The Ghost of Mrs. Wilcox and the Haunting of Margaret Schlegel

Because I read Delmar's paper before I read the novel, his perspective on Margaret has colored the text for me. Delmar notes that Margaret serves as a kind of replacement for Mrs. Wilcox, the new Ruth if you will. Henry's children worry about Margaret's potential desire to take Howards End, which is the Wilcox family's last connection to Ruth. Even though Mrs. Wilcox does not survive the novel, it is her symbolic nature of an agrarian England gone by due to the rise of industrial capitalism that seems to be the ideal to which Henry and Margaret return to at Howards End with London in the distance. Because Mrs. Wilcox bequeathed Howards End to Margaret, the reader is meant to recognize their similarity in character. Despite the fact that Margaret does attempt to distance herself from Mrs. Wilcox's burden (i.e. Henry's affair with the vulgar Jacky), the affair is one that affects her and Henry's relationship even though the affair began during his marriage to Ruth. Margaret is much more active than Ruth as she leaps in and out of cars and goes against the wishes of those who wish to control her; however, Howards End keeps calling to her and through it, Ruth's ghost. If Ruth is the agrarian idyllic past that Margaret is becoming the caretaker of, then Henry is capitalism confronting its own failings in its treatment of humanity. Henry must deal with his many indiscretions, the loss of his wife, and Margaret’s new role in his life. The novel ends with the capitalist’s mind changed, the new life of Helen’s baby, and the promise of a new fertile crop. In order for there to be a return to and a renewal of life, the capitalist must leave his ways behind. Life is nurtured in the realm of the Ruth, acting as a modern goddess of the fields and fertility and the project of capitalism has been passed onto the younger generation. More than ever, the novel seems to close in a past that never existed, one bought by capitalism, but protected from its evils..

The New Angel of the House: An Un-Academic Post of Anger

Margaret perplexes, vexes, enchants, disgusts, and impresses me. As a single woman she lived a life much like us academics, the life of the mind. In this life, she is both a picture of the Victorian New Woman and impressive philosopher. I even like her politics for the most part.
 But then Henry comes along. Henry. Hateful Henry. It seems that he represents a new kind of capitalistic manhood and that Margaret, under his romantic influence, is the angel of the house. While she resists his beliefs for the most part once they get engaged and married, she is also heavily influenced by him and hopes that she will be able to make him a better man.
Well, that sounds awfully familiar. However, she is really rather ineffective. Henry is nearly immovable. In addition, it's difficult for me to get over the red haze under which I see Margaret responding to Henry's previous indiscretion. "Oh no, Henry. It's fine. That was a different chapter in your life. I only feel bad for Mrs. Wilcox." Vomit.
But if I can get past the retching that Henry/Margaret combination cause all the way up to Charles being sent to prison, I can feel glad that Henry becomes broken. Margaret's role as the angel of the house can actually be fulfilled when Henry becomes a pale, fragile vision of his former self. While it seems that Henry, Margaret, Helen, and the baby are all very happy together, they could not be so if Henry had remained a raging asshole unwilling to change. Unfortunately, this does not lend me to think, "Good for you, Margaret!"

Blog #5: The Character of Margaret Schlegel

There a few aspects of Forster’s plot whose validity people tend to question, but I want to focus on the “love” between Margaret Schlegel and Henry Wilcox. These two characters appear to have very little in common. Henry is a dispassionate, pragmatic capitalist who only cares about money and business, whereas Margaret is an enlightened, mostly idealistic middle class intellectual who values human connection. Henry is also a male chauvinist who opposes women’s suffrage and does not respect their independence, while Margaret seems to be an independent-minded progressive who has “a reputation as an emancipated woman.” So, what inspires their feelings for each other and their desire to marry? Consider how enraptured Margaret is simply by Henry’s proposal. She admits that although she has experienced “love” in the past, her romance with Henry carries a novelty she has never felt before: “Yet she [Margaret] was thrilled with happiness ere she reached her own house. Others had loved her in the past, if one may apply to their brief desires so grave a word, but those others had been ‘ninnies’— . . . And she had “loved,” too, but only so far as the facts of sex demanded: mere yearnings for the masculine, to be dismissed for what they were worth, with a smile” (HE 134). What is going on here? How could a woman like Margaret fall for such a man? After first reading the novel (a few years ago), I recall being quite outraged by Margaret’s “weakness” and “poor judgment” (these are the words I used). Returning to the novel this semester, however, I was actually much less surprised. After all, it turns out that both Margaret and Henry value money, albeit for different reasons (Margaret values it, so that she can experience “the life of the spirit,” or so she says; Henry values it because it gives him power and social standing). Margaret repeatedly affirms the necessity of money and claims that to do otherwise in her position would amount to hypocrisy. Even if this is true, her attitude toward the poor (what she calls “the abyss”) is disconcerting or, at the very least, disappointing. Indeed, I would venture that a close reading of Margaret would show that she is a problematic character. I am glad that she eventually puts Henry in his place but this, in my view, is too little, too late. Critics have read Margaret’s love for Henry as being internal to her desire to reconcile the contraries of life. I think that this reading is perfectly tenable, but my point here is that it may also simply follow from the kind of character she proves to be.   

