Where Angels Fear to Tread

Forster’s first novel, in which he introduces his great theme of the confrontation between English bourgeois suburban stuffiness and all the grand, beautiful and natural things it is afraid of — but secretly longs to join in with — in the wider world. The Herritons pack off their inconvenient widowed daughter-in-law Lilia on a trip to Italy with the respectable Miss Abbott, but it all goes horribly wrong when she falls for the lovely Gino in a small town somewhere in Tuscany. Lilia’s brother-in-law Philip is sent out as a task force to eliminate the problem, but fails dismally, also falling for Gino’s charm. Then the comedy turns dark — oddly I always remember this as a light, sunny book and am shocked by how dark it is when show more I actually re-read it — when Lilia tries to bridge the cultural gap between her and Gino by the traditional English means of waving money around and being calm but determined, and there’s a grotesque finale when Philip and Miss Abbott try to clear up the mess and make it worse. Complete with a glorious set-piece in the opera house, and a Laurentian wrestling scene that reminds us that poor Lilia was merely incidental, and this story is all about the relationship between Gino and Philip… show less

Even considering that a couple of E.M. Forster's books are considered to be flat-out twentieth century classics, "Where Angels Fear to Tread" is a remarkable performance, a debut novella that never seems to put a foot wrong. The book works on a number of levels. It's an acid satire of comfortable upper-class British life at Sawston -- apparently Tunbridge Wells -- transposed to an Italian setting. Skewering the manners and manias of the economically comfortable is never all that difficult, but his upper-class would-be rebels aren't necessarily heroes. They may complain about the dreadfully dull culture of the moneyed upper classes, but lack the fortitude to leave it behind entirely. Being Forster, this little book is splendidly observan show more about character: about what makes some people strong or weak, about which of our connections are really most meaningful to us, about and which values really help us develop. And although Forster didn't know too many Italians personally when he wrote this one, it's a not-too-unsuccessful study in the contrast between Southern European and Northern European attitudes, and, perhaps most delightfully, its a canvas on which the author can describe -- and express his own enthusiasm for -- Italy. Even if it had nothing else to recommend it, "Where Angels Fear to Tread" would be worth reading just for the author's descriptions of Italy's natural beauty, its ancient towns, and its complex social customs that, to a visiting Englishman, must have seemed delightfully novel and strange. You can't fake the sort of enthusiasm that Forster displays here.

What really struck me about "Where Angels Fear to Tread" is how well I felt I knew the characters after spending a mere one hundred and sixty pages with them. Although I've seen Forster's style described as "light," he had the rare gift of describing character: his insight into people's characters and their motivations seems, at times, nothing short of supernatural. The book itself may be brief, but -- from the clever but ineffectual Phillip to the reckless Lilia to the louche but undeniably charming Gino, each of his characters seem to breathe on the page. The changes they undergo -- their character arcs, if you'll permit me the phrase -- also seem significant and complex for such a short book. Forster, in other words, fit a lot of humanity into this little volume.

Lastly, while it's been a while since I've picked up anything by this author, "Where Angels Fear to Tread" seemed to confirm my suspicions that he serves as an important link between nineteenth and twentieth century writing. He writes exclusively in the third person and doesn't hesitate to describe a reader's character or moral precepts to his readers, which may not be to every modern reader's taste. Still, while these descriptions are often remarkably insightful and economical, I felt that something else was constantly trying to emerge here. Forster doesn't hesitate to describe the lazy, likeable, pleasure-seeking Gino in forthrightly physical, almost erotic, terms. Italy itself, with its opera performances and its food and its cafés and its warm, scented night breezes, is portrayed as a garden of sensual delights, something that often disorients our English visitors and makes them question their own values and customs. The body, in all its messy, sensual glory, keeps trying to break through here, and sometimes it does. In "Where Angels Fear to Tread," threadbare Victorian morality constantly seems as risk of toppling over once and for all, and it's sometimes thrilling to watch. I'm not sure if this one is read as often as Forster's "A Passage to India" or his "A Room with a View," but honestly, I can't see why it shouldn't be. Highly recommended. show less

E. M. Forster's first novel tackles issues of national identity and the potential for interpersonal connection despite societal inequalities that would preoccupy Forster throughout his career. The action is split between England and Italy. Where Angels Fear to Tread culminates in a "song of madness and death" similar to the sad opera Lucia di Lammermoor, which turns raucously amusing in one of the novel's most memorable sequences, yet at times veers into farce.

