Review: Where Angels Fear to Tread, E. M. Forster

 

Where Angels Fear to Tread

by
E. M. Forster

published 1905

Classics Club Review # 2/50

This was my second Forster, the first being the exquisitely beautiful A Room With a View. This is a rather different sort of book. It deals with impetuous passion and its consequences rather than with true love and the trials of decision regarding its attainment. Both have a battling of the old and new, the traditional and the freeing (There is more to both books, but I only aim to remark upon so much). Within the novel, class and the societies of the two countries (England and Italy) are compared, contrasted, and moved in in differing degrees of enjoyment and repulsion. Italy is beautiful and raw, England limited and quiet. Under the surface we see that some of the characters hold much larger opinions and feelings than their environment might allude to, and some have more stifling ideas than seem even congruous with theirs and their country's perceived identity. While in A Room With a View one found a sense of beauty and of hope in these places, Where Angels Fear to Tread is rather dark and unhappy. The scant beliefs in places and people which were held at first, however weakly, are pulled away leaving only the most meagre hopes, which even then are subdued into nothingness. But, in spite of that, or because of that, this book was worth the very quick read and does not leave one disheartened, I don't feel, merely thoughtful on the motives and themes. There were moving tones throughout, and humor, but whereas in A Room With a View there is mingled with the beauty but a kind of melancholy, all through this was a kind of despair.

No book is ever simply what one makes of it, however, and I am interested to see, if I can find them out, what other people have to say.

The title is taken from 'An Essay on Criticism' (1711) by Alexander Pope.

No place so sacred from such fops is barr'd,

Nor is Paul's church more safe than Paul's churchyard:

Nay, fly to altars; there they'll talk you dead:

For fools rush in where angels fear to tread.

Distrustful sense with modest caution speaks;

It still looks home, and short excursions makes;

But rattling nonsense in full volleys breaks;

And never shock'd, and never turn'd aside,

Bursts out, resistless, with a thund'ring tide.