Opposition in Howards End

I enjoyed this first book, especially Forster’s attention to gender and the woman’s viewpoint. Modernism was taking form. When Mrs. Wilcox dies, Forster emphasizes that her death represents the death of the Victorian ideal of a woman. “London had done the mischief, said others. She had been a kind lady; her grandmother had been kind, too—a plainer person but very kind. Ah, the old sort was dying out!” (Forster 66). We are informed what the “old sort” is in Mr. Wilcox’s description of his wife, which contains the traditional ideals of the Victorian woman. In other places, Forster shows the main themes of Modernism. With Mr. Bast, he shows the issues of undefined class. “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 civilizations of the past, he would have had a definite status (35). The ideas of Modernism and traditional views are in opposition like the two families of Howards End.

The Wilcoxes and the Schlegels are depicted as opposing viewpoints that in the end are united by Margaret Schlegel’s marriage to Henry Wilcox and her subsequent conquering him. However, it is not just a comparison in people but in households. The Schlegel sisters’ household, Wickham Place, is characterized as feminine. Tibby is there, but he said to be feminine. He was raised by Helen and Margaret, without a male figure. Tibby seems similar to Forster in this aspect, since as Martin and Piggford point out, Forster was raised by women and “his overprotective mother remained a strong influence on him until her death in 1945” (Martin 11). Wickham Place is filled with intelligent and liberal people. Often, the Schlegels have artists over to their house, the type of people Mrs. Wilcox does not like.

We can clearly see the transitional phase that Forster was living in. On one hand, the Schlegel sisters are independent and intelligent women, a far cry from the traditional Victorian ideal of the domestic angel. However, on the other hand both women are taken by the masculine qualities that the Wilcoxes represent. After Helen returns from Howards End, Forster describes her love for the Wilcox family and how they are different from her.

She had liked giving into Mr. Wilcox, or Evie, or Charles; she had liked being told that her notions of life were sheltered or academic; that Equality was nonsense, Vote for Women nonsense, Socialism nonsense, Art and Literature, except conducive to strengthening the character, nonsense. One by one the Schlegel fetishes had been overthrown, and, though professing to defend them, she had rejoiced. (Forster 19).

Helen gladly accepts all her notions as an intelligent and independent woman being taken away. Other than this, we glimpse into the Wilcoxes’ views as being completely opposite of what the Schlegels’ modernist views. Margaret also appears to accept being taken out of her views into the world of the Wilcox family’s views. When Margaret asks Henry to hire Leonard Bast, she does it with her influence.

It was the reward of her tact and devotion through the day. Now she understood why some women prefer influence to rights. Mrs. Plynlimmon, when condemning suffragettes, had said: “The woman who can’t influence her husband to vote the way she wants ought to be ashamed of herself.” Margaret had winced, but she was influencing Henry now and though pleased at her little victor, she knew that she had won it by the methods of the harem. (165)

Margaret, here and several other places, gives into the views of the Wilcoxes and of those that her ideals opposed when she was an independent woman.

However, these oppositions are unified at the end by Margaret’s ability to bring together pregnant Helen, Henry, and herself at Howards End. Elizabeth Langland says, “the resolution of the novel where the value of connection, represented by the presence of Henry and Helen at Howards End, is enacted in the plot by Margaret’s conquest of Henry” (447). This connection unifies two people who are in opposition to one another since Margaret’s marriage to Henry, and it is also a unification of ideas.

Defining Modernism

Modernism took place in the early twentieth century. The transition period was 188-1910, which Bonnie Kime Scott considers important, and the main period is from 1910-1940 (Kime 2007, 12). Modernism is the movement away from the traditional forms in order to express the changing way of life. Pericles Lewis says,“the word refers to the tendency of the early twentieth century to break away from traditional verse forms, narrative techniques, and generic conventions in order to seek new methods of representation appropriate to life in an urban, industrial, mass-oriented age” (XVII). Modernists were looking for a new way of expressing themselves through their art, whether it is painting, theater, or literature. They did not completely discount the traditional, but instead, wanted to find ways to express the changing ideas of the twentieth century. According to Pericles, changes in style included the movement in poetry to free verse, the movement in art to abstract representation, and the taking down of the fourth wall in theater (3). Christopher Reed says that modernism brought about the avant-garde, and the modernist avant-garde was in opposition to the home (2). Also, Modernism moved away from the idea as art as a function, but rather just be art.

The modernists were responding in many ways to the changes around them, or as Lewis says, “to display what was distinctively modern about the times in which they were living” (11). New technological innovations changed the lives of many people. Due to the rail system, there was a standardization of time. It seems that the superimposed nature of time on hourly basis can begin to push people away from a leisurely life to a more scheduled and rigid lifestyle. The industrial revolution shifted the population to the cities rather than the country. Also, the empire building of all the European, and later America, would be in the background of the modernists’ minds. According to Lewis, modernists’ political views were varied, but many tended toward the extreme (16).

Less recent events such as the American and French revolutions’ ideas of liberalism influenced the modernists’ view of politics. Even the Russian Revolution of 1917, which was poorly planned and eventually all reforms fell to the wayside, had an effect on the political mindset of the modernist. Lewis says that world wars and disastrous attempts at liberalism made the modernist rebel against liberalism (12).

Bloomsbury modernism was in line with the mainstream ideas of modernism. Reed says that the ideas of the Bloomsbury group were never “outside of the mainstream cultural forms they challenge, but co-exist in a more complicated— less heroic—dynamic strongly inflected by the dominant culture’s effort to neutralize challenges to its authority.

The most interesting part the reading the be the articles on gender, and the movement away from the Victorian ideal of women to a freer and more empowered woman. Bonnie Kime Scott says that though gender in modernism is an issue for both women and men, “women write about it more, perhaps because gender is more imposed upon them, more disqualifying” ( Kime 1990, 3). Women at the time were still outsiders, and their work then was considered with much less merit. Now however, one of the most well known modernist (at least to me) is a woman, Virginia Woolf.

On a side note, the mention of Sylvia Beach reminded me of my trip to Paris to the new Shakespeare and Company bookstore which was opened under the same name and same principles after her bookstore was closed. It made find the whole article a little bit more interesting.

(below: writer's nook in the new Shakespeare and company bookstore).