Sync Narrator: Forster's Ironic Critique Of Economic Ine

The Out-of-Sync Narrator: Forster’s Ironic Critique of Economic Inequality
Although she rarely uses personal pronouns to call attention to herself as a physical character, it is hard to ignore the narrative presence in Howards End that often seems overly harsh and judgmental toward the characters and events being described. If Forster were trying to impart a single moral truth or Victorian ideal on the reader, it would have made more sense to have the narrator’s voice more closely align with Margaret’s growing understanding of the connection between the emotional and the practical, and the inner and outer life. However, in regard to issues such as class and gender, there are numerous instances in which the narrative voice upholds the status-quo
of conservative British values and contradicts the ideals that readers may be taking away from the actions of the characters in the story. As I noticed many of what I call these “out-of-sync moments” during my reading, I began to realize that one of the functions of the narrator in Howards End is to adapt an ironic façade of outdated values that is supposed to be exposed rather than defended. Paul B. Armstrong writes “The narrator of Howards End affirms the normative even as he tacitly questions and undermines it” (308). By attempting to preserve concepts like economic inequality and the separateness of the genders, the narrator aligns herself with the cultural constructs that the novel is trying to depict as a barrier to the “Only connect” epigram that runs throughout it.
One of the most striking instances in which the narrator exhibits an extremely cruel viewpoint is in the opening of chapter VI. “We are not concerned with the very poor. They are unthinkable and only to be approached by the statistician or poet. This story deals with gentlefolk, or those who are obliged to pretend that they are gentlefolk” (43). It is not certain whether the narrator uses “we” to mean the upper class, society as a whole, or “we” the readers. As readers, we may feel implicated in this “we,” but the natural reaction for many would be to detach themselves from this group and take a critical perspective toward her affirmations. By singling out the statistician and the poet, the narrator implies that the poor can only be viewed from a dehumanized, mathematical perspective or an overly sentimental, romantic one. As readers, we want to understand the Basts through our own analytical viewpoint and further question the statements of the narrator. Leonard easily fits into the category of people who “pretend that they are gentlefolk,” and the narrator mocks the attempts of someone who is “not as courteous as the average rich man, nor as intelligent, nor as healthy, nor as loveable” to gain the cultural capital of the upper class (43). The harshest words are saved for Jacky, who upon being bought by Helen to Evie’s wedding is described as being “so bestially stupid that she could not grasp what was happening” (209). Even though Margaret blames Helen’s emotional impulsiveness on the debacle that takes place at the wedding, the narrator has a greater problem with the mere existence of Jacky than with Helen’s lack of foresight. It is clear that Margaret and the narrator are far from being one in the same.
Had Leonard and Jacky Bast been morally reprehensible characters, we might take the narrator’s comments on the poor more literally, but the novel constructs them as sympathetic figures whose poverty forces them into situations beyond their control. In one of the most honest reflections on money in the book, Margaret says:
You and I and the Wilcoxes stand upon money as upon islands. It is so firm beneath our feet that we forget its very existence. It’s only when we see someone near us tottering that we realize all than an independent income means. Last night…I began to think that the very soul of the world is economic, and that the lowest abyss is not the absence of love, but the absence of the coin” (57).
When the narrator calls the very poor “unthinkable,” she aligns herself with those who “stand upon money as upon islands,” but she is different from Margaret in that she lacks the self-awareness to recognize her upper-class perspective. In this instance, Margaret’s views provide a corrective to the earlier statements from the narrator that Leonard is not as “loveable” as a rich man. Margaret could be addressing the narrator directly during this monologue as the narrator’s cruel ultimatums are exposed as being inferior to the Schlegel’s more nuanced perspective that acknowledges economic privilege. Forster uses this ironic narration to make us more closely see Margaret as the moral center of the novel. While the narrator determines that the Basts are inferior due to their own lack of culture and intellect, Forster depicts their misfortune not as a moral failure, but rather as the result of a society in which everything is unfairly stacked against the poor. This is one of the key out-of-sync moments in which the narrative action contradicts the narrative commentary. When Margaret tells her discussion club, “Money: give Mr. Bast money, and don’t bother about his ideals. He’ll pick up those for himself,” Froster wants use to agree with her very blunt statements (119). We have already seen that Leonard’s attempts to advance in class through attaining culture have only made him awkward and insecure. He hopes to find meaning by seeing the sunrise in the county, but when Helen asks if the dawn was beautiful, he replies, “The dawn was only grey, it was nothing to mention–“ (112) The cultural ideals he hopes to attain through reading do not translate into his reality of being a poor man with an uneducated wife. Later in the novel, Charles describes how a bookcase fell on Leonard after he hit him with a sword. The symbolic message is that Leonard ended up buried by the knowledge that failed to advance his social standing. By drawing a clear barrier between money and ideals, and knowledge and monetary well-being, Margaret again contradicts the narrator by showing how the supposed cultural deficiencies of the poor are economic and not moral.
