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.”