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Samples From Page to Screen: E.M. Forster's A Room with a View, Maurice and Howards End Chapter 3: Howards End In filming E.M. Forster's novel Howards End, Ismail Merchant and James Ivory translated an intricately plotted, intelligent book into an equally literate and thought-provoking movie. The film is unique in the aspect that it is thoroughly English in its subject matter (relations between the different social classes) and execution, (very genteel and mannered) yet the form, seamless and flowing, is undeniably American film making. The numerous plot lines and characters are extensively developed and unified using different components of mise-en-scene and film style. The result is a film which uses mesmerizing characters and plots rather than spectacular production costs to draw its viewers in. One of the most important aspects of this film, the emphasis placed on houses of all kinds, is conveyed to the viewer through the use of various aspects of mise-en-scene. There are four homes that are shown in great detail: the Schlegel and Wilcox apartments in affluent parts of London, Leonard Bast's tiny apartment in a run-down part of London, and Howards End, the Wilcox family's house in the English countryside. The depiction of these homes establishes many of the themes and ideas referred to by the filmmakers throughout the rest of the film. The Schlegel apartment is full of light and cheerfully cluttered with books, artwork and family heirlooms, such as their father's old army sword. The atmosphere of their apartment demonstrates the optimistic, gregarious nature of the Schlegel family, which contrasts sharply with that of the Wilcox family. Their London apartment is perpetually shrouded in heavy drapes, making the dark colors in which it is decorated seem even more severe and solemn than they normally would. The rooms are filled with knickknacks and family portraits, and the books and artwork that lined the walls and shelves of the Schlegel apartment are noticeably absent, revealing the more reserved, somber existence of the Wilcox family. Leonard Bast's two room apartment exemplifies the downtrodden nature of his existence: the wallpaper is peeling, the furniture is spare and threadbare and the brightest light source comes from the trains that clatter by his bedroom window every few minutes. Howards End, a pivotal setting in the film, is portrayed as having an ethereal quality: the house itself is spacious and almost always full of people and conversation, and the grounds of the house, with their beautiful trees and wildflowers, play an equally important role in the glorious aura that surrounds the house. To further establish houses as an integral aspect of the action in the film, Merchant-Ivory combined aspects of mise-en-scene and style to give each of the houses its own musical theme, which is played whenever it is shown or discussed at length. The London apartments of the Schlegels and the Wilcoxes have rapid, lively orchestral themes that emphasize the atmosphere of the city. Leonard's has its own theme, a slower, more legato orchestral melody that grows more tragic as the movie progresses, foreshadowing his ultimate demise. Howards End's theme is a lyrical, flowing solo piano piece that reflects the tranquility and beauty of the country house. The contrast between the city (London) and the country (Howards End, an hours' train ride north of London) is very important in both the novel and the film. The sorts of images used to describe each of these settings serve to make a distinct impression on the reader regarding the nature of each place: the description of Howards End contains references to such objects as a "wych elm and hay field" and London is sketched in terms of an object like the noisy, dangerous automobile. Henry Wilcox's first wife, Ruth, and Margaret most purely represent the country, for they love Howards End and the land around it. Henry and his son Charles represent the city, more for the fact that they are apathetic about Howards End than because they express a love for London. It is clear that they do not possess the love and respect for the country that Ruth and Margaret do, which is key for Forster. The manner in which he writes about Howards End makes it clear that in the country, with that house, is where his true affection lies; the descriptions of it are detailed and lovingly written, contrasting sharply with passages which reflect the "flux, rootlessness and mere bigness of London" (Stevenson 136). The film establishes clear distinctions between the city and the country using camera work, editing and music. Shots of Howards End are long and fluid--the house in the sunset, the movement of a dress in long grass--with little cutting, evoking an unhurried, tranquil mood. The music is a melodic, legato piano melody, which matches the soothing nature of the cinematography. Scenes in London, on the other hand, emphasize people, fast movement, tall buildings. The camera work is faster, with the editing using more cuts, in order to show the sheer amount of people, carriages, movement London must handle. The music is fast, with running eighth and sixteenth notes played by an orchestra, reinforcing the idea of the bustling metropolis. Another device employed to unify the various plot lines in Howards End is the use of recurring props. Books and a sword are two examples of these objects. Wherever the Schlegels are, there are bound to be piles of books--this serves to distinguish their literary-appreciative nature from that of the Wilcoxes. This contrast may be most clearly seen in the fact that the only thing a Wilcox is ever shown reading is an edition of "The Tatler". There are extensive bookshelves in the Schlegel's London apartment, and their brother Tibby's room at Oxford is cluttered with numerous stacks of precariously balanced books. Just after she and Henry are married, Margaret is shown lying in bed with several books strewn around her, with Henry sitting near her stumbling over the pronunciation of one of the titles. Finally, towards