The novel is gruesome, accomplished, and darkly humorous. The best intentions fail and well-known ideas of virtue and vice fall to pieces in it. This kind of tragedy is distinctively Jamesian, and Philip's tale unmistakably invokes The Ambassadors' storyline. Similar to Strether show more in James' novel, Philip goes to the continent in order to save a fellow countryman from disgrace (first Lilia, then her son), only to fall in love with the place, find himself in the unlikely position of defending it, and have additional "ambassadors" (Harriet and Caroline Abbott) sent in order to save his mission. John Marcher, the main character of Henry James' "The Beast in the Jungle," and, in a way, the model for Strether, have similarities with Philip in his disengagement from life and inability to make snap decisions. However, Philip's tragedy is more difficult to accept because of his conviction that nothing can save him, which is actually the reverse of Strether's.

The action of this novel somewhat presages aspects of Forster's third novel, A Room With A View. As first novels go, this one is one of the best with a literary touch that Forster would continue to develop in his more famous later novels. show less

The title of this novel is the second half of a well-known saying. If you think of the first half, you know what many of the characters do throughout the book. At least the English, middle-class set of characters. They break like a giant wave against the boulder of indolence that is the hallmark of the Italian set of characters, epitomized by the legend of the patron saint of the village church. Caught between the two sets is Philip, the effete younger son of the suburban Herritons, whose sympathies are easily aroused by Italy and its people, in part because their inclinations coincide with his own. There is one crucial difference: the Italians in the book somehow find a way to make their way of (not) doing things work (even if this is show more not enough to forestall a horrible event), whereas Philip aspires to nothing more than honorable failure. In some ways, he is a forerunner of the pair of characters in Forster’s masterpiece, Howards End, Tibby Schlegel and Leonard Bast. If there is a narrative center to Angels, it might be Philip’s perspective, although it seems to be overdoing it to call him the protagonist. That role would be too weighty for him. In a moment of insight, he describes himself as “trivial.” For a brief instant, it appears as if the tragic climax of this clash of cultures might stir him to develop into something more, but this is quickly crushed by one last plot turn, and Philip seems almost relieved that it is so.
This was Forster’s first novel, but he had already found not only themes that would preoccupy him throughout his career (the emptiness of the outwardly-successful English merchant class, the limits and ultimate futility of aesthetic interests, the contrast with other, more elemental cultures), but also his characteristic narrative voice, nominally the anonymous, omniscient story-teller, but occasionally breaking in with asides that align him with an author creating a tale rather than simply a narrator recounting one. Here is an example, from chapter two: “What follows should be prefaced with some simile—the simile of a powder-mine, a thunderbolt, an earthquake—for it blew Philip up in the air and flattened him on the ground and swallowed him up in the depth.”
I first read this some thirty years ago, but picked it up yesterday afternoon to help while away another flu-plagued afternoon; it was just what I needed. Highly recommended, a good read. show less

The stuffy and moralistic English middle classes are in full view when the wayward widowed sister-in-law finds love in Italy with a handsome (and younger) Italian man and marries him. When she conveniently dies in childbirth, the family aren’t very aggrieved, but the thought of leaving one of their own to be raised by “those people” is not to be born. The family mounts a rescue mission to bring the child back to England. This expedition, shows the English family at their worst and sets the scene for a terrible tragedy. This is Forster at his finest.

This was a short book, with interesting characters that carried the story, rather than the action carrying the story. It had a few memorable insights, such as when Ms. Abbott recognizes that Mr. Herriton has insight and a "splendid" brain, but that he is idle when he sees what is right to do. There are people who are dull, or for some other reason can't see what is right, but perhaps worse are people who see it clearly, but simply choose not to act.

Overall, this book did not make me overly eager to read more EM Forster, but I know that this isn't his most popular book. (I think it may have been his first.)

Where Angels Fear to Tread is a gem with too many facets to appreciate fully at first inspection. E. M. Forster packed so much into his short first novel that it would be a pleasure to read several times.

When Lilia Herriton left for a year in Italy, her in-laws breathed a sigh of relief to have the impetuous, somewhat gauche, widow out of their stodgy hair. But when they discover that Lilia has gone and married the ne’er-do-well son of a provincial Italian dentist, their shocked overreaction leads to a series of misfortunes that eventually crush their prim conventions.

Forster uses the star-crossed lovers, Lilia and Gino, to illustrate the clash between star-crossed cultures and philosophies. In surviving these clashes, Lilia’s show more brother-in-law, Philip Harriton, and her companion, Caroline Abbott, grow to appreciate a world much bigger than their tedious hometown of Sawston.

Forster is – for the better – a stripped down version of Henry James. The beauty and big ideas are there, but are not swaddled to obscurity with a million extra words.Where Angels Fear to Tread was published in 1905. To readers used to James’s heavy hand (The Wings of the Dove, The Ambassadors, and The Golden Bowl were published in that order in the three years prior to Angels), Forster must have seemed like the breath of life itself.

Also posted on Rose City Reader. show less