Forster’s Modernism: Modes and Methods

I am able to form connections based on personal or educational experience, so I continue to attempt a connection with the ideas of modernism and its notions as they are portrayed through literature. That said, I was driving home the other day and I could not stop thinking about Henrik Ibsen’s two plays, Brand (and Hedda Gabler) because of some of the descriptive passages I had been reading in Howard’s End. The contrast of colors, as both writers conveyed vivid scenery descriptions, helped lead to a nature of truth through modern tragedy. Brand, for example, used images (specific to settings) of black and white and images of shadows throughout this piece that grappled tragically with love, morality, and religion motifs. In the play’s final act and scene, “A storm is gathering …[b]lack peaks are visible here and there; then they are veiled again in mist” (Meyer 149). These images and lack of color were devices that would better construe the author’s intent. This play, published in 1865, was premature to really establish a true connection to modernism, unfortunately. Yet, I believe it is still allowing me a better insight to Forster as a whole—as he, too, dealt with the similar central themes (although differing outcomes transpire because of the time and writers’ perspectives) and used similar device to establish meaning for his reader. Forster’s lower class Londoner paints a dim picture as his, “…flat is dull as well as stuffy” (38). The exterior setting of this “flat” is not portrayed any brighter: “A block of flats, constructed with extreme cheapness, towered on either hand. Farther down the road…an old house was being demolished to accommodate another pair” (36). Later, we see London, “as a tract of quivering grey” (79). Ibsen and Forster allow me to witness their seemingly tragic truths through setting. Further, Forster permits me to observe connection through disconnection.


“Only connect” is wallpapered behind our blogging list directory for this class. I think this excerpt, taken from E.M. Forster’s 1910 novel, is a central theme for this course as we are to make connections with the works as they correlate to modernism and possibly to our larger graduate scope. Howard’s End, then, is an appropriate place to begin. Although harshly criticized by his contemporaries, the novel serves as a beginning (most certainly my beginning, anyway) to understanding and visualizing high modernism’s start from Forster’s disconcerted perspective of his ever-altering England. Between Forster’s heavily descriptive narrative and the essay, “Through Modernity: Forster’s Flux,” I came to see themes, and possibly a central theme, more clearly. I also gleaned ideas of Forster’s literary stance and form through the essays.


“He has recorded too much too literally,” asserted his modernist companion, Virginia Woolf (392). Yet, had it not been for his keen and literal observations, his readers of today would have been less aware of Forster’s personal interpretation of his changing society. “Mr. Forster is extremely susceptible to the influence of his time” (392) Had he not been vulnerable, we may not have gotten such a clear picture of the class structures and their divisions of people, places, and moral positions. It is Forster’s stark realism that brings his reader of any era and any location to better understand his. Albeit the author seems literal and descriptive in some places and symbolic and brief in others and may seem to “…lack force,” but his realistic description of place and careful use of symbolism, it seems, could be Forster’s largest literary device (394). It is with these descriptions of Howard’s End and its wych elm, for example, that we establish a sense of “home” for England. For Forster, it seems that modernism’s mechanics disconnected social classes even more than in the past. It changed morality and ethics as technology and medicine advanced. The author’s attitude adopted a form that was seen as “lack[ing] fusion” (394). It may be true that the disjointing form separates him from his literary counterparts, such as James Joyce because he does not write in stream of consciousness, but it is disputed that the novel’s form “…‘seeks to catalogue and question the chief ideological assumptions that govern modernist speech’ and that it is a meditation on modernism at large” (Thacker 48). It is this very form that makes him an artist of his time even though it may not have been received as such in 1910.


Through Forster’s personal journey of disconnection with his society, we are transported into three different places, three different homes, three different classes, and three different families. Through Modernity: Forster’s Flux explains that the description of places and people allows the reader to see that there is a clear division of these people and places, but it is not simply the disconnection that allows us to connect literally and figuratively. The essay “…explores the diverse geographies depicted in the novel and interprets the key theme of connection in a manner that differs from the orthodox by stressing the idea of spatial connections” (Thacker 46). It is the movement through the novel that establishes disconnection between people and places at first and forms an unconventional connection at its conclusion. We begin and end with Howard’s End and the wych-elm tree establishing a connection with Forster’s notion of home and idea of identity and what England’s identity should be—rural, clean, and untouched by urban/suburban sprawl. It is here we meet the wealthy English Wilcox family. We travel to the German Schlegel family’s home, Wickham Place, in suburban London and eventually to the underprivileged English Bast’s “Block B” flat. Through modern transport the three families intertwine and encroach upon each place throughout the novel. The German Schlegels and underprivileged Basts all visit Howard’s End more so then any other place in the novel. It is also interesting to note that the Schlegels and (indirectly) the Basts end up calling Howard’s End home more so then the original Wilcox inhabitants. Henry Wilcox, at the end, seems to be more of a fixture then a figure in his home. He is heard as “weary” when attempting to please everyone (241). For Margaret, Henry “fade[s] away as reality emerge[s]” (235). This establishes the sense of convergence of places and classes, which corrupts Forster’s vision of England as the age of modernization seeps forth.