the end of the movie, Helen is lured to Howards End by the promise of retrieving her books. The character of Leonard Bast, too, is largely defined by books. He works as a bookkeeper for an insurance company, at which he often reads books, hiding them under his work when a superior walks by. His friendship with the Schlegels is brought about by a book: he used the calling card he received upon his first visit to their home as a bookmark, which his wife found, and, worried one day when he did not come home after work, she pays the Schlegels a visit, demanding to see her husband. Much embarrassed by his wife's rude behavior, he goes to their apartment to apologize, forging a friendship with them when he explains that he didn't go home after work because he was walking all night, in imitation of a character in a book he was reading. In the end, Leonard's death is caused by the books he loved so much--as he is recoiling from the blow of the sword, he falls to the ground and is crushed to death by a bookcase. The scene ends with the camera lingering on his lifeless body, and the books from the bookcase spilling out on top of him. The sword that is instrumental in causing Leonard's death is also seen at several different points in the movie, subtly foreshadowing an important role in the action. The sword is first mentioned when Margaret tells of her late father hanging it up, vowing never to be a soldier again. It hangs in the sitting room of their apartment, where Leonard, having come for tea, admiringly runs his hand along it, which, given the outcome of the movie, is highly ironic. When the Schlegels' belongings are being moved into Howards End for storage, a neighbor woman is seen carefully unpacking the sword, and, when he tries to touch the blade, sharply admonishes him and jerks the sword away, yet another foretelling of the sword's menacing purpose in the film. The final time the sword is seen is when Charles uses it to strike Leonard, bringing his death and the termination of one of the plot lines. An element of the film's style that contributes enormously to its unity is camera movement and editing. The camera in this movie is solely a spectator; there is no fancy or distracting movement or cutting, which allows the character and plot developments to carry the viewer through the film. In two particular instances, camera movement and editing are used to help the viewer draw parallels between characters and plot lines. The camera moves in virtually identical ways when we see first Ruth Wilcox and then Margaret Schlegel walking around Howards End. The camera remains behind the women as they walk, emphasizing the movement of their long dresses in the grass, then moves to track alongside them as they admire their surroundings. This camera movement serves to remind the viewer of the similarities between Ruth and Margaret, as well as the importance of Howards End in the narrative. Editing is similarly used to draw parallels, in this case between different phases of Margaret and Henry's relationship. It is used twice, once during the first time the two ever dine together, and again after they are engaged, after Margaret discovers that Henry and Leonard Bast's wife had an affair a decade before when they were both living in Cyprus. The sequences are broken up into little segments of conversation connected by fade-outs, then fade-ins that represent the passage of a few minutes, creating a somewhat disjointed but ultimately unified effect. In both instances, the editing technique is used to demonstrate the overall mood and importance of the action, (pivotal moments in their relationship) without diluting the salient points within the context of a lengthy conversation. The theme of the differences which exist between social classes is omnipresent, both in the novel and in the film. Three social classes are represented: the lower working class by Leonard Bast, the middle class by the Schlegels and the upper middle class by the Wilcoxes. In Edwardian England, these three disparate groups of people would not normally interact in the manner which occurs in the novel, because class lines were indelibly drawn, seldom to be crossed. This novel's mixing of classes, however, enables Forster to comment on the state of class relations in England. Forster has very definite ideas about the identifying characteristics of the classes which are present in his novels, particularly the middle class characters. In Mary Lago's biography of Forster, she outlines his ideas about the class of which he was a part. "England's essentially middle-class character was expressed in 'solidity, caution, integrity, efficiency; but also in 'lack of imagination, hypocrisy'. . . [Forster blames this on] the public school as an institution, the 'heart of the middle classes' as a machine for standardising those who will obtain a highly disproportionate number of responsible positions in the civil, military and ecclesiastical establishments of realm and empire" (Lago 17). This is a blatant criticism of the sort of people he created in the Wilcoxes; they are the people who possess much of the power and control in all aspects of life in England, yet lack imagination, and affection and respect for art, which Forster deems essential to a meaningful life. In Howards End, the Schlegels represent the sort of middle class people which Forster viewed as the ideal: they may have "solidity, caution, integrity, efficiency. . ." but they also have great amounts of imagination, empathy towards others and other qualities which Forster too often found lacking in middle class people. The Schlegels are further identified as likable, sympathetic people because they show a genuine, non-patronizing interest in Leonard Bast: they are concerned about him as a person (intellectually, emotionally) as well as his financial state. On relating with someone who is of a lower social class than themselves, the Schlegels contrast sharply with the Wilcoxes; this is Forster's technique for showing how unfeeling and unsympathetic he felt the more fortunate people in England could be. On