Nationalising Classical Music

I was amused by one of the earlier scenes in Howards End - the orchestral concert. In addition to being immensely humorous, this scene provides a metric for determining the cultural status of the listeners. The initial assumption is that the listener has a certain level of privilege already; we see the amount of concern in Leonard Bast after he pays the amount necessary for entrance to the concert. Though the seats are cheap at two shillings, Leonard fears that the cost is higher than the potential benefits. Next, ones response to music reveals something about nationality. For example, Mrs. Munt enjoys "tap[ping] surreptitiously when the tunes come" and is described as "so British, and wanting to tap" (26, 28). The German listeners, on the other hand, remember "all the time that Beethoven is 'echt Deutsch'" and are unable to form responses to the music (27). Further information is given about the Germans; for example, "Frieda, listening to Classical Music, could not respond. Herre Liesecke, too, looked as if wild horses could not make him inattentive" (27). These responses to music, classified through nationality, are suggestive. The British temperament, if we are to take the narrator at his or her word, desires to regulate the physical body in obedience to the rhythm of the music, suggesting a tendency toward regulated action. The German personality considers music an intensely demanding undertaking. Additionally, the capitalization of classical music alludes to the practice of capitalizing nouns in German, but it also suggests that classical music is something of an institution, revealing the amount of cultural capital assigned to it, at least by the German listeners. The Schlegel sisters fall into neither trap. They both are able to engage with the music on both an emotional and intellectual level, suggesting their position as cosmopolitan.

Island discourse in Howards End

Throughout the semester I have been interested in the intersection between imperialism, colonization, and class status. In Felix Holt Harold Transome builds his fortune in a colonial capacity. In The Way We Live Now there are elements of a budding neoliberal transnationalism that sustains multinational corporations, along with repeated references to the imperial periphery during Melmotte’s geopolitical dinner event. In Howards End, the obvious example of a colonial “absent presence,” or a constitutive outside, takes shape in Paul, the youngest of the Wilcox family who goes off to Nigeria to assist with his father’s rubber business.

I’d like to go in a different direction for this final blog post, though, and look at how imperialism structures an already gendered and classed discourse on economy. Specifically, I’d like to examine Margaret’s early discourse on political economy, a discourse that employs a potent island metaphor. I’ll argue that this rhetoric underscores not only the imperial outside of the English economy, but that it also spatializes money. In other words, Margaret’s discourse on economics manifests the close connection between economic class and spatial location.

Talking with Mrs. Munt, Margaret delivers a speech tantamount to a tirade against socioeconomic class privilege. She says, "'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'" (57). Margaret’s observation implies two ideas. First, it implicates British colonization in the accumulation of capital. While all of the colonies clearly weren’t islands—India and Africa immediately come to mind—the colonies might be said to exhibit a quality of islandness. In other words, colonial spaces are interpellated as “over there,” an insular bounded space that is separate from the metropole. Second, Margaret draws attention to the fact that a stable income has everything to do with how one (literally) “grounds” his or her every day life. If someone has the privilege of a certain yearly allowance, then theirs is the prerogative to “forget its very existence.” Money equals stability, both literal and metaphorical. Lack of money, on the other hand, induces a “tottering,” or a precarious positioning of life. This notion is embodied by Leonard Bast.

