〝for the dead, who seem to take away so much, really take with them nothing that is ours.〞

★★★.5

a wonderful story of questioning, disillusionment, and conversion, where angels fear to tread tells the story of a prim english family's encounter with the foreign land of italy. when attractive, impulsive english widow lilia marries gino, a dashing and highly unsuitable italian twelve years her junior, her snobbish former in-laws make no attempts to hide their disapproval. but their expedition to face the uncouth foreigner takes an unexpected turn when they return to italy under tragic circumstances intending to rescue lilia and gino's baby.

when I was researching what to read in italy one of the most mentioned books was a room with a view by forster. I read that last year but sadly didn't like it much so I didn't want to reread it on my trip. however, I never quit authors after the first book so when I saw that a room with a view had a kind of "sister novel" born during the same time of the same inspiration; I obviously had to give it a chance. sadly I now think it's time for me to quit forster. I never dnf books so me even thinking about dnfing this one says a lot. sure the writing is beautiful and I would put some of these quotes in my instagram bio but I just didn't care about the characters nor the plot. twist after twist came but I was just never intrigued and didn't really care about where the story was going. I had the same problem with a room with a view so if you liked that one; you'll probably love this but if not; sit this one out like I should've.

cawpile: 6.00
ig: @winterrainreads

Italy, Italy. People go there, I am told, to free themselves of the constraints of stuffy, modern life. To take part in its beauty, and really live. Ladies often go there to f*uck hot Italian guys, eat tasty treats, and possibly write a memoir all about their spiritual awakening and/or f*ucking that hot Italian guy.

Well, lady-characters in the turn of the century did the same thing! Minus the memoir part. They never got a chance to write their memoirs. No, their authors killed them off before they got the chance to reflect on eating, or praying, or loving. I'm pretty sure that they killed these "free-spirited" ladies off because these ladies preferred the sexy Italians to their stuffy British and snobby American male counterparts, and they sadly needed to learn their lessons: Italy is a fine place to visit, Ladies, as long as you have a male chaperone who wishes to bore you to death with lectures about architecture as he leads you by the elbow through the safest of Italian tourist spots.

E.M. Forster agrees, "Italy is such a delightful place to live in if you happen to be a man...In the democracy of the caffe or the street the great question of our life has been solved, and the brotherhood of man is a reality. But it is accomplished at the expense of the sisterhood of women."

In the beginning of Where Angels Fear To Tread, I was reminded of Henry James' Daisy Miller. In a sense, Lilia is described by Forster as a sort of silly woman, just as Daisy was a silly "girl." In both instances, our silly women need to be sought after, rescued from Italy, saved by men. In both instances, the men fail.

But, I had more hope for Lilia. Where James chastises, Forster seems, at first, to empathize. Daisy's character-execution is foreshadowed, but fast (malaria), and she never has to back down, submit to Winterbourne. Winterbourne never gets to mold her character to his liking. Daisy is Daisy until the end.

Lilia's character-execution is worse, in my opinion. Before he can kill Lilia off, Forster first has her undergo a character change: Lilia becomes less spirited, smaller, older, insecure, afraid of her lover, Gino. What happened to that crazy Cougar-Lilia we met in the beginning, with the money and the power? She dies giving birth to a son - an ultimate sacrifice for a patriarchal line.

Now, don't get me wrong. I did not like Lilia, as a character, for the most part. I mean, she ditches her daughter for a 21-year-old Italian guy. But, I was disturbed by her end, by the ease with which Forster killed her off. After her death, we move back to England, where we gauge the reactions from the rest of the characters. With the exception of Caroline Abbott (a family friend) and Lilia's daughter Irma, everyone else is relieved that they don't have to deal with Lilia anymore. I felt, if Lilia's death was heartless, well - the lack of grief surrounding it was even worse. I think that Forster included Lilia's downfall in a less chastising or patronizing way than James. He shows how the masculine influence can really harm the spirit or personality of the woman, but his lack of sympathy was somewhat disheartening.

