BARBARA ROSECRANCE
595
for a tragedy which his earlier involvement might have averted, and he
is rewarded by an insight into the meaning of life and, as corollary gift,
into his own feelings for an interesting young English woman. Philip
has made the connection and, it would appear, attained the ideal. But
the moment of revelation presents unexpected ironies. Philip's reward
becomes punishment (or perhaps relief). The girl loves another, and as
the novel ends, Philip retreats to a life of observation and passivity, an
existence newly examined and informed, but detached and sterile. At
the moment of his greatest insight, Philip withdraws from participa–
tion in the instinctual life whose value Forster has celebrated through–
out the novel. Moreover, the detachment that was Philip's besetting sin
and from which the novel's action undertook to dislodge him, appears
at the end as the necessary condition for his insight.
This paradoxical conclusion is doubly consequential.
Where
Angels Fear to Tread
begins a pattern of schism between explicit ideals
and real energies: in this respect, the novels unconsciously subvert
themselves. But the paradox exemplified in Philip's situation has in
addition a larger significance. For Philip's inaction presents a para–
digm that becomes the prevailing metaphysic of
A Passage to India,
where the relationship between withdrawal and the possibility of
wholeness becomes fully and finally explicit.
The earnest heterosexuality of the five major novels masks the fact
that, except in
A Room With a View,
the really important relationships
occur between persons of the same sex. The source of energy in
Where
Angels Fear to Tread
is Philip's relationship with the brash young
Italian, Gino. Philip approaches salvation through the transforma–
tions of condescension to love, dramatized in his growing rapproche–
ment with Gino. Their climactic encounter is a kind of Liebestod in
which Forster's fantasy of brutality, orchestrated at some length as
Gino sadistically twists Philip's broken arm, almost results in his
hero's death. Caroline Abbott reveals her love for Gino, but the really
telling confession is Philip's, "I love him too"; and, deprived of their
Italian touchstone, Caroline and Philip unite in the reiteration which
ends the novel, "all the wonderful things are over."
The Longest Journey,
Forster's next published novel, enlarges on
this pattern. Like Philip, Rickie Elliott is a young man in search of his
soul. Unlike his predecessor he appears at the outset to be free from the
pretension Philip had to overcome to "connect" with the world. But
Rickie makes the fatal mistake of trying to connect inner and outer
worlds (the very attempt for which Forster claims success on behalf of
Margaret in
Howards End).
Rickie's imagination is no match for his
