Modernism's Beginning and Howards End

I've been trying to think about how I would define modernism. There are so many ways to do it, ya know? You have people who do it historically: 1890 - 1950, 1901 - 1945, or even the very niche 1918 - 1939. Some people define it through aesthetics and connect it to art movements such as impressionism, cubism, and film. Other scholars attempt to define modernism by focusing on the values: a rejection of Victorian values, an embrace of fascism, or a challenge to Enlightenment philosophies. I think I fall somewhat in this last camp.

I've been thinking that modernism is this rejection of Enlightenment values in that it is a questioning of the individual and communal perspective. Modernism rejects the notion that there is a concrete understanding--a certainty--of anything. This leads to an emphasis of one's impression of an event rather than the facts of an event. But modernism is not a straight-forward championing of the individual. It is an understanding that the individual perspective is limited and flawed and simultaneously all that we have. Just as modernism undermines our faith in collective certainty (the Enlightenment, the Industrial Revolution, religious institutions, social constructs, etc.), it undermines our faith in the certainty of an individual perspective. In his modernist masterpiece, Howards End (1910), E. M. Forster explores the limitations of any perspective, challenging both social conventions/ Victorian values and individual subjectivity.

The novel opens by announcing to the reader, "One may as well begin with Helen's letters to her sister." At once, the novel undermines the traditional understanding of a novel's structure. We can begin anywhere so we might as well begin here. It suggests there are other suitable moments to begin the narrative and that this one will function just as well as another. Beginnings become replaceable or subjective.

Furthermore, by beginning with letters, we clearly begin with one person's impressions of the events. Forster takes away all pretense of an unbiased narrator relaying the facts of the events and instead provides an intimate view. This is not about documenting a family's history and experience, but rather showing how a range of perspectives shapes a collective understanding of reality/society. There is a third person narrator, but this narrator moves from letters to one character's thoughts to another. We see the range of perspectives and experiences from Helen to Margaret to Aunt Juley to Leo Bast and more. As Michael Levenson explains, modernism has "no scruples about the text penetrating a consciousness, because the text has become identical with a consciousness." By exploring multiple consciousness, we deflate the previously all-important authority and elevate the individual perception. But we cannot have just one perception: to have one perception is to return to a singular authority. By engaging with a multitude of voices and perspectives, we create a range of meanings. Again, as Levenson states, "to mean is to be perceived." Modernism hinges upon flipping the vertical hierarchy of meaning/value (the authority) to that of the horizontal hierarchy of meaning/value (multiple impressions).

One of the themes these multitudes of perspectives all seem to reflect upon in their various ways is the issue of procreation/legacies. The underpinning question to these concerns is "who inherits the future"? In Forster's novel, this translates to "who inherits Howards End?" By titling his novel after the house, he pushes the home and its ownership into the forefront of its meaning. Mrs. Wilcox wants to leave the home to Margaret, whom she believes shares her impressions of the world and will share her impressions of the home. Her family did not share her impressions: "[t]o them Howards End was a house: they could not now that to her it had been a spirit, for which he sought a spiritual heir." Her family feels betrayed by the discovery of the new heir (although Margaret remains unaware). The narrator wonders if "the possessions of the spirit n be bequeathed at all" while the family laments that their mother "had been treacherous to the family, to the laws of property, to her own written word." So how does a legacy get transferred? Who gets to be a biological heir, a material heir, a spiritual heir?

The question stems from a range of modernist concerns. In the 20th century, issues of immigration, class, sexual values, increased industry, and gender meant that, in many ways, the world was up for grabs. As an unknown man in Howards End worries, "this decline of the birth-rate in Manchester" implies "the population of England will be stationary in 1960." What he means is that the WHITE Anglo-Saxon population will be stationary. He is worried that England can be taken by immigrants, by people of color, by outsiders. He shares this concern with Leonard Bast, an outsider in proper English society. Leo is poor and attached to a "fallen woman." He is not the sort of man who fits Victorian English values and he is not a man many of the conservative English would select as a spiritual heir.

Yet Leo nevertheless becomes an heir. They all do. The book synthesizes the different impressions and perspectives of all of the characters to form a singular heir to represent their interests. The eventual heir of Howards End will be the nephew of Henry Wilcox and Margaret Schlegel Wilcox, the illegitimate son of Helen Schlegel and Leonard Bast. Each perspective is slightly altered yet all valued equally.

#michaellevenson #genealogyofmodernism #modernism #legacy #inheritance #eugenics #emforster #howardsend