Fools Rush In

Where Angels Fear to Tread – E.M. Forster (1905)

This is the first novel by the British writer famous for Howards End. The text is smooth and short, readable and enjoyable. The linear plot is easy to follow due to its simplicity and the limited number of characters. It’s even slighter than feather-like A Room with a View but it creates a sweet little story of remarkable effectiveness and dramatic pathos, especially at the end.

It is set in the fictitious village of Monteriano, supposedly inspired by the real life San Gimignano, a small walled medieval hill town in the province of Siena. During this Tuscan idyll with her young friend and travel companion Caroline Abbott, widow Lilia Herriton falls in love with Gino, a handsome Italian man much younger than her. Lilia decides to extend her stay. Furious, the family of her deceased husband sends Philip, Lilia's brother-in-law, to Italy to prevent the woman from committing a folly by marrying an Italian barbarian, but Philip arrives too late.

I will stop recounting the plot, since I hate spoilers. Forster didn't have a lot of arrows in his quiver but he had a genuine ability to surprise us readers, a talent I enjoy in a writer. He also likes epigrammatic advice that will resonate with readers who read for suggestions on how to soldier on, muddle through, keeping yer chin up:

Society is invincible—to a certain degree. But your real life is your own, and nothing can touch it. There is no power on earth that can prevent your criticizing and despising mediocrity—nothing that can stop you retreating into splendour and beauty—into the thoughts and beliefs that make the real life—the real you.

Pretty big claims there! Nothing can touch my real life, which is my own. Not obligations to friends and family? Not money pressures? Not chronic pain or living in a town or house we dislike? Not a hurricane? Not the severity of a judge? Not a job we have to drag ourselves to? Nothing can stop us from setting our own opinions, controlling our own impulses, identifying our own likes and dislikes and thus not letting other people push us around. Great, if true. If we really could dispute our beliefs that cause us to experience anger, depression, and anxiety, we would face the fact that it’s we ourselves inflicting our goofy feelings and opinions on ourselves. 

Beyond the surprises and suggestions, it also presents many elements important to the author. In a clash of cultures like in Howards End, we have two world views, two types of people whose attitudes and orientations oppose each other and both sides are roasted by the author. His gentle irony examines English rigidity, conformity, hypocrisy, a society based on keeping up appearances, stony cold and overly concerned about good manners. Forster once observed the English as having “well-developed bodies, fairly developed minds and undeveloped hearts.” Italians are seen as acting out of pure instinct for passion and fun, more alive because they are supposedly still linked to natural desires and not forced to act per social protocols. One wonders if Forster was parodying stereotyping behavior, so black and white is representation of the Italians.

For various reasons I think this novel is not often read. Some readers may be put off by Forster’s tone which blows alternately serious and facetious. Ditto with the writer's reluctance to decide which side to plump down on, English moralism or Italian spontaneity. For readers that have to like characters, well, it’s hard to respect the two principal players. Philip sits on the sidelines of life, not taking its enjoyments or sorrow to heart, saying “Miss Abbott, don't worry over me. Some people are born not to do things. I'm one of them.” And Lilia tries our patience for two reasons. One she dumps her daughter Irma on relatives to go visit Italy. And she’s foolish enough to enter one of life’s supreme challenges – an international marriage in which the partners don’t speak each other’s language – without serious consideration.