vulgar mind to be thrilled by bigness, to think that a thousand square miles are a thousand times more wonderful than one square mile, and that a million square miles are almost the same as heaven. That is not imagination. No, it kills it. When their poets over here try to celebrate bigness they are dead at once, and naturally.
And the difference between the sisters is indicated at the end of chapter 4:
In character she resembled her sister, but she was pretty, and so apt to have a more amusing time. People gathered round her more readily, especially when they were new acquaintances, and she did enjoy a little homage very much. When their father died and they ruled alone at Wickham Place, she often absorbed the whole of the company, while Margaret--both were tremendous talkers--fell flat. Neither sister bothered about this. Helen never apologized afterwards, Margaret did not feel the slightest rancor. But looks have their influence upon character.
Chapter 5: This is the chapter where we meet Leonard Bast, a lower-middle class man, and his domestic partner Jacky (they are not legally married).
Leonard is sitting next to the Schlegels at a classical music performance at a public concert. Helen accidentally steals his umbrella when she leaves the concert early, and Margaret then walks him home so he can retrieve the umbrella from their house.
There’s quite a lot in this chapter about social class and education — we can contrast the easy way the Schlegel siblings take in Beethoven vs. how Leonard Bast (and Mrs. Munt, for her part) take it in. For Leonard Bast, it represents “improvement” and “culture.” But for the Schlegels, there’s a sense of substantial engagement with the narrative and structure of the performance. They understand its ‘language’ intuitively. Tibby is making judgments about the technical musicianship, Helen is transported by the “goblins” — a kind of narrative superstructure she imposes on Beethoven’s Fifth Symphony.
Her speeches fluttered away from the young man like birds. If only he could talk like this, he would have caught the world. Oh, to acquire culture! Oh, to pronounce foreign names correctly! Oh, to be well informed, discoursing at ease on every subject that a lady started! But it would take one years. With an hour at lunch and a few shattered hours in the evening, how was it possible to catch up with leisured women, who had been reading steadily from childhood? His brain might be full of names, he might have even heard of Monet and Debussy; the trouble was that he could not string them together into a sentence, he could not make them “tell,” he could not quite forget about his stolen umbrella. Yes, the umbrella was the real trouble. Behind Monet and Debussy the umbrella persisted, with the steady beat of a drum. “I suppose my umbrella will be all right,” he was thinking. “I don’t really mind about it. I will think about music instead. I suppose my umbrella will be all right.” Earlier in the afternoon he had worried about seats. Ought he to have paid as much as two shillings? Earlier still he had wondered, “Shall I try to do without a programme?” There had always been something to worry him ever since he could remember, always something that distracted him in the pursuit of beauty. For he did pursue beauty, and, therefore, Margaret’s speeches did flutter away from him like birds.
Chapter 6: In this chapter, we follow Leonard Bast back to his basement flat in east London. We meet his distasteful partner Jacky. She seems vulgar and uneducated. She’s also ten years older than Leonard (who hasn’t turned 21 yet; she is more than 30), and she clearly is nudging him hard to marry her to “make it right.”
Leonard, for his part, is constantly trying to “improve” himself. One way he does that is through reading serious literary prose. But we see the gap between the world described in a book of Ruskin’s he’s reading and his everyday life in this flat.
The chapter begins with a remarkable — and perhaps somewhat frustrating — admission from the point of view of Forster’s narrator:
WE are not concerned with the very poor. They are unthinkable and only to be approached by the statistician or the poet. This story deals with gentlefolk, or with those who are obliged to pretend that they are gentlefolk.
The boy, Leonard Bast, stood at the extreme verge of gentility. He was not in the abyss, but he could see it, and at times people whom he knew had dropped in, and counted no more. He knew that he was poor, and would admit it; he would have died sooner than confess any inferiority to the rich. This may be splendid of him. But he was inferior to most rich people, there is not the least doubt of it. He was not as courteous as the average rich man, nor as intelligent, nor as healthy, nor as lovable. His mind and his body had been alike underfed, because he was poor, and because he was modern they were always craving better food. Had he lived some centuries ago, in the brightly coloured civilisations of the past, he would have had a definite status, his rank and his income would have corresponded. But in his day the angel of Democracy had arisen, enshadowing the classes with leathern wings, and proclaiming, “All men are equal—all men, that is to say, who possess umbrellas,” and so he was obliged to assert gentility, lest he slip into the abyss where nothing counts, and the statements of Democracy are inaudible.