When Leonard leaves his job as an insurance clerk due to the bad business advice the Schlegel’s dispense from Mr. Wilcox, Mr. Wilcox is so high up on his “island” that he fails to see how the power of his word could have grave consequences for someone who has little money. He does not care about what happens to Leonard one way or the other, telling Margaret, “I can’t fit in your protégés every day. Business would suffer” (213). It is not only the Wilcoxes who are responsible for the Bast’s troubles. Describing the events after the wedding, Forster writes:
The expedition to Shropshire crippled the Basts permanently. Helen in her flight forgot to settle the hotel bill, and took their return tickets away with her; they had to pawn Jacky’s bangles to get home, and the smash came a few days afterwards. It is true that Helen offered him five thousand pounds, but such a sum meant nothing to him. He could not see that the girl was desperately righting herself, and trying to save something out of the disaster, if it was only five thousand pounds. But he had to live somehow. He turned to his family, and degraded himself to a professional beggar. There was nothing left for him to do. (295)
In this passage, Leonard has to “degrade” himself because of the actions of Helen, a member of the upper class. Although we are supposed to feel sympathy for Leonard who is merely doing what he can in the face of Helen’s carelessness, the narrator still has a harsh opinion of him. She says, “Leonard realized that they need never starve, because it would be too painful for his relatives. Society is based on the family, and the clever wastrel can exploit this indefinitely” (296). By implying that he is a “clever wastrel,” the narrator absolves Mr. Wilcox and Helen of the injustices they have caused him, even though they both share much of the responsibility. Forster further emphasizes the structural inequality of Britain when Leonard first returns the check to Helen. Not knowing what to do with the extra five thousand pounds, Helen reinvests the money and “became rather richer than she had been before” (238). In becoming richer with money that was originally intended for the Basts, Forster shows the unfairness of the rich advancing while the poor continue to suffer, and he wants the reader to be critical of the indignant narrative commentary toward the lower-class characters. The commentary is overly cruel because it presents the societal view of the lower class that Froster deconstructs through the action in the story. Kinley E. Roby writes, “The narrator’s strong bias against Leonard Bast is matched by an equally strong bias in favor of the Wilcoxes, in defiance of the action of the novel” (120). When viewing the narrator as an ironic, judgmental voice, it is obvious to see why Forster would align her closely with the masculine, capitalist ethos of the Wilcoxes. In one of the more vexing passages in the novel, the narrator uses her authority to defend the Wilcoxes’ decision to keep Howards End from Margaret. Literally inserting her presence into the story, the narrator argues:
It is rather a moment when the commentator should step forward. Ought the Wilcoxes have offered their home to Margaret? I think not. The appeal was too flimsy. It was not legal; it had been written in illness, and under the spell of a sudden friendship; it was contrary to the dead woman’s intentions in the past, contrary to her very nature, so far as that nature was understood by them (93).
