Social Fragmentation in Modernist English Literature

This essay will focus on two modernist works by Virginia WOOLF and E. M. FORSTER, which might in fact be regarded as very different concerning their subject matter and style. When FORSTER completed his fourth published novel Howards End in 1910, Europe was on the edge of the First World War, while WOOLF’s novel Between the Acts – finished in November 1942 – was created under the impacts of fascism, the frightening force of the Second World War, and the Blitz in Great Britain. Despite a relatively long time span between these works, the novels are dealing with similar modernist aspects insofar as they are both considering the changes of a society under the influence of modern life, resulting in a social fragmentation caused by political developments within Europe.

This paper will at first reveal the indications of social fragmentations worked into the novels and, secondly, find out if FORSTER and WOOLF are actually providing a solution to the upcoming problems within their artwork. The political tensions in FORSTER’s Howards End predominantly arise between the characters of the Schlegels and the Wilcoxes, two middle class families with completely different social backgrounds. As the director of a rubber company with African holdings, Henry Wilcox is the epitome of British industrialism and imperialism, while the Schlegel sisters (Margaret and Helen) are representing quite the opposite. Being daughters of a liberal German refugee, the Schlegels are not English “to the backbone” 1 , though they are not supposed to be of a certain German type, either. Her father – Ernst Schlegel – emigrated because [h]e was not the aggressive German so dear to the English journalist, nor the domestic German, so dear to the English wit. If one classed him at all it would be as the countryman of Hegel and Kant, as the idealist, inclined to be dreamy, whose Imperialism was the Imperialism of the air. […] [H]e knew that some quality had vanished for which not all Alsace-Lorraine could compensate him. Germany a commercial power, Germany a naval power, Germany with colonies here and a Forward Policy there, and legitimate aspirations in the other place, might appeal to others, an be fitly served by them; for his own part, he abstained from the fruits of victory, and naturalized himself in England.

(FORSTER, 2000: 24) 1 FORSTER, Eward Morgan. Howards End. New York: Penguin, 2000: 24.

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Throughout the plot of the novel, the two different middle class families are constantly getting in touch with each other, which causes many problems because of the different attitudes of the characters. The Wilcoxes are a particularly selfish and greedy. Like the German imperialists the deceased father Ernst Schlegel must once have turned away from, they are described as being very efficient, but also heartless exploiters with a significant lack of spirituality and humanity. The alienation from humanity goes so far that, even within the Wilcox family, people are not able to get along with each other any more. However, they keep paying attention to their outer appearance, which does not seem to represent more than an empty shell.

Though presenting a firm front to outsiders, no Wilcox could live near, or near the possessions of, any other Wilcox. They had the colonial spirit, and were always making for some spot where the white man might carry his burden unobserved.

(FORSTER, 2000: 174) The narrator’s comment on the white man’s burden which has to be carried out “unobserved” as well as on the “colonial spirit” obviously does not lack of irony. Bearing in mind the African rubber company, one might assume that the burden rather consist in personal enrichment than in any kind of enlightenment brought to native people in the colonies. One may also ask how enlightenment could possibly be provided by people who are uncivilised themselves and only interested in money and motorcars, like the Wilcoxes are characterised in Howards End.

Furthermore, the Wilcoxes’ lack of idealism does not only affect their supposed exploitative behaviour in the colonies, but also their own life within England. The “Imperialist’s principle of ‘Everyone for himself’” 2 is evidently seen as a powerful influence on the English society as a whole. Additionally, in a capitalist and imperialist society, the outer life of business is seen as being divided from the inner life of personal relations represented by the Schlegel sisters, and in particular by the character of Helen, that is entirely devoted to the inner life. Although Helen is not designed to be a very bright and intelligent

2 GREEN, Robert. Messrs Wilcox and Kurtz, Hollow Men. in: Twentieth Century Literature, Vol.

14. No. 4 (Jan., 1969): 235.

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character, she has very distinguished feelings about the Wilcoxes, when she states:

I felt for a moment that the whole Wilcox family was a fraud, just a wall of newspapers and motor-cars and golf-clubs, and that if it fell I should find nothing behind it but panic and emptiness.

(FORSTER, 2000: 22) However, Margaret’s opinion about the outer life of the Wilcoxes differentiates from the wholesale condemnation by her sister insofar as she regards it to be absolutely necessary in modern times, because the very soul of the world is economic and […] the lowest abyss is not the absence of love, but the absence of coin.

(FORSTER, 2000: 52) The undeniable fact of modern life that cash “is the warp of civilisation, whatever the woof may be” 3 ultimately leads to the tragic failure of another character in FORSTER’s novel: The poor idealist Leonard Bast, who continually tries to revalue his life as a salaried employee, but simply does not have the means to join the cultural life of the upper middle class, must finally come to grief. Consistently and ironically, FORSTER’s narrator had already stated before that [w]e are not concerned with the very poor. They are unthinkable, and only to be approached by the statistician or the poet. This story deals with gentlefolk, or with those who are obliged to pretend that they are gentlefolk.

(FORSTER, 2000: 38) Despite the tragic fate of Mr. Bast, Howards End is often seen as an optimistic novel, in which a fragmented society was moving towards union 4 . This assumption may at least partly be confirmed for the characters of Margaret Schlegel and Henry Wilcox, even though the reunification of the inner and the outer life is clearly at the expense of the imperialist Henry Wilcox, who is a broken man in the end 5 . Furthermore, both characters stay static, while their relationship in Howards End may rather be seen as a marriage of convenience than one of love. Thus, the indivisible oppositions of modern life

3 FORSTER, 2000: 108.

4 ZWERDLING, Alex. The Novels of E. M. Forster. in: Twentieth Century Literature. Vol. 2. No. 4

(Jan., 1957): 178.

5 FORSTER, 2000: 281.

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