An Interpretation of Bast’s Death in Howards End

: This thesis explores the intricate relationship among class, culture, and social identity in E. M. Forster’s Howards End , with a particular focus on the character of Leonard Bast. Through an in-depth analysis of the direct and indirect reasons for Bast’s death, the thesis sheds light on the complex interplay between individual aspirations and social constraints, highlighting Bast’s struggle to transcend his lower-middle-class status through cultural enrichment. In addition to analysing how other characters impact Bast’s fate, the thesis also looks at Forster’s broader thematic concerns about connection. It argues that Bast’s death is not merely a personal tragedy but a symbol of the wider social failures to bridge the gaps between classes. By analysing the aftermath of Bast’s death and its impact on the novel’s characters and their relationships, the thesis suggests that his death ultimately contributes to a tentative hope for a more connected and inclusive society.


Introduction
Edward Morgan Forster (1879Forster ( -1970) is an outstanding British novelist, essayist, and literary critic in the first half of the twentieth century.Forster was born in January 1879 in London, England.Though he was born into a wealthy middle-class family, he lived in Europe, India, and other places for a long time.This made him clearly aware of the merits and demerits of the British middle class and other classes, as well as those of other nations.Forster completed six novels in total, including Where Angels Fear to Tread (1905), The Longest Journey (1907), A Room with a View (1908), Howards End (1910), A Passage to India (1924), and Maurice (1971).Forster's works contain his views on the theme of the British "undeveloped heart".He concentrates on the relationship between people and calls on people to remove prejudices between individuals, genders, classes, and races and find a common home for mankind.What Forster advocates for is inclusive love in a multicultural world.While making the appeal for "connection", he is also aware of the difficulty of connecting.Among his novels, Howards End has captured substantial public concern since its publication, helping him solidify his literary position.The famous critic Lionel Trilling believes that Howards End is undoubtedly Forster's masterpiece [1] .The novel explores the intertwined lives of three families: the practical and wealthy Wilcoxes, the intellectual and idealistic Schlegels, and the struggling lower-middle-class Basts.Howards End, a country house that serves as a symbolic focal point for the characters' aspirations, conflicts, and desires, is at the core of the story.The middleclass characters in the novel vividly show people's spiritual conditions, value standards, and ethical orientation during the transitional period from the Victorian era  to the Edwardian era (1901)(1902)(1903)(1904)(1905)(1906)(1907)(1908)(1909)(1910).In this novel of "Condition of England", Forster resorts to "connection" between classes, for in this transitional society, traditional families find it difficult to play a normal role.
Forster insists that families of different classes need to make a change, which he calls "connection", to adapt to society.Besides, as Garant mentions, Forster was