Howards End - refelections by a Quaker Feminist

The January 1910 United Kingdom general election was held from 15 January to 10 February 1910. The government called the election in the midst of a constitutional crisis caused by the rejection of the People's Budget by the House of Lords, in order to get a mandate to pass the budget.
The election produced a hung parliament, with the Conservative Party led by Arthur Balfour and their Liberal Unionist allies receiving the largest number of votes, but the Liberals led by H. H. Asquith winning the largest number of seats, returning two more MPs than the Conservatives. Asquith formed a government with the support of the Irish Parliamentary Party, led by John Redmond. Another election was soon held in December.
The Labour Party, led by Arthur Henderson, continued to gain strength, going from 29 seats to 40.

Labour Party formed 1900
Worker's Education Association formed 1903
Women's Suffrage 1918


Howard's End published in 1910


Howards End is a very complex and erudite novel which still has implications for readers of the present day.  E.M.Forster was a Cambridge Classics Scholar  and Gay. He is acknowledged to have an empathic understanding of women in his generation.

I can best record my comments by going through the characters.

First the Shlegels , Margaret  who becomes a substitute mother to her two younger siblings at 8 years old. She has a mature practicality, is attractive but not too attractive to attract unwelcome male admirers and she is fair minded. Helen, impetuous, principled, highly strung and Tibby who is possibly on the autistic scale, who is other worldly and receded to Oxford cloisters shunning social company and studying Chinese.

Henry Wilcox- clever, a born organiser of military precision and successful business man who builds an empire throughout the course of the book. He is generous to his family and friends and is a good host.

Mrs Ruth Wilcox - first wife of Henry who has inherited Howards End from her family and as the novel progresses has an almost mystical love of the house and its vicinity and ecological surroundings, shared by the rather puzzling relationship of her retainer who decides to furnish the house without permission.   It can be seen in Forster's biography that he had a love for a house in a similar way which he  shared with his single mother after his father died until the lease ran out and they were forced to move.

Question?

Does this rather mystical regard for the countryside so beautifully described by Forster, and is such a pleasure to the reader hark back to the pantheism of Romantic Poetry? The retainer, the strange Miss Avery,is  both mystical and magical with the pagan wisdom of people connected to the land?

Ruth Wilcox is said to come from Quaker stock, She has Grace and deftly disarms conflict at Howards End when Helen and her second son become romantically involved briefly. This is typically Quaker.  The Chinese were first mediators and Quakers were the second.  We can see her listening in London when she is invited to lunch by Margaret to meet her London cultured set and that she does not contribute to debate but sees both sides. It is the role of the mediator to hold opposing views in the mind without judgement. We are told she lives by ' doing no harm' ., Many Quakersin the past and  today live by this mantra.

 But Quakers were also great industrialists and Bankers in this period, ( Cadbury, Fry, Fox, Lloyds. (NB Quaker business practice is still practiced to this day eg a moderate profit and a fixed price,  no haggling) Cadbury's were notable for building the Bourneville Estate and treating their employees with dignity, respect and a living wage. They also provide for recreation for their employees.

Quaker women have always been encouraged to be radical from the earliest times.  Elizabeth Fry for instance reformed the prison system, but there were other Quaker women , radical, forceful and fighting for social change. Quakers did own slaves but other Quakers strove to help the abolition of slavery and opened their Meeting Houses to all types of radical thinkers including the women in the suffrage debate. Modern Quaker's have committed to off setting Climate change and engage in influencing public opinion towards ecological preservation continuing to try to think radically of the problems today.

Ruth is the custodian of  a spiritual essence of Howards End and passes it to a worthy a spiritual owner on her death. Henry does not acquiesce to his deceased wife's wishes but fate takes a hand, Henry's personality receives a blow caused by his self inflicted shame of his eldest son's imprisonment, Margaret's compassion to forgive both her sister's immaturity and her Husband's obstinacy makes her the rightful mistress of Howards End.

The Wilcox children- they are the worst examples of the Nouveau Riches. They applaud the despicable motorcar, they are rude to servants.  Evie sends a wedding present back because Miss Avery , is  a farm worker whom she considers  to be socially below her. They love money and love spending it and never have enough although they are given ample allowances.

The Houses- Each house seems to have a character of its own, the Schlegel's house is to be pulled down  ' Houses have a way or dying..' p249 Ch 31, the house in Shropshire, Leonard's house, Henry's town house, the new house he intends to build are all given personalities in the context of the invading sprawl of commerce. But of course, the solid, characterful house of Howards End is the centre of the novel. It holds an intrinsic beauty which his first wife and then his second wife appreciated, p214 ch24 ',,,  from the window was an English tree. no report had prepared her for its peculiar  glory.....their message was not of eternity , but of hope on this side of the grave. As she stood as the one, gazing at the other, truer relationships had gleamed.'  Henry would never understand, he does not have the language to understand and to be honest Margaret doesn't understand commercial language. Henry is trade but the women are heiresses, This highlights the class war of the novel together with the conflict between culture and commerce. But Margaret is the winner.

