TO RIGHT: Helena Bonham-Carter in the movie version of Howards' End - great actress, interesting film shot. Scrutinized the poem on page 153, "On Beauty."
- Who is the "we"? What is the "list"? "They" could mean all beautiful people, the "we" could mean the ugly people. The beautiful are ideal, they have no "wounds" to speak of. What is snow usually representative of? Purity, winter... Maybe "They" are beautiful because they're wounded. "They", by nature of the word, creates a distance - put them in italics, and the distance increases (as in "They are the damned...", 3rd stanza). The "we" feel left out, so the word "they" describes the distance and that feeling of being left-out. The vague terms could be asking the question, Can you really put people into two separate camps like that?
- Interestingly enough, the poet who wrote the poem isn't interested in that kind of poetry anymore.
Page 206-7: Notion of living for someone and with someone. Here, Kiki argues with Howard, and says, "I staked my whole life on you... I gave up my life for you." Here, she's saying something that sounds more like Carlene than not. "Before, she adopted Howard's attitude - later, she adopts Carlene's atttitudes." Characters here claim to be what they often insist they are not - characters reverse.
- Talked about Howard's End, a novel by Forester, from which Zadie Smith "stole" the plot, of which only the ending is changed (allegedly). Howard's End is a place, not a person. It's a part of Victorian England; purity notion characterized by propriety (social codes). Men and women are supposed to do perform the same kinds of roles and are supposed to behave a certain way around each other.
Page 301: After Howard abruptly leaves the funeral, he visits his father, Harold Belsey. This section highlights social expectations and racial divisions, tensions. Harold guesses Kiki "found another black fella," and earlier Levi talks about how white people look at him in his own neighborhood because of the way he dresses and because he is black.
Page 263: Claire suggests Zora give a "barnstorming speech" at the next meeting so she can stick up for the students who were not officially enrolled in classes. She says that students like Carl don't have a voice, and Zora should be his voice. What kind of voice? A Wellingtonian voice. He can stand up for himself, but not in a way that will earn the respect or consideration of Wellington academics. This has to do, again, with defintions of what a person is - how does one have subjectivity? - how does one have power, or resist power? Implication: The people Claire is talking about don't have their own "personhood". For the rest of the novel: What is it saying about subjectivity - how does one form notions of one's self?
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