Forster underscores this idea through his repetition of the island metaphor. Margaret also tells Mrs. Munt, "‘But Helen and I, we ought to remember, when we are tempted to criticize 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'" (57). In this instance, the island metaphor is employed to designate a vertical power relationship. Being on top of their monetary “islands,” Margaret and Helen occupy a plane of experience that is always already above that of the poor. They are not included among those “down below the surface of the sea.” Being “islanded,” as it were, implies mobility: the rich have the privilege to “escape” any and all unpleasant social relations. This mobility is only possible due to occupying a financial island. Therefore, Forster spatializes money, implying simultaneously that (1) money stems from colonial island spaces, and (2) this flow of finances enables travel, movement, and mobility.

Margaret gestures toward a more enlightened consciousness when she laments, “‘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'" (57). Again, having money is tied to an experience of stability—nobody in Margaret and Helen’s position is worried about “keep[ing] their feet above the waves.” (The narrator also layers his perspective on islands on page 131, referring to a stable income as “the golden island”).

Lastly, the metaphorization of money into an island suggests the typical upper-class dismissal of structural privilege. Margaret describes her and her sister’s 600-pounds-a-year income, along with their brother’s slightly higher income, as follows: "'as fast as our pounds crumble away into the sea they are renewed--from the sea, yes, from the sea'"(57). This statement is problematic in the sense that money does not just spring “from the sea.” This discourse, in all its effort to expose the hypocrisy of high class status, only naturalizes the source of income. In this statement, the various types of dehumanizing exploitative labor performed in the colonies is swept under rug. The sea itself does not renew income; rather, in the metropolitan upper class imagination, the sea and its accompanying islands are naturalized as a removed part of life. Margaret’s critique therefore fails, as her comment on different experiences of reality is literally cut short: "'we forget that below the sea people do want to steal them [umbrellas], and do steal them sometimes, and that what's a joke up here is down there reality--'" (57). In the language of the colonial islands, such a statement unveils and yet ultimately reinforces the vertical hierarchy of power, the difference between money as “a joke” and “[a] reality.”

The Future of the Past: Cosmopolitanism, Nature, and History

While Margaret Schlegel is contemplating Henry’s comfort with an instability and flux of life which she associates with London, Forster’s narrator makes an aside, stating that “under cosmopolitanism, if it comes, we shall receive no more help from the earth. Trees and meadows and mountains will only be a spectacle, and the binding force that they once exercised on character must be entrusted to Love alone. May Love be equal to the task (222)!” For the narrator, the unique natural surroundings of a particular nation which in the past was the prime influence on the individual are losing their power, replaced by large urban centers with a strong international element. The cosmopolitan city, which tends to have more in common with foreign cities than the rural areas of its own nation, is posited here as determining factor in the future of society.

The waning of nature and the nation’s power to shape individuals is reflected by the novel in the fate of Ruth Wilcox and her house at Howards End. Ruth is, early on, depicted as deriving her character and personality from the nature represented by her estate of Howards End, with the narrator noting that Margaret “discerned that Mrs. Wilcox, though a loving wife and mother, had only one passion in her life- her house (73),” identifying Ruth’s attachment to her natural surrounds, by way of her home, as the primary influence on her personality, with her attachment to others (her position as wife, mother) being secondary. More than love, the natural world of Howards End makes Ruth who she is.

This attachment of Ruth’s is easily contrasted in the attitude towards Howards End manifested by the rest of the Wilcox family after Ruth’s death, when it is revealed that Ruth wanted the house to pass to Margaret instead of staying in the Wilcox family. The narrator voices the family’s disbelief, asking “was there to be no compensation for the garage and other improvements that they had made under the assumption that all would be theirs someday (85)?” The Wilcoxes are not bothered by the potential loss of Howards End due to any sentimental attachment to the property, but are instead concerned at the prospect of not gaining their expected return on an investment. The property is thought of by the Wilcoxes in terms of monetary value, far removed from the sense of personal attachment felt by Ruth. The Wilcoxes are less worried about the loss of Howards End itself, and more so with the loss of the house’s monetary value. Unlike Ruth, the rest of the Wilcoxes have little or no identification with the natural world of Howards End.