The real triumph of character in Where Angels Fear To Tread is Philip, though. Philip ties in all of the the novel's central themes: idealization vs. reality, of the romanticization of one's sense of identity, voyeurism vs. participation. And of course, the satire of British superiority, and subsequent control.

In the words of Philip, "Society is invincible - to a certain degree. But your real life is your own, and nothing can touch it. There is no power on earth that can prevent your criticizing and despising mediocrity - nothing that can stop you retreating into splendour and beauty - into the thoughts and beliefs that make the real life - the real you."

I want to mention, too, that the introduction to this edition was really good. Ruth Padel, O ye of the well-phrased thesis! "All of the novels published in Forster's lifetime conjure a place, a way of looking at a place, a journey, or a passage towards it. A title beginning "Where," beginning a novel-writing career that will end with the last words of A Passage To India - "not there." From "Where" to "not there" is the Forster arc, eyes on the horizon...which [is] incomprehensible and unattainable, but which symbolizes something within him, something that matters deeply to him."

Eager to read more Forster. If I remember from reading A Room With A View, it gets better than this, for sure...

In E.M.Forster's first novel, Where Angels Fear to Tread, he explores character, the late 19th century English class structure and nationalism, the accepted misogyny of the times, that inform his later books and does so with big doses of irony and occasional humor, holding up a mirror to our foibles.
Lilia is a young English widow and mother whose wealthy in-laws, the Herritons, encourage her to travel to Italy in the hopes that its ancient culture will broaden her horizons and knock off a few of her rough edges. She travels with a chaperone, Miss Abbott, who is ten years her junior but much more mature.
Soon a brief telegram arrives from Miss Abbott informing the Herritons of Lilia's engagement to a young Italian, 'the son of Italian nobility.' Philip, Lilia's brother-in-law, leaves immediately for Monteriano to intervene. Miss Abbott meets him at the station and on the ride into town sheepishly lets him know that they stretched the truth a little in the telegram: Signor Gino Carella is merely the son of a dentist (gasp!)
Philip is even more determined to put a stop to this nonsesnse and offers Gino money to break off the engagement. He laughs in Philip's face and announces that it is too late, they are already married. Philip and Miss Abbott leave Italy 'toute de suite.' The Herritons, of course, are determined that Lilia will never see her young daughter, Irma, again.
Lilia and Gino do not live happily ever after. Cultural differences come into play and isolate Lilia in her new home. Gino becomes bored and strays. Lilia decides a baby will solve their problems but tragically dies in childbirth.
The Herritons are informed of the dreadful news but decide to keep the birth of the child quiet. The boy is really no relative of theirs, after all, so let him be raised as an Italian. But Gino sends postcards to Irma from her baby brother and she wants to know the whole truth. Once the news becomes public knowledge, the Herritons MUST bring the child back to England to be raised properly, so Miss Abbott, Philip and his sister, Harriet, all set off to Monteriano to rescue the baby...with tragic results. "Fools rush in where angels fear to tread." (Alexander Pope)
The storyline begs the reader to ask: Did this situation really need to end this way? Why couldn't certain characters have left well enough alone? The rules of the late 19th century society seemed determined to crush nonconformity. Miss Abbott tells Philip: "I hated society...I didn't see that all these things are invincible, and that if we go against them they will break us to pieces." This novella is an interesting character and societal study; perhaps not as great as Forster's later works, but still worth reading.

11/15
SO well written! And so so hilarious! I love seeing self-righteous and hypocritical men who make themselves fools.

Forster’s first novel was published when he was just 26. In many ways it feels like a dress rehearsal for the themes and settings of A Room with a View, but with an awful histrionic ending that reads like a poor man’s version of Thomas Hardy. So, probably a 2.5 for me, but bumped up because it was very atmospheric reading on a trip to Tuscany last month. (See my Italian reading list on BookTrib.)

