Howards End

[osprey_archer]

I first read E. M. Forster's Howards End in my senior year of high school (when I wrote a term paper about it), so it was a bit startling to watch the recent miniseries starring Hayley Atwell as Margaret Schlegel and discover that my opinions of the work had shifted significantly. Was the Schlegels' relationship with their lower-middle-class protege Leonard Bast always this condescending?

This side of their relationship was present in the book, but I don't recall finding it so unbearable, and I'm not sure if the difference is because the adaptation is highlighting that quality, or simply that I'm older and less able to forgive Helen Schlegel everything on account of her high spirits and good intentions. Yes, she's so charming, but the way that she drags poor Leonard Bast and his wife Jackie across the countryside to confront Mr. Wilcox after Mr. Wilcox's advice inadvertently leads to Bast ending up unemployed... It's like she didn't stop for a moment to see how humiliating this would be for Leonard Bast, and can't even really see it when her older sister Margaret points it out to her.

But he shouldn't be embarrassed!, Helen insists; he's done nothing wrong! It's Mr. Wilcox who ought to be embarrassed. As if people can just choose whether to feel embarrassed based on whether or not you personally happen to feel that they should.

To be fair I think we are meant to be on Margaret's side of the question - she is after all played by Hayley Atwell - but nonetheless the whole scene gave me secondhand embarrassment for Leonard Bast and Jackie and especially Helen, largely because Helen is the only one who doesn't seem to realize that she has anything to be embarrassed about.

The adaptation also made the odd choice to cast Jackie as a black woman and then never comment on this fact, an omission which became particularly glaring when Leonard is explaining why his family never approved of their relationship and it's all about how she's a woman with a Past. His family... didn't have objections based on racial prejudice? Really? Is this story set in an alternate universe 1910?

There are some lovely costumes and sets in this miniseries, and of course I always enjoy Hayley Atwell, but in the end the secondhand embarrassment is so strong - not just in the aforementioned scene, but in almost any scene involving Leonard Bast - that I couldn't recommend the miniseries unless you have great fortitude for that sort of thing.

Comments

[kore]

Yeah, I think that was there even in the earlier movie (a Merchant & Ivory production, 1992, wow, now I feel Old) -- Helen was Helena Bonham Carter and Emma Thompson was Margaret, which is kind of like Marianne v Elinor. Forster's revolutionary types are nearly always blinkered.

[osprey_archer]

Yes, I watched that one back around the time I read the book! Perhaps Helena Bonham Carter's verve and spunk blinded me to Helen's weaknesses. (Also, IIRC in the 1992 production Helen and Leonard Bast did it in a boat beneath the rippling leaves of a weeping willow - my memory may be embroidering this somewhat - but nonetheless the inclusion of the boat made it far more understandable that they both lost their heads.)

[kore]

No, I think you're right about the boat!

I loved that movie, but I don't think I've rewatched it a lot. I think you're right about Bonham Carter too -- she was so appealing in Room with a View and Hamlet and Lady Jane, it's hard to think poorly of her characters from that era.

[osprey_archer]

I think she's got sort of the same energy as Kate Winslet as Marianne in that Sense and Sensibility adaptation: both characters make some poor decisions, but they do it with such enthusiasm that you nonetheless want things to work out for them in the end, even if it's clear that those particular decisions are not going to pan out.

[kore]

Ooh yes, that's a great comparison. I think Marianne is often meant to be rude or disdainful in the novel, but Winslet has such beautiful high spirits she just seems like fun.

[amaebi]

I haven't seen the movie-- but rereading the novel about thirty years after reading it at university definitely had me feeling much as you do.

[osprey_archer]

Poor Leonard Bast! I think Helen, in her enthusiasm for pursuing this cross-class friendship, projects quite a lot of qualities onto him that he really hasn't got, and that works out very poorly for him in the end.

[amaebi]

As ever so it is.

Have you read Robertson Davies's Fifth Business? The novelist or a character standing in for him remark about the disaster to women it is to be married by those whose ideals they were as teens or so. (And there's the old "Washington is a city of important men and the women they married before they grew up"-- which I now find is Nora Ephron's. Eek!)

It's unusual to see a woman perpetrating that on a man, but class trumps all most of the time, I guess. Well, no. In this novel.

[ladyherenya]

I have exceedingly little fortitude for secondhand embarrassment, but I haven't read the book and maybe the uncomfortable bits were less intensely uncomfortable because I didn't know where the story was headed. I really liked Margaret and the Schlagels siblings' dynamic and the picturequeness, and the way the story was told intriguing, but I don't know if I'd have the same reaction if I were to rewatch it.

[osprey_archer]

Yes, I think this is definitely a case where the uncomfortable bits get much more uncomfortable when you know exactly how poorly this is all going to turn out for poor Leonard Bast. I just wanted to shout "ABANDON THE UMBRELLA AND RUN!"

But it is a wonderfully picturesque production. So many wonderful houses. Aunt Julie's house by the sea was probably my favorite, but of course Howards End is lovely too, and the Schlegels' home that they are so sorry to leave.