Leonard Bass - is married to Jacky ( who is a prostitute ) out of convenience and possibly guilt.  Leonard has a sensitivity towards the arts. He is trying to self educate himself.  He is a protege of  Margaret and Helen.  Both think him attractive. Margaret sees him as a real man, and Helen has a baby by him.

Page ch 27  ' there's a nightmare of a theory that says a special race is being born ...  the "I" had you heard of that?"  This is a different 'I', it is possibly Nietzsche. 'I'  previously in the novel the 'I' and the 'me' is discussed in relation to Leonard. Like Leonard I have not studied the German philosopher Nietzsche  but Helen is German. " Me " in Mead;s philosophy stands for the cultured side of the personality. Both the "I" and the "me" should be in balance according to Mead. However in balance Nietzsche philosophy is more likely.https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Friedrich_Nietzsche

Margaret and Helen have this philosophy of their own.  When Leonard describes his walk through the night , Margaret discuss the 'I' and the 'me' in relation to Leonard's personality.  

Nietzsche philosophy was as far as I can understand is a plea for authenticity, During this period his philosophy was canbalised by his sister Elisabeth Forster-Nietzche https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Elisabeth_F%C3%B6rster-Nietzsche

Is this a coincidence that Forster name is connected with  -Nietzche?

Later scholars revived the original philosophy in the 1960's

 
Helen's animosity towards the Wilcox's is perhaps rather out of proportion, at least by modern standards in that it  is said there is just one kiss ( or possibly more) and then she is shunned and becomes  a woman scorned by a man, who is her social inferior  and in her view of the family's authenticity humiliates her total philosophy of life. Is Henry Wilcox one of the nightmare race in her opinion.She then rages against the male gender except for Leonard who she champions and tries social engineering by asking Tibby to give him money.  It is only after she has a (lesbian?) relationship with an Anglicized Italian women in Germany that her anger assuages.

Leonard - is on the edge of poverty, barely scratching a living as a wage slave. Jacky is another nail in his coffin for the reader, she is one of the poor, ignorantly steeped  in her 'bestiality,' which the middle-classes do not care to think about. and her fate is never described.

But middle class women before the advent of Marie Stopes (1921) willingly turned a blind eye to the Jackies of the world to relieve the burden of childbirth.

Henry's indiscretion may not of worried Ruth, and Margaret, forgave again.

Leonard is a condemned man.  He has ideas above his station, he should return to the plough, know his place.  Poor Leonard reared in a family who disown him as an embarrassment and with a crushing conscience seeks out Helen and to his eyes his responsibility in remorse, and meets his death.

The Commentator of the novel. - This is another character in my opinion.  Is it the voice of the author? or is it the voice of the establishment, in these turbulent times? Or is it a proponant of someone interested in a model for society based on Nietzsche philosophy?

Leonard's Chapter no.41 we are told that remorse is not among the eternal verities,https://www.psychologytoday.com/us/blog/the-consciousness-question/201412/the-eternal-verities

But the commentator does not think that Leonard with his remorse and changed by it is a 'good man', if he were a better man.... etc, the commentator has a poor opinion of Leonard.

Then ' In Hilton p340  '... he stepped out into the country. Here men had been up since dawn. Their hours were ruled not by a London office but by the movements of the crops and the sun..... they are England's hope..... they can still throw back to a nobler stock, and breed yeomen.'

I note the word  they , what nationality is Forster?

The Schleger Women

Which modern feminist wouldn't like to be like Margaret and Helen. They are both already liberated.
They are cosmopolitan
They are independently and financially  secure.
They are both free thinkers
They are cultured and educated.
There is no patriarchal figure in their family nor friends.
They respect and connect with the people they meet.
They believe in helping the poor, in a rather ineffective way "raising them up"

Margaret has the choices and the abilities to challenge and leave her husband Henry Wilcox when he displays double sexual standards and a lack of compassion towards herself and her sister because she has financial security to do so.

And yet she possesses spiritual depth, liberality, and understanding of men to be able to love romantically but also to love spiritually, to have the gift of deep compassion for human psychology and individual failings.  ( Is this the sensibility of a homosexual man? )Is she German aristocrat?

She keeps her integrity by refusing Henry's money but accepting Mrs Ruth Wilcox's house.