This is one of the only times in the entire novel when the narrator refers to herself as the one telling the story and it is curious that she uses this moment to step in. At this point in the story, the Wilcoxes have descended into chaos and paranoia over how to keep Howards End out of Margaret’s hands. The family humorously looks for a legal loophole, with Dolly arguing that it is written in pencil and “Pencil never counts.” (91) Charles also comes up with the malicious conspiracy that Margaret forged the note. As readers, we find the family’s banter ridiculous and see that there is no legitimate reason why Margaret should not have Howards End. It is almost as if the narrator needs to step in and articulate what the Wilcoxes cannot. The fact that the narrator defends the family that holds the social authority of the upper class illustrates an interesting comparison by putting the reader in the same position as the Basts and the lower class. We are unable to fight back against the omniscient narrator whose judgments are biased toward the rich, much like how the Basts are unable to combat the social forces greater than their control. While the reader lacks the narrative agency in constructing the outlook of the story, the Bast’s lack the social agency to better their situation. By drawing this parallel, we are more likely to take an ironic interpretation of the narrator and like Leonard, decry the unfairness of the social inequality present in the novel.
Roby writes, “The defense raised most by the narrator in attempting to shield the Wilcoxes from criticism is that England owes them a great debt, that they and their kind have built modern civilization” (121).
Throughout the novel, one of the many ways in which the Wilcoxes are contrasted with the Schlegel’s is in work ethic. Tibby, the sole living male Schlegel, represents the greatest contrast to the Wilcox men and is a character who receives almost no respect from the narrator. He is seemingly asexual and “untroubled by passions and sincerely indifferent to public opinion” (233). With no other desires than to do well on his mods at Oxford, Tibby is the antithesis of the Wilcoxes, who the narrator sees as the builders of English civilization. Questioning Margaret’s earlier dislike of the Wilcox’s qualities, the narrator asks, “How dare Schlegels despise Wilcoxes, when it takes all sorts to make a world?” (97) While the Schlegel’s may be able to pontificate on meaning in the world, the Wilcoxes are viewed as the ones who actually built it and for this reason, the narrator aligns her traditional capitalist values with a leniency toward them that she does not give to the other
characters.
This is most striking when she defends Charles for murdering Leonard Bast at the end of the novel. “It was against all reason that he should be punished, but the law, being made in his image, sentenced him to three years’ imprisonment” (311). This is another one of the out-of-sync moments where the action of the story makes us want to see the justice that Leonard deserves, and to hear the narrator describe punishment as being unreasonable seems absurd. Yet when looking at the basic facts of the situation, in which a rich man kills a poor adulterer, the narrator is merely presenting the societal viewpoint that Forster wants the reader to criticize. By describing the law as “being made in his [Charles’] image,” the narrator again reminds the reader that the Wilcoxes are the architects of society and that his punishment has nothing to do with “reason,” but rather a sense of loyalty to his class and the idea of justice that it upholds. The narrator implies that to not be punished would be a betrayal of upper-class values, but does not take into account the moral ramifications of the Leonard’s death; the characters are left to do that on their own.
Despite all of the moments in which the narrator is out-of-sync with the action of the story, she also fulfills other functional roles.
There are many times when she limits her views and outwardly disappears to clarify plot points or describe the thoughts and feelings of the characters. While her judgments range from the flagrant to the very subtle, I chose to focus on the more outrageous moments because that is what I found to be both the most confusing and interesting aspects of her character. From the first sentence of the novel, “One may as well begin with Helen’s letters to her sisters,” it seemed obvious that the narrator was calling into question her role as storyteller (1). This passive construction of this statement made me ask, “Why not begin somewhere else?” and I immediately realized that the narrator is aware of her strong viewpoints that she wants the reader to call them into question. At the end of the novel, when it is decided that Howards End will be left to Helen’s son, we see that the narrator’s social views have fully diminished as the future will be controlled by a new type of person who represents a mixture of the social classes and genders. Forster uses Helen’s son to show that the hyper-capitalist, masculine principles of the Wilcoxes and the narrator will not survive the future of
England.

Works Cited
Armstrong, Paul B. "The Narrator in the Closet: The Ambiguous Narrative Voice in Howards End." MFS Modern Fiction Studies. 47.2 (2001): 306-328. Print.
Forster, E.M. Howards End. New York: Barnes & Noble Books, 2003. Print.
Roby, Kinley E. "Irony and the Narrative Voice in "Howards End"." Journal of Narrative Technique. 2.2 (1972): 116-124. Print.