Vital disconnection in Howards End

Twentieth Century Literature, Spring, 2005 by Leslie White

For most of the novel, Margaret's actions instantiate the conflicted idealism discernible in Forster's evolving aesthetic values. Margaret rejects elitist remove and the valorizing of Schlegelian values even as she elevates those responsive to the unseen above those who aren't: "Don't brood too much on the superiority of the unseen to the seen," she admonishes Helen. "It's true, but to brood on it is medieval. Our business is not to contrast the two, but to reconcile them" (102). Margaret knows that the Wilcoxes are not "her sort," that they "were often suspicious and stupid" and possessed virtues of the "second rank" (101-02), yet she is often stimulated by contact with them. Unlike Helen, who very nearly comes to think of Wilcoxes as evil, Margaret, in this sense Arnoldian, sees the amelioration of Wilcox deficiencies as essential for the survival and advancement of aesthetic and spiritual values. But what role is the artist or the person of culture ("minor artist," "appreciator") to take in an effort to accommodate these disparate orientations? In "The Duty of Society to the Artist," "Does Culture Matter?" and "Art for Art's Sake," the artist is a provocateur producing his work at a comfortable remove and an agitator as well, whose duty it is "not to fit in" (Two Cheers 98). He is neither elitist nor deliberately radical, but one who "does not consider too anxiously what his relations with society may be, for he is aware of something more important than that--namely, the invitation to invent, to create order, and he believes he will be better placed for doing this if he attempts detachment" (93). For both creator and "minor artist," Forster favors detachment over "idiosyncrasy and waywardness" not only because it facilitates invention but, as significantly, it is a way to avoid the "mateyness" that is potentially threatening to the "creative impulse." Broadly in the Schlegel-Wilcox association and particularly in the Margaret-Henry relationship, Forster anticipates the potentially risky intimacy between artist and "average citizen" that he warns of in "Art for Art's Sake." Margaret is the curious seeker who "hopes to risk things all her life" (67), bent on engaging the world's variety while working to heal its divisions. But her well-intentioned quest for connection is perverse, and ultimately injurious. Finally, she is driven too much by the "missionary spirit," and her efforts to that end effectively amount to pandering, or "mateyness."

When Margaret announces to Helen that she will marry Henry, justifying her decision in a language of flat rationality, Helen is shocked nearly into silence; at this point in the narrative, the central consciousness shifts briefly from Margaret to Helen, who implores her sister not to go forward with her plans and is able only to murmur "Don't" and "One would lose something" (159). She views Margaret's "well considered, well thought out" (158) decision as deeply compromising, a betrayal of the values the sisters have inherited from their father and cultivated all their lives. As Alan Wilde remarks of Margaret,