Some of the story here overlaps with the bigger historical narrative Forster has alluded to at various points — the shift from country to city that’s led to the creation of a person like Leonard Bast, literate but not really educated. His ancestors were peasants, but he hasn’t really found his place in the life of London.
But the constraint is that Forster is essentially admitting that he doesn’t really have anything to say about “the very poor.” They aren’t on his horizon and don’t factor into the world he’s created in this novel.
Chapter 7: The main plot development here is that we learn that the Welcomes have taken a flat in London across the street from the Schlegels, so the two families will likely cross paths and renew their acquaintance, despite the unpleasantness that followed Helen and Paul Wilcox’s brief ‘thing’ early in the book.
But the really interesting moment in this chapter might be Margaret’s monologue about money:
“But after all,” she continued with a smile, “there’s never any great risk as long as you have money.”
“Oh, shame! What a shocking speech!”
“Money pads the edges of things,” said Miss Schlegel. “God help those who have none.”
“But this is something quite new!” said Mrs. Munt, who collected new ideas as a squirrel collects nuts, and was especially attracted by those that are portable. “New for me; sensible people have acknowledged it for years. You and I and the Wilcoxes stand upon money as upon islands. It is so firm beneath our feet that we forget its very existence. It’s only when we see some one near us tottering that we realise all that an independent income means. Last night, when we were talking up here round the fire, I began to think that the very soul of the world is economic, and that the lowest abyss is not the absence of love, but the absence of coin.”
“I call that rather cynical.”
“So do I. But Helen and I, we ought to remember, when we are tempted to criticise others, that we are standing on these islands, and that most of the others are down below the surface of the sea. The poor cannot always reach those whom they want to love, and they can hardly ever escape from those whom they love no longer. We rich can. Imagine the tragedy last June, if Helen and Paul Wilcox had been poor people, and couldn’t invoke railways and motor-cars to part them.” “That’s more like Socialism,” said Mrs. Munt suspiciously.
“Call it what you like. I call it going through life with one’s hand spread open on the table. I’m tired of these rich people who pretend to be poor, and think it shows a nice mind to ignore the piles of money that keep their feet above the waves. I stand each year upon six hundred pounds, and Helen upon the same, and Tibby will stand upon eight, and as fast as our pounds crumble away into the sea they are renewed—from the sea, yes, from the sea. And all our thoughts are the thoughts of six-hundred-pounders, and all our speeches; and because we don’t want to steal umbrellas ourselves, we forget that below the sea people do want to steal them and do steal them sometimes, and that what’s a joke up here is down there reality.”
In effect, Margaret is here putting forward a point of view I might refer to as ‘materialist’: your material conditions impact your psychic disposition quite a bit. The Schlegel sisters have inherited a medium-sized fortune from their mother’s family, which means they don’t have to work. That stability informs their perspective and shapes their world-views. Aspects of their lives that are more voluntary or tied to personal choices or predilections, Margaret suggests, are less important than this brute fact.
How might we translate that to class and privilege in the U.S. in the present day?
Chapter 8: Though it starts off a bit roughly, Margaret and Mrs. Wilcox become reacquainted in this chapter. Helen is off in Germany and Paul has left for Nigeria. The friendship between the two women will become an important plot point later.
Chapter 9: Mrs. Wilcox comes to a party at the Schlegel house, but is out of her element. She Schlegel circle is progressive and feminist; one of the key political issues of the 1910s is whether women would be granted the right to vote in England (this was also an issue in the U.S. at around the same time). Throughout the nineteenth century, the right to vote (or suffrage) was steadily expanded, from a very limited number of propertied Anglican men in the year 1800, to virtually all male adults, including working class men, by around 1870. (Mr. Wilcox is still grumbling about the fact that working class men can vote forty years later!)
