Movin' On Up

Property and the urban/rural binary function as markers of class and class mobility in both Howards End and The Way We Live Now.  In TWWLN, the weight of one’s class position rests firmly in the country estate that comes with a title.  However, as the fate of Georgina Longestaffe demonstrates, the city becomes all-meaningful in maintaining one’s position—or, for Melmotte, in attempting to surpass one’s position.  Without the city, there are no means for making connections, both marital and financial.  Still, in TWWLN, the distinct separation between the rural and urban continues and the impossibility of certain characters to cross that boundary successfully presents in Ruby Ruggles and Felix Carbury.

Moving ahead half a century, in Howards End, the lines between the rural and urban have already begun to meld.  The countryside, after all, is now a quick jaunt by the fully-established and regular train service.  Further, though, the border between country and city now vanishes:  “‘All the same, London’s creeping.’  [Helen] pointed over the meadow—over eight or nine meadows, but at the end of them was a red rust” (289; ch. 44).  No, the city’s takeover is not accomplished quickly—the city “creeps” like the ivy slowly overtaking Howards End.  This slow emigration of cityscape into country, in fact, happens slowly enough that the threat may not even be noticeable to those less mindful of such matters than the Schlegels.  And as the narrator suggests, this creeping city changes the vibrancy of the landscape into “rust.”

As Cristy also notes, Margaret, beholden like Mrs. Wilcox to the past, hopes against this shift:  “Because a thing is going strong now, it need not go strong for ever” (290; ch. 44).  But, of course, Margaret hopes from her bourgeois position.  She does not know that, as Leonard Bast has told Helen, the “shameful” attitude of the current lower class toward its past as it has moved toward its own center of hope:  urban mobility (202; ch. 27).  In Leonard’s shame concerning his grandparents’ position as “agricultural laborers and that sort,” Forster underscores the city’s promise to both the lower and middle classes the opportunity to escape an imposed status.  In the age of industry, capital, speculation, and automated motion, the city now spreads its arms wider and wider to catch any who would wish to advance.