What is perhaps less obvious, but still operative is what this coming of cosmopolitanism as dramatized by the novel means for the notion of the past. With her connection with the natural world by way of Howards End, Ruth would seem to find her identity, including her class position, given her by her connection with the past. Howards End, a remnant of her heritage, directs Ruth in how to think of herself. Henry, however, would seem to eschew any sort of identification with his past, as is alluded to by his refusal to think about or deal with his involvement with Jacky Bast, would seem to couple his disconnection from nature with a disconnection with the past. While it will be noted that Henry is not himself thoroughly cosmopolitan, in the sense that he tends to identify with a rather aggressive nationalism, his disconnection from the natural world would seem to position him as a sort of quasi-cosmopolitan. This degree of cosmopolitanism would seem accompanied by a disregard for the past.

The question is then: what is the future of the past? If, as is stated in the novel, cosmopolitanism is slowly diminishing the importance of nature to the individual, then what is to become the importance of the past, which is shown as carried in nature, to the individual? It would seem that Howards End, in alluding to a world in which the natural is in the past, no longer as important as it once was, also alludes to a world in which the past itself is increasingly past, diminishing in importance to the individuals occupying an increasingly cosmopolitan world.    

Choosing Between Being an Englishwoman and a Sexual Woman

For my post, I would like to think about how Howards End disrupts the idea proper English womanhood, especially as it relates to female sexuality. We have seen many a pure female this semester—Margaret Hale, Esther Lyon,[1] Hetta Carbury—all of whom our Englishmen were happy to marry in the final pages of their respective novels; however, in many ways the less-than-ideal ladies are more interesting to consider. One striking similarity between two of the fallen women from our texts—Mrs. Winifred Hurtle and Helen Schlegel—is their lack of pure Englishness. Paul Montague cannot marry Mrs. Hurtle because of her unwomanly knowledge of the world, history of violence, and sexualized past. And all of these flaws are very much tied up in her American-ness. Likewise, Forster highlights the split between the Schlegel’s English and German heritage, and, after Helen’s relationship with Leonard and resultant pregnancy, she departs for Germany, and eventually makes plans to reside with Margaret and her child in Munich. While Mrs. Hurtle returns to America at the end of The Way We Live Now, Helen remains in England at Howards End. In spite of all efforts on the part of he Wilcox’s (and society at large), Helen was ultimately not stripped of her Englishness just because she lost her virginity.

After learning of his sister-in-law’s false step, Henry Wilcox refuses to have her stay at Howards End, attempting to control the damage and tidy up the mess of an unmarried woman who is with child in the eyes of society. Knowing Henry’s own sexual history, which he does not see as comparable, Margaret points out Henry’s hypocrisy: “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!” (38.263). Margaret notes the double standard that allows her husband to sew his wild oats, while her sister is supposedly ruined by her sexual encounter. The exact same double standard that Margaret and Helen combat is the understanding that allows Paul Montague to sew his wild oats with Mrs. Hurtle, but not marry her because she is too coarse, instead opting for the proper model of English female virtue, the pure Hetta Carbury.

 

Interestingly, because Helen maintained her innocence prior to her sexual relationship with Leonard (and because of her privileged class positioning), she is largely stripped of blame in causing the event itself (though she is still equally sullied by the results). The narrator notes that “[i]t never occurred to him [Leonard] that Helen was to blame” (41.270) and the guilt over corrupting Helen’s pure womanhood tortures Leonard to his death. However, Helen sees the truth that she was the one who made the decision and guided Leonard: “I tempted him, and I killed him” (44.288). Thus, it is not just Helen who suffers because of the ideal of female chastity, but the man who feels unbearable guilt over ruining that supposed ideal as well. The novel, however, justifies Leonard’s suffering and death as part of a larger struggle, because it allowed for a victory in the war against false ideals: “It was part of the battle against sameness…I can’t have you worrying about Leonard. Don’t drag in the personal when it will not come. Forget him” (44.288). Ultimately, the novel allows for a small place where Helen is neither virgin nor whore, victim or villain, but rather a woman free to make her own choices in life—as we have seen throughout this semester, it is particularly notable that this place of independence was within the bounds of England.

---

[1] Esther is an interesting character in relationship to this conversation thanks to her French mother, but she seems to live up to a certain standard of Englishness throughout Felix Holt.