Here’s the story: Lilia Herriton, an English widow in her early thirties, sets out for a year in Italy, against all the warnings of her fussy in-laws. She settles in Monteriano, a thinly-veiled fictional version of San Gimignano (a gorgeous medieval village), and soon falls in love with Gino Carella, who is not the son of a nobleman as her telegram home implies, but (gasp!) the son of a dentist. Lilia’s brother-in-law, Philip, sets off for Italy, a country he fell in love with as a young man, to see if he can salvage a disastrous situation.

Although Forster’s familiar themes are here – the clash of two worlds, class snobbery, and the apparent danger of letting passion disrupt ordinary life – the novel does rather melt into melodrama. Still, if only for Philip’s paean to Italy, it seemed well worth reading: “don’t, let me beg you, go with that awful tourist idea that Italy’s only a museum of antiquities and art...I do believe that Italy really purifies and ennobles all who visit her.”

More tragic and profound than A Room With a View. I enjoyed it just as much. Quick, vivid, insightful. Maybe because now I'm a mother and have just had a new baby, the parent-child scenes and relationships were especially poignant for me. The evolving value system of that Post-Victorian age intrigues me. And, I love his writing.

“We were mad—drunk with rebellion. We had no common-sense. As soon as you came, you saw and foresaw everything.”

Al volver a leer cualquier libro de este impresionante autor, quien muy para mi pesar abandonó la ficción en sus últimos 46 años, obtengo mayor placer lector, me reafirmo más y más en mi apreciación de su obra como la culminación de la novelística "clásica" inglesa, de esas piezas que desdeñosa y cariñosamente llamamos "de tacitas". Para mí no hay nadie mejor, nadie comparable, y pocos a su altura.

Pocos son capaces de ofrecernos unos diálogos tan vacilantes, tan vacilones, tan enrevesados que a veces (sin llegar a los mil y un James) debes volver los pasos tras un sonoro WTF! mas, siempre rutilante, te sorprende con una carcajada o, cuando menos, una asombrada visión de cómo somos los humanitos, cómo vamos construyéndonos nuestras verdaditas, cada quien las suyas, por favor.

No acepto la común opinión que sea aburrido, con mucha descripción y poca acción. Los hechos, bastante terribles en verdad, permanecían en mi memoria cuarenta años después, si bien admito que no recordaba a Lilia mordiendo el polvo del camino aquel anochecer. Las descripciones son brevísimas (y estamos hablando de un viaje a Italia, eh!); otra cosa es que no sigan líneas de puntos, y sean fecundas y sugerentes como aquí.

Cierto que es su primera novela, con dudas y recovecos pero, cuando partimos una vez más hacia Monteriano para amar, maquinar y despreciar, cuando asistimos a esa festiva Lucía di Lammermoor, cuando huimos en ese carruaje en la noche lluviosa, por el bosque plagado de violetas... ¡Allá vamos, con nuestra atrevida ignorancia, a donde los ángeles temen aventurarse!

"For a wonderful physical tie binds the parents to the children; and—by some sad, strange irony—it does not bind us children to our parents. For if it did, if we could answer their love not with gratitude but with equal love, life would lose much of its pathos and much of its squalor, and we might be wonderfully happy"

Romance only dies with life. No pair of pincers will ever pull it out of us. But there is a spurious sentiment which cannot resist the unexpected and the incongruous and the grotesque. A touch will loosen it, and the sooner it goes from us the better. It was going from Philip now, and therefore he gave the cry of pain."

"Philip looked away, as he sometimes looked away from the great pictures where visible forms suddenly become inadequate for the things they have shown to us. He was happy; he was assured that there was greatness in the world. There came to him an earnest desire to be good through the example of this good woman. He would try henceforward to be worthy of the things she had revealed. Quietly, without hysterical prayers or banging of drums, he underwent conversion. He was saved."

"There was nothing to distract him this time; his sentimentality had died, so had his anxiety for the family honour. He might be a puppet’s puppet, but he knew exactly the disposition of the strings."

