"Only connecting" with the family: class, culture, and narrative therapy in E.M. Forster's 'Howards End.' - Family Systems Psychotherapy and Literature/Literary Criticism

7 In Narrative Knowing and the Human Sciences, Donald E. Polkinghorne notes that "the reflective awareness of one's personal narrative provides the realization that past events are not meaningful in themselves but are given significance by the configuration of one's narrative. This realization," he continues, "can release people from the control of past interpretations they have attached to events and open up the possibility of renewal and freedom for change" (182-83). Polkinghorne's postulation of storytelling and its value as a means for effecting systemic change underscore the ways in which Forster's novel, with its social and aesthetic vision of England's future, functions as a work of narrative therapy.

8 Napier and Whitaker argue, moreover, that with scapegoating "one of the spouses can agree unconsciously to be 'the problem.'" In this way, "at least one spouse has to be able to cope with the reality world, while the other 'specializes' in contact with the disturbed feelings present in both partners. . . . This decision" - as Howards End clearly illustrates through Henry and Margaret's initially dysfunctional marriage - "may have grave consequences for the couple" (149).

9 In poorly functioning systems such as Margaret and Henry's marriage, however, family members develop pseudo-selves - often fostered by fear and anxiety within the system - and thus, such individuals frequently remain unable to maintain any real congruence between their inner feelings and their outward behavior (Barnard and Corrales 85-87). The cathartic qualities of Margaret's dramatic emotional tirade clearly portend that she will subsequently advance into a new, functional era of selfhood.

10 Like Charles, contemporary reviewers of Howards End "assumed," according to Lago, "that Leonard is the seducer, for a respectable middle-class girl like Helen could not be actively attracted even briefly to the 'squalid' Leonard" (45). Helen's empathy for and seduction of the clerk, however, allow Forster to establish his narrative of accommodation between the classes. In Forster's ethical schema, Helen truly appreciates Leonard's social and intellectual qualities: "Such a muddle of a man," Helen remarks to her sister about Leonard, "and yet so worth pulling through. I like him extraordinarily" (155).

11 Notably, while Barbara Rosecrance problematizes Margaret's "almost absolute moral authority" in the novel, she astutely notes that Margaret's "ability to connect seems the moral prerequisite for her guardianship of Howards End" (112, 122).

12 Ironically, Henry's social transformation follows closely on the heels of Leonard's sad recognition of his lower-class fate. Before traveling to Howards End and his untimely death at the hands of Charles, Leonard discusses the social dichotomy between rich and poor in a manner strikingly evocative of Henry's previous social philosophy: "There always will be rich and poor," he tells Margaret; "if rich people fail at one profession, they can try another. . . . I mean if a [poor] man over twenty one loses his own particular job, it's all over with him. I have seen it happen to others," he explains. "Their friends gave them money for a little, but in the end they fall over the edge. It's no good. It's the whole world pulling" (237-38).