Where Angels Fear to Tread (1905)

While this novel won't be among my favorite of Forster's, I did appreciate it as a precursor to such masterpieces as A Room wiht a View, Howard's End and A Passage to India. Widow Lilia Herriton, aged 33, decides to spend a year in Italy with a female companion, leaving her young daughter with her mother-in-law. When the family learns that she has become engaged to a younger Italian--the son of a dentist, God forbid!--Philip Herriton is hustled off to persuade her to return. Alas, he is too late; the couple is already married, and passion seems to have prevailed over middle-class British stodginess and propriety. Sadly, things don't work out well for Lilia, as her romantic ideals don't mesh with the reality of Italian married life. After she dies in childbirth, Philip is sent on a second mission: to 'rescue' Lilia's child and bring it back into the fold of British respectability.

It's at this point that the novel falls into a hazy category where I would also place Chekhov's play The Seagull. Is it comedy, tragedy, or melodrama? Or perhaps a combination of all three? While generally categorized as comedies (most likely because of their sharp social critiques), characters in both works endure some truly tragic events--and respond quite melodramatically. This fuzziness of genre doesn't really detract from either the play or the novel but does leave one wondering what the author's original intention might have been, and whether he might have gone a bit off track.

So my recommendation is: If you've never read Forster before, don't start here; but if you have, Where Angels Fear to Tread is worth adding to your TBR shelf. ( )

Slow starting, but eventually got into it & quite enjoyed it in the end. A little unbelievable, but quite sweet. ( )

Where Angels Fear to Tread is a short novel that I think might have been an even better short story. It really is a wonderful story, but I felt that the author often got bogged down in exposition and could have cut to the chase with as much and maybe even more impact. As he does in other novels, Forster skewers the conventional, oh-so-proper, early 20th century middle-class British by exposing them (and us) to the spontaneous vitality of Italy. His British characters literally and figuratively embark on journeys from one extreme to the other and come out a little wiser for it.

The story basically centers around two trips to Italy made by members of the Herriton family. In the first journey, Philip Herriton comes to Italy at the behest of his mother in order to dissuade his widowed sister-in-law from marrying Gino, a much younger local man and – horrors – the son of a provincial dentist. He discovers that he is too late and that his sister-in-law’s British travelling companion, Caroline Abbott, not only abbetted the marriage but was deceptive when writing to the family about its status and that of the groom.

The second part of the book revolves around the second trip Philip makes to adopt and/or purchase the baby who is the product of the doomed marriage. A guilt-ridden Caroline Abbott has returned to the Italian town to retrieve the baby as well - and to save it from both the Herritons and from Gino. It is in this section that the conflict between right and wrong, love and moralistic self-righteousness as well as impulse and calculation is played out. It seems to me that the turning point for Caroline and Philip occurs during their attendance of a provincial performance of the opera, Lucia di Lammermoor. It can be no coincidence that Forster chooses this opera, written by the Italian composer Gaetano Donizetti and based on Sir Walter Scott’s story of a family’s disastrous attempt to intervene in a marriage that would have dire consequences for their prosperity, reputation and standing in the community.

Both Caroline’s and Philip’s transformation and growth come when British middle class rectitude and Italian passion literally and figuratively collide. The two (especially Philip) are at first charmed in an arrogant, morally superior and disdainful way by the Italian lifestyle. This attitude is then replaced by horror and ultimately, the two main characters are transformed by their exposure to Italy and come to understand, accept and embrace what it represents – both the beautiful and the ugly. In the end, they come to a much broader understanding and acceptance of the fullness of a life that includes mercy and cruelty, love and hate and good and evil. ( )

Haven’t read Forster for a long while and the last time I tried I found him whimsical but wordy, kind of like he was playing straight man to Evelyn Waugh. This was good though. One of his earliest novels and I liked it.

Waugh-like, this is a parody of the English class-system which Forster deals more seriously with in later more famous novels. We’re in Italy and we’re in love with everything Italian. That is, until we have to deal with the realities of Italy which the Italians have so rudely failed to conceal.

This is a story of romance v reality and the effects of that on one particular family when one of their member ends up marrying, quite unexpectedly, an Italian. What’s worse, he’s the son of a dentist.

What starts as a battle to reclaim an Englishwoman from the greasy clutches of her uncultured husband, finishes as a fight over the only child of the marriage, with tragic consequences.

The characters are farcical which keeps you wanting to read on to see what other ridiculous things they might say, do, think or presume. And he’s not done a bad job with the story weaving in a certain amount of suspense along the way.

It’s a good read, but it was never going to win any prizes. It stands far below the literary importance of later works such as Room With a View or Passage to India. But maybe it’s a good read because of it. ( )

On the back cover this book is called a "sophisticated comedy" so I expected something witty something like Noel Coward's Private Lives. It wasn't even close to what I expected. Yes, there were some funny parts but, on the whole, I found it rather gruesome. Without spoiling the end for another reader I can't specify why I didn't like it. I found a scholarly review of the book which you can read if you don't mind having the end spoiled.

Forster is quite savage about the middle class English and their pretensions and that seems to be the point of this book. Lilia, youngish widow of Charles Herriton, decides to travel in Italy with a companion for a year. While in the small city of Monteriano she falls in love with a handsome, unemployed Italian and they get engaged. When the Herritons hear this news her brother-in-law, Phillip, is sent off to prevent the marriage. However, he is too late and the marriage has already taken place. Lilia lives to regret her hasty marriage to Gino who carries on his life as he had before he was married, spending most of his time away from the marital home, but forbidding Lilia to go out unaccompanied. Then Lilia discovers he has had an affair and when Gino gets angry that she went out of the house she "saw him for a cruel, worthless, hypocritical, dissolute upstart" (p. 82) She responds by telling him she knows about the affair. Gino doesn't deny it; instead he laughs and realizes he must give her more credit than he has been. He thinks he can gloss everything over with a little more attention but Lilia will not be placated so easily. Lilia writes to a male friend in England to ask him to rescue her but Gino intercepts the letter. Lilia becomes pregnant and dies in childbirth.

That's one of the main problems I have with this book. Lilia is independently wealthy; she knows how to get out of Monteriano; even if she didn't want to return to her in-laws she has her own mother's place in Yorkshire. It just doesn't seem likely to me that she would meekly sit around Monteriano when she is miserable.

As a study of the contrasts between the staid English and the passionate Italians this book is probably a masterpiece. No doubt it shook people up when it was first published. Now, however, it seems dated. ( )