"Life was greater than he had supposed, but it was even less complete. He had seen the need for strenuous work and for righteousness. And now he saw what a very little way those things would go."

"But as years went on he became either less self-conscious or more self-satisfied. The world, he found, made a niche for him as it did for every one. Decision of character might come later—or he might have it without knowing."

What a very strange book. At points it seemed ready to burst into bloom, yet despite significant dramatic events, it remained confined and a little stilted. Some beautiful writing, as you would expect from Forster, and some familiar themes, but not quite up to his best imo.

לסקירה מפורטת בעיברית, קישור לבלוג שלי -

https://sivi-the-avid-reader.com/wher...

3.5

E.M. Forster subscribes to and culminates with Kipling's famous line: "Oh, East is East and West is West, and never the twain shall meet" in his most famous novel A Passage to India. The genesis of this belief in an irreconcilable dichotomy, however, can be seen in his earliest, rather amateurish attempt Where Angels Fear to Tread, where he categorizes it as the irreconcilable social ideals of North and South.

The novel revolves around a failed and ultimately tragic marriage between a young English widow Lilia Herriton and an even younger handsome Italian man called Gino. Though it abounds in scathing critique of English snobbery and class system - its primary exponents being Lilia's brother in law Philip and sister in law Harriet and their mother Mrs. Herriton - Forster himself puts forward and appears to bolster many stereotypes about national characters and dispositions.

"No one realized that more than personalities were engaged; that the struggle was national; that generations of ancestors, good, bad or indifferent, forbade the Latin man to be chivalrous to the northern woman, the northern woman to forgive the Latin man. All this might have been foreseen; Mrs Herriton foresaw it from the first."

The writing is already accomplished and there are some lovely passages, especially descriptive ones of Tuscany. But ultimately the characters are as yet not fully drawn and multi-dimensional and this is a novel of consequence more for understanding Forster's evolution as a novelist than its other merits. The journeys to Tuscany, and to Monteriano in particular, are first to prevent Lilia and Gino's marriage and later to ostensibly rescue her child after her death in childbirth, not due to any attachment to him but for public appearances and to raise him as an Englishman.

It is hard to categorize whether the book is tragedy, a social satire, a drama or a grotesque comedy for it has elements of all these. He wrote it when he was twenty six and it is apparent that he is learning and experimenting in many ways - in terms of craft as well as his view of the world. The conflict persists throughout between the imagined and the real - between romance and reality and also between desire and social and class constraints. Gino is alien and unknowable but also irresistible - not just to Lilia and Caroline, her companion on the journey where she met him who later also goes back to retrieve the child but with somewhat nobler intentions, but indeed also to Philip. We can observe Forster's own repressed sexuality and bent in his somewhat convoluted treatment of his character's emotions and desires. Yet there also remains that ever-present national and class consciousness.

"And Philip had seen that face in Italy before a hundred times - seen it and loved it, for it was not merely beautiful, but had the charm which is the rightful heritage of all who are born on that soil. But he did not want to see it opposite him at dinner. It was not the face of a gentleman."

Where Angels Fear to Tread provides a rigid and yet evolving, complex and often paradoxical perspective on the durability of relations between people of different national and cultural backgrounds, as well as a very readable Italian escapade, that precedes his more famous exploration of the country in A Room with a View.

I'm always amused at the distain the haughty English aristocrat feels toward the average Italian and their incomprehensible ways and their attitude toward life. I've noticed it in several works of English literature and, not being English myself, I don't know if it really exists. I hope it is true, I won't have to change my perception of the 19th and early 20th century English. I like them that way, their style, their arrogance, if that's the right word, their belief that their way is the right way and everything else be dammed. That's the case in this novel when an upper class English family sees their widowed daughter-in-law fall for and marry an Italian of unacceptable status. Things turn tragic and complicated when she dies in childbirth. The English family does not want this child, their blood relative, to be raised Italian, and so the struggle begins. This is Forster's first novel but the genius is there, you can feel it in the reading, and it remains one of my favorites of his work.