Helen can have a baby and live on an independent income, without need for childcare, employment which hinders motherhood, or the give and take of marriage (to a man or a woman). She does not have to work, then make a meal, do the housework, put the children to bed and then get ready for work the next day. Nor be a single mother on benefits.

The novel's language is benign, psychologically aware, full of wonderful prose, philosophically and spiritually deeply moving and a message from the past to the future. It speaks to the eduvcated middle classes. I keep in mind that Forster invented these characters which is masterful. But it is my opinion it disguises a view and philosophy which will end in war.

I include a man's opinion.https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2014/aug/18/howards-end-em-forster-classic


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Howards End inspired this poem

Wrong

Wrong how that word
reverberates, what was
wrong,who was wrong.
The world revolves on
perceptions of right and
wrong but be strong.
Remember that there
might be different views.


What is wrong with you!

you hear them say
when people disagree
but free their imagination
and another aspect
will they see,

When different world views collide,
keep inside
a respectful attitude.
different life experiences preclude
instant understandings.




Zoe Ainsworth Grigg holds a  Diploma in Psychoanalytic Psychology, Certificate in Person Centred Art Therapy and also studied feminist literature as part of a BA degree in Humanities.  www.zoeainsworthgriggbooks.com

Madame Bovary

The first thing to say is that - Flaubert is not intentionally a feminist writer, however, he has created a female character in which we can learn of feminist issues.

Emma ( Madame Bovary) marries a rural doctor, Charles, and they live in a provincial part of the France. From the beginning of the marriage we can see an almost existential conflict between art and science but neither of them has had access to very good education and perhaps they both have average intelligence. Charles is a "run of the mill", unimaginative Doctor but carries out routine problems successfully and comes unstuck when he tries to experiment on a patient. Emma has an artistic temperament, playing the piano and at first inventing ways to please Charles hoping in return he will give words of love and understanding, praise and companionship.  But Charles has no imagination and doesn't understand the theatre when they go and although he loves her unconditionally, it is a love of a paper shadow of who Emma is.

Emma has no opportunities, to perhaps perform at the piano or create in any other way but domestically.  The apothecary suggests that in the future women will teach their offspring, but for now Emma is trapped in a boring marriage in which women at that period in history are not allowed to divorce and do not bond with their babies.  She is dependent on her husband's economic support and is emotionally stultified.

She glimpses another world at a ball and she has conversations about limited artistic journals with Leon, but at that stage remains loyal and moral. Then a sexual predator meets her and admires her beauty and cunningly seduces her from boredom. Rudolph is handsome wears expensive clothes , and owns expensive possessions. She is reminded of the men she met at the ball and as he gives her protestations of love she is naive and psychologically vulnerable to his advances. He becomes the love of her life, her ideal man and she falls hook , line and sinker.

When the eventual rejection from Rudolfe comes, it is a cruel and humiliating blow to her psyche and totally fragments and shatters her ego. She has a manic depressive breakdown spending days in bed. We can imagine a rural doctor not knowing psychiatry and she cannot tell him the reasons because she has been corrupted into and by deceit.  She already knows there is no understanding from Charles, they are two separate people. She is alone and bereft.

As we read with horror as she descends into metal illness, both excessive sexual appetite and spending excessively are symptoms of a manic depressive illness, she seems to have no redeeming quality, even to herself, nothing we can empathise with. She has another fling with Leon but it is purely sexual and extreme, even he becomes frightened of her. She eventually commits suicide which is how many manic depressive illnesses end.

The question for me is why Flaubert created this female character?  Is she Flaubert's alter ego and it is only through this element that he can describe his own mental illness?  Given the century it is possible he suffered in silence. He had few friends accept George Sands who was a feminist. He possessed an artistic sensibility which is evident in his descriptions of the natural world and of rural people and life.

We know that Flaubert had a breakdown at eighteen. Did Flaubert have a crushing love or sexual humiliation at the age of eighteen something so terrible to his psyche that he could not speak of it? Was it a woman or perhaps a man?

He produced an almost clinical description of a person with a mental illness and was Charles a characterisation of the Doctors Flaubert might have met in real life?

It is very tempting to read Emma's personality as being at fault, and she is not likeable as indeed we shy away from mental illness in the present day, but if we see her as a victim and perhaps also that the artist author who created her as a victim too, then we will get a real sense of the feminist perspective.  It is not all about the patriarchal society although that is always a factor, but also the limitations we have been dealt in our lives and how we cope.

Zoe Ainsworth Grigg holds a  Diploma in Psychoanalytic Psychology, Certificate in Person Centred Art Therapy and also studied feminist literature as part of a BA degree in Hiumainities.  www.zoeainsworthgriggbooks.com