!Class divisions/politics in literature Essay Plan

Howard's End and Mrs Dalloway

Intro (3 bullet points)

• the importance of connectedness in both of the novels - potent in the epigraph to Howard’s End being “Only Connect!” - illustrates the shared quest for humanity

• connectedness as being illustrated through a dismantling of class distinctions →

  • Forster presents class as a visible social barrier limiting relations between the Schlegels, Wilcoxes, and Basts

  • Woolf renders it as a more internalised force shaping perception itself

• In both texts, class emerges as the primary impediment to genuine human relation → the realisation of a shared humanity depends upon the dismantling of the social divisions that constrain it.

How place encapsulates class distinctions in Howard’s End (and perhaps works to illuminate them in Mrs Dalloway) (points and evidence)

• HE → motif of the pig’s teeth in the wych elm at Howards End promoting the lost connectivity of folklore and the community it harnessed

  • “the country people put them in long ago and think that if they chew a piece of bark, it will cure the toothache”

• MRSD → comparable to the way the flashbacks at Bourton illuminate the narrative and explain how Clarissa comes to befriend so many different people

intertextuality → T.S. Eliot’s ‘Wasteland’

“I can connect/Nothing with nothing”

written as a parody of Forster’s epigraph

illuminates via contrast the crux of his novel → the dismantling of social divisions/distinctions can only be achieved through a collective empathetic effort from humanity to repair the fragmentation

fragmentation as a common undertone

[CRITIC] Kenneth Womack, “Only Connecting” with the family: Class, Culture, and Narrative Therapy in E.M. Forster’s “Howard’s End” (1997) (two quotes)

• Forster ‘juxtaposes his characters class standings in relation to their ability to enjoy friendship and recognise culture’

• Forster’s creations are ‘distinguished by their capacities for taking pleasure in aesthetic experiences and appreciating the interpersonal qualities of human interaction’

Dismantling of class boundaries in Mrs Dalloway (point and evidence)

Clarissa traverses the boundaries between high and low class - we are introduced to her as a high class lady partaking in stereotypically ‘lower class’ jobs like:

• “buying the flowers herself”

• “mending her own green dress” (subsequently traversing gender boundaries by wielding her scissors while talking to Peter, who plays with his pocket-knife)

• staying in the attic (typically the servants quarters)

which perhaps indicates a misunderstanding of herself and where she belongs as a person

quote from Mrs Dalloway indicating Clarissa’s internal qualm with social status

“she would not say of herself, I am this, I am that”

she occupies a liminal space in her humanity, which allows her to traverse class boundaries in an unconventional way

quote from Miss Kilman about her opinion pertaining to Clarissa and class

Miss Kilman maintains that Clarissa “came from the most worthless of all classes - the rich, with a smattering of culture”

(possible) purpose of Miss Kilman’s character [in the context of class]

serves to remind the reader of Clarissa’s upper class status after we become slightly disillusioned by the nature of her introspection to believe she really does traverse class boundaries

how does intellectualism become disillusioned Howards End (point and evidence)

the Shlegel’s going to see Beethoven’s Fifth Symphony

Helen connects the goblins “walking quietly over the universe” and can see “heroes and shipwrecks in the music’s flood” → connects this to the lack of heroism in the world

intellectualism becomes disillusioned → “[the goblins] merely observed in passing that there was no such thing as splendour and heroism in the world”

[CRITIC] Helen Carr, Virginia Woolf, Empire, and Race

‘Her writing as a powerful social satire, which ‘mercilessly parodies’ her own class and culture’

It might be better to consider her writing as tracing the anthropology of the aristocratic, educated classes, while maintaining the assertion that they should not be considered the civilised, heteronormative standard, ‘an essential step in moving beyond ethnocentrism’