If you were a friend of the Schlegels’ in 1910, you would undoubtedly support women’s suffrage, and see opponents of it as stodgy and conservative.
"You will admit, though, that the Continent--it seems silly to speak of 'the Continent,' but really it is all more like itself than any part of it is like England. England is unique. Do have another jelly first. I was going to say that the Continent, for good or for evil, is interested in ideas. Its Literature and Art have what one might call the kink of the unseen about them, and this persists even through decadence and affectation. There is more liberty of action in England, but for liberty of thought go to bureaucratic Prussia. People will there discuss with humility vital questions that we here think ourselves too good to touch with tongs." "I do not want to go to Prussia" said Mrs. Wilcox--"not even to see that interesting view that you were describing. And for discussing with humility I am too old. We never discuss anything at Howards End." "Then you ought to!" said Margaret. "Discussion keeps a house alive. It cannot stand by bricks and mortar alone."
"It cannot stand without them," said Mrs. Wilcox, unexpectedly catching on to the thought, and rousing, for the first and last time, a faint hope in the breasts of the delightful people. "It cannot stand without them, and I sometimes think--But I cannot expect your generation to agree, for even my daughter disagrees with me here."
"Never mind us or her. Do say!"
"I sometimes think that it is wiser to leave action and discussion to men."
There was a little silence.
"One admits that the arguments against the suffrage are extraordinarily strong," said a girl opposite, leaning forward and crumbling her bread. "Are they? I never follow any arguments. I am only too thankful not to have a vote myself."
"We didn't mean the vote, though, did we?" supplied Margaret. "Aren't we differing on something much wider, Mrs. Wilcox? Whether women are to remain what they have been since the dawn of history; or whether, since men have moved forward so far, they too may move forward a little now. I say they may. I would even admit a biological change."
Forster returns to the theme of money vs. art for a third time in chapter 15, at the women’s discussion club, where the topic is “what should the rich do with their money to help the poor?”
"Give them a chance. Give them money. Don't dole them out poetry-books and railway-tickets like babies. Give them the wherewithal to buy these things. When your Socialism comes it may be different, and we may think in terms of commodities instead of cash. Till it comes give people cash, for it is the warp of civilization, whatever the woof may be. The imagination ought to play upon money and realize it vividly, for it's the--the second most important thing in the world. It is so sluffed over and hushed up, there is so little clear thinking--oh, political economy, of course, but so few of us think clearly about our own private incomes, and admit that independent thoughts are in nine cases out of ten the result of independent means. Money: give Mr. Bast money, and don't bother about his ideals. He'll pick up those for himself." She leant back while the more earnest members of the club began to misconstrue her. The female mind, though cruelly practical in daily life, cannot bear to hear ideals belittled in conversation, and Miss Schlegel was asked however she could say such dreadful things, and what it would profit Mr. Bast if he gained the whole world and lost his own soul. She answered, "Nothing, but he would not gain his soul until he had gained a little of the world." Then they said, "No they did not believe it," and she admitted that an overworked clerk may save his soul in the superterrestrial sense, where the effort will be taken for the deed, but she denied that he will ever explore the spiritual resources of this world, will ever know the rarer joys of the body, or attain to clear and passionate intercourse with his fellows. Others had attacked the fabric of Society-Property, Interest, etc.; she only fixed her eyes on a few human beings, to see how, under present conditions, they could be made happier. Doing good to humanity was useless: the many-coloured efforts thereto spreading over the vast area like films and resulting in an universal grey. To do good to one, or, as in this case, to a few, was the utmost she dare hope for.
Another key thread in the middle of the novel is the romance, if it can even be called that, between Margaret and Mr. Wilcox, a man at least twenty years older than herself. It probably starts in the scene where Leonard Bast explodes at the Schlegels’ house at what he perceives to be mistreatment (they are trying to help him by convincing him to quit his job at an insurance firm, after hearing from Mr. Wilcox that the firm is headed for bankruptcy). Mr. Wilcox derides Leonard Bast, but Margaret stands up for him:
He shook his head. "Miss Schlegel, excuse me, but I know the type." "I said before--he isn't a type. He cares about adventures rightly. He's certain that our smug existence isn't all. He's vulgar and hysterical and bookish, but I don't think that sums him up. There's manhood in him as well. Yes, that's what I'm trying to say. He's a real man."