the topic of Leonard Bast, their respective statements about his situation speak volumes. Margaret laments "Yes, [Leonard Bast] is done for. We upper classes have ruined him, and I suppose you'll tell me it's the battle of life," versus Henry's flippant "The poor are poor and we are sorry for them, but there it is." In Howards End, the classes are distinguished as much by their attitudes towards the arts as they are by the amount of money the respective families have. "For Forster, the citizens of the new suburban communities possessed many of the middle-class virtues that had given England her distinctive character. Their great fault lay in their being too often complacent and too seldom uncertain about their place in the new scheme of things. They were absorbed in the minutiae of position and prestige and property-owning. They wished to be thought cultured but seemed not to understand Culture" (Lago ix). Forster also had very definite ideas on the concepts of art and "Culture": ". . . his inclusive subject [in the BBC radio talks] was the Culture that rests on a foundation of all the arts. Where Culture is absent, the spirit is impoverished and practical enterprise as well as personal relations will suffer. . . 'Art' is his comprehensive term for all that makes life more than a routine existence: literature, music, the fine arts, the decorative arts" (Lago x, 1). The novel makes it clear, however, that in England at this time in history one's ability to enjoy the arts was implicitly controlled by one's income: a clerk such as Leonard Bast is not going to be able to attend the number or variety of events as the Schlegels or the Wilcoxes would be able to, because working in order to earn money for basic survival is not a major concern of theirs. Much of the point of Forster's novel, therefore, lies in the irony (and, for him, tragedy) that Leonard Bast, who can only afford to attend an occasional free concert still embraces all forms of the arts. Leonard, like the Schlegels, has great enthusiasm for the arts, but because of his poverty can only aspire to partake of them as the Schlegels are able to. Because they are free, he attends weekly "Music and Meaning" lectures in London, and he reads voraciously, becoming so caught up in the action of a book that he goes so far as to emulate characters' actions (in one book, the main character walks all night, so Leonard starts walking one evening after work and does not stop until the next morning). The affluent Wilcox family, particularly Henry, views the arts and those who enjoy them with great suspicion: "But [the Schlegel sisters] to him were denizens of Romance, who must keep to the corner he had assigned them, pictures that must not walk out of their frames." The Wilcox apartment is lined with oil portraits, but Henry is quick to tell Margaret that he did not purchase them--he "bought the place lock, stock and barrel. At one point, speaking of the Schlegel sisters, Charles refers to their "artistic beastliness," once again emphasizing the underlying wariness the Wilcoxes have towards artistic persons. The Schlegels, living off of comfortable inheritances, are portrayed as perhaps the most ideal characters: they love art, music, intellectual conversation, but are not so ensconced in their world that they cannot recognize those who are less fortunate (i.e., Leonard Bast) than they. It is Margaret Schlegel who has perhaps the novel's most famous line, which summarizes her family's view of the world, and demonstrates what Forster feels is deficient in the Wilcox outlook on life: "Only connect! That was the whole of her sermon. Only connect the prose and the passion, and both will be exalted, and human love will be seen at its height. Live in fragments no longer. Only connect, and the beast and the monk, robbed of the isolation that is life to either, will die." In keeping with the her philosophy of "only connect!", Margaret, particularly in her relationship with Henry Wilcox, will prove to be that which bridges the gap between various worlds: the artistic with the non-, the lower class with the upper, the city with the country. The character of Margaret Schlegel is a fine example of a point Mary Lago makes about Forster's use of characterization: ". . . although the abstract idea of 'the people' is held up as the ideal, he puts his faith in the individual" (Lago 3). Margaret may be a member of the sometimes-suspect middle class, but she personally does not possess the numerous bad qualities that Forster attributes to the group as a whole. As is characteristic of Forster's novels, he uses the presence of another culture (in A Room with a View, Italy, in Maurice, Greece and India in A Passage to India) to highlight the various idiosyncrasies (and, more severely, blatant flaws) in English society. In a portion of the novel which is not included in the film, the Schlegels and some relatives from Germany go to a concert with a variety of classical music on the program, including Beethoven (a German) and Elgar (an English composer). During the performance, Beethoven's Fifth Symphony is to be succeeded by Elgar's Pomp and Circumstance. All of the characters in the scene express a distinct lack of affection for the piece, yet the English concertgoers stay to listen to the piece out of respect or a sense of duty to a fellow countryman; the Schlegels' guests from Germany, however, shocked the entire audience by getting up and leaving the concert as the Elgar began. Most readers would probably feel that the actions of the English concertgoers were the most polite--one cannot always get up and leave when a situation is not particularly enjoyable. Forster's point, however, was that the characters stayed, not out of respect for the music, nor the effort which had gone into composing it, but simply because he was British and leaving would appear rude to their compatriots in the audience. This tendency towards unconditional adherence to custom and ideas of propriety constitutes one of Forster's most frequent targets for criticism.

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