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.