As she spoke their eyes met, and it was as if Mr. Wilcox's defences fell. She saw back to the real man in him. Unwittingly she had touched his emotions. A woman and two men--they had formed the magic triangle of sex, and the male was thrilled to jealousy, in case the female was attracted by another male. Love, say the ascetics, reveals our shameful kinship with the beasts. Be it so: one can bear that; jealousy is the real shame. It is jealousy, not love, that connects us with the farmyard intolerably, and calls up visions of two angry cocks and a complacent hen. Margaret crushed complacency down because she was civilized. Mr. Wilcox, uncivilized, continued to feel anger long after he had rebuilt his defences, and was again presenting a bastion to the world.
In chapter 18, he proposes to her. Despite it being in some ways kind of a disaster, she is touched by the proposal and it’s clear that she’ll say yes:
"Miss Schlegel"--his voice was firm--"I have had you up on false pretences. I want to speak about a much more serious matter than a house." Margaret almost answered: "I know--"
"Could you be induced to share my--is it probable--"
"Oh, Mr. Wilcox!" she interrupted, holding the piano and averting her eyes. "I see, I see. I will write to you afterwards if I may."
He began to stammer. "Miss Schlegel--Margaret--you don't understand." "Oh yes! Indeed, yes!" said Margaret.
"I am asking you to be my wife."
So deep already was her sympathy, that when he said, "I am asking you to be my wife," she made herself give a little start. She must show surprise if he expected it. An immense joy came over her. It was indescribable. It had nothing to do with humanity, and most resembled the all-pervading happiness of fine weather. Fine weather is due to the sun, but Margaret could think of no central radiance here. She stood in his drawing-room happy, and longing to give happiness. On leaving him she realized that the central radiance had been love.
"You aren't offended, Miss Schlegel?"
"How could I be offended?"
There was a moment's pause. He was anxious to get rid of her, and she knew it. She had too much intuition to look at him as he struggled for possessions that money cannot buy. He desired comradeship and affection, but he feared them, and she, who had taught herself only to desire, and could have clothed the struggle with beauty, held back, and hesitated with him.
"Good-bye," she continued. "You will have a letter from me--I am going back to Swanage tomorrow.
"Thank you."
"Good-bye, and it's you I thank."
"I may order the motor round, mayn't I?"
"That would be most kind."
In chapter 19, Margaret explains her feelings to Helen, who is initially incredulous and angry:
"Tell me about it first, and meanwhile perhaps I'll have got my head out of the slime."
"That's better. Well, where shall I begin? When I arrived at Waterloo--no, I'll go back before that, because I'm anxious you should know everything from the first. The 'first' was about ten days ago. It was the day Mr. Bast came to tea and lost his temper. I was defending him, and Mr. Wilcox became jealous about me, however slightly. I thought it was the involuntary thing, which men can't help any more than we can. You know--at least, I know in my own case-- when a man has said to me, 'So-and-so's a pretty girl,' I am seized with a momentary sourness against So-and-so, and long to tweak her ear. It's a tiresome feeling, but not an important one, and one easily manages it. But it wasn't only this in Mr. Wilcox's case, I gather now."
"Then you love him?"
Margaret considered. "It is wonderful knowing that a real man cares for you," she said. "The mere fact of that grows more tremendous. Remember, I've known and liked him steadily for nearly three years.
"But loved him?"
Margaret peered into her past. It is pleasant to analyze feelings while they are still only feelings, and unembodied in the social fabric. With her arm round Helen, and her eyes shifting over the view, as if this county or that could reveal the secret of her own heart, she meditated honestly, and said, "No." "But you will?"
"Yes," said Margaret, "of that I'm pretty sure. Indeed, I began the moment he spoke to me."
How can we quite make sense of Margaret’s attraction to Mr. Wilcox? Why is she marrying him? Why is Helen so angry about this?
Howards End (Final day of discussion)
“Only Connect”
This is the novel’s opening epigram, though for much of the book we don’t necessarily see its significance. Most readers will tend to like Margaret Schlegel and wonder a little at her decision to marry Henry Wilcox. And most readers will probably like Helen Schlegel, but worry a bit about her patronage of the Basts (at least until it becomes clear what happens at the end of the novel). But this isn’t exactly what Forster has in mind for the novel, as he begins to make clear when he returns to the idea of “Only Connect” in chapter 22:
Margaret greeted her lord with peculiar tenderness on the morrow. Mature as he was, she might yet be able to help him to the building of the rainbow bridge that should connect the prose in us with the passion. Without it we are meaningless fragments, half monks, half beasts, unconnected arches that have never joined into a man. With it love is born, and alights on the highest curve, glowing against the grey, sober against the fire. Happy the man who sees from either aspect the glory of these outspread wings. The roads of his soul lie clear, and he and his friends shall find easy-going.
[…]
It did not seem so difficult. She need trouble him with no gift of her own. She would only point out the salvation that was latent in his own soul, and in the soul of every man. Only connect! That was the whole of her sermon. Only connect the prose and the passion, and both will be exalted, and human love will be seen at its height. Live in fragments no longer. Only connect, and the beast and the monk, robbed of the isolation that is life to either, will die.
Nor was the message difficult to give. It need not take the form of a good "talking." By quiet indications the bridge would be built and span their lives with beauty.
But she failed. For there was one quality in Henry for which she was
never prepared, however much she reminded herself of it: his obtuseness. He simply did not notice things, and there was no more to be said. He never noticed that Helen and Frieda were hostile, or that Tibby was not interested in currant plantations; he never noticed the lights and shades that exist in the grayest conversation, the finger-posts, the milestones, the collisions, the illimitable views. Once--on another occasion--she scolded him about it. He was puzzled, but replied with a laugh: "My motto is Concentrate. I've no intention of frittering away my strength on that sort of thing." "It isn't frittering away the strength," she protested. "It's enlarging the space in which you may be strong." He answered: "You're a clever little woman, but my motto's Concentrate." And this morning he concentrated with a vengeance.
So what does “Only Connect” mean for Forster?
Here at least, he is talking (through Margaret’s voice) about connecting the “prose and the passion.” In the examples given in the final passage, the references are all to the nuances of personal relationships. “Connectism,” if it is a philosophy, is at the end of the passage above contrasted to Mr. Wilcox’s motto of “Concentrate.”
We can apply the idea of linking “Prose and passion” to the two families in the novel – just as there must be a connection in any individual life between the “prose and the passion” (that is, between everyday life and a desire for aesthetic experience, or beauty), there might also be constructive connections between families that tend to favor one or the other principle. By marrying Henry Wilcox, Margaret “connects” the prose of the Wilcox family with the “passion” of the Schlegel family.
We can also extend the significance of “only connect” further – as relating to taboo subjects and sexuality. One of the obvious problems with Henry Wilcox is his tendency to presume that his private sexual life is his own concern, and not something that the respectable women in his life should know about. He disconnects what is happening “below the belt” with the rest of the body, and the human limitations of the body from the idea of respectability in society. This disconnect is somewhat harder for women to make (for starters, having sex out of marriage may not have cost Henry anything, but even sleeping with Leonard one time leads Helen to become pregnant).
Near the end of the novel, Forster returns to the gender relations question – and specifically the matter of women’s rights. As we saw earlier, Margaret is very willing to compromise a direct confrontation with a man (i.e., Henry) if she can get her way through feminine “influence.” But in chapter 36 she takes a different sort of stand:
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"Stop that at least," she said piteously; the doctor had turned back, and was questioning the driver of Helen's cab. A new feeling came over her; she was fighting for women against men. She did not care about rights, but if men came into Howards End, it should be over her body.
"Come, this is an odd beginning," said her husband.
The doctor came forward now, and whispered two words to Mr. Wilcox-- the scandal was out. Sincerely horrified, Henry stood gazing at the earth. "I cannot help it," said Margaret. "Do wait. It's not my fault. Please all four of you to go away now."
The occasion here is the discovery of Helen’s pregnancy. This is the moment where Margaret lays down her own version of the law, and insists on the right to see Helen first – her sister’s pregnancy is an issue that pertains to them as women before it pertains to men or “society.” She doesn’t care whether what her sister did was right or wrong; at present what she wants to do is support her and communicate with her.
This is also the chapter where Margaret puts forward her theory of “affection”:
"It all turns on affection now," said Margaret. "Affection. Don't you see?" Resuming her usual methods, she wrote the word on the house with her finger. "Surely you see. I like Helen very much, you not so much. Mr. Mansbridge doesn't know her. That's all. And affection,
when reciprocated, gives rights. Put that down in your notebook, Mr. Mansbridge. It's a useful formula."
Henry told her to be calm.
"You don't know what you want yourselves," said Margaret, folding her arms. "For one sensible remark I will let you in. But you cannot make it. You would trouble my sister for no reason. I will not permit it. I'll stand here all the day sooner."
"Mansbridge," said Henry in a low voice, "perhaps not now." The pack was breaking up. At a sign from his master, Crane also went back into the car.
"Now, Henry, you," she said gently. None of her bitterness had been directed at him. "Go away now, dear. I shall want your advice later, no doubt. Forgive me if I have been cross. But, seriously, you must go."
It does seem that Margaret is again insisting that her affection for her sister means the question of moral judgment has to be put off. Are we allowed to judge the people we love differently than people we don’t love? (That is what she seems to be suggesting.) How might this relate to the idea that “personal relations” are supreme, which is a philosophy Margaret had earlier questioned?
Another key passage relating to “connections” comes near the end of chapter 38. This is the fight between Henry and Margaret over whether Helen should be allowed to spend the night at Howards End. Henry feels it wouldn’t be proper since she’s technically a “fallen woman,” but Margaret insists on it. She tries, very hard, not to mention Henry’s own past, but ultimately when he makes a hard refusal she can’t control herself any longer and forces the “connection” on him:
She controlled herself for the last time. "No, let us go back to Helen's request," she said. "It is unreasonable, but the request of an unhappy girl. Tomorrow she will go to Germany, and trouble society no longer. Tonight she asks to sleep in your empty house--a house which you do not care about, and which you have not occupied for over a year. May she? Will you give my sister leave? Will you forgive her--as you hope to be forgiven, and as you have actually been forgiven? Forgive her for one night only. That will be enough."
"As I have actually been forgiven--?"
"Never mind for the moment what I mean by that," said Margaret. "Answer my question."
Perhaps some hint of her meaning did dawn on him. If so, he blotted it out. Straight from his fortress he answered: "I seem rather
unaccommodating, but I have some experience of life, and know how one thing leads to another. I am afraid that your sister had better sleep at the hotel. I have my children and the memory of my dear wife to consider. I am sorry, but see that she leaves my house at once."
"You mentioned Mrs. Wilcox."
"I beg your pardon?"
"A rare occurrence. In reply, may I mention Mrs. Bast?"
"You have not been yourself all day," said Henry, and rose from his seat with face unmoved. Margaret rushed at him and seized both his hands. She was transfigured.
"Not any more of this!" she cried. "You shall see the connection if it kills you, Henry! You have had a mistress--I forgave you. My sister has a lover--you drive her from the house. Do you see the connection? Stupid, hypocritical, cruel--oh, contemptible! --a man who insults his wife when she's alive and cants with her memory when she's dead. A man who ruins a woman for his pleasure, and casts her off to ruin
other men. And gives bad financial advice, and then says he is not responsible. These, man, are you. You can't recognize them, because you cannot connect. I've had enough of your unweeded kindness. I've spoilt you long enough. All your life you have been spoiled. Mrs. Wilcox spoiled you. No one has ever told what you are--muddled, criminally muddled. Men like you use repentance as a blind, so don't repent. Only say to yourself, 'What Helen has done, I've done.'"
"The two cases are different," Henry stammered. His real retort was not quite ready. His brain was still in a whirl, and he wanted a little longer. "In what way different? You have betrayed Mrs. Wilcox, Helen only herself. You remain in society, Helen can't. You have had only pleasure, she may die. You have the insolence to talk to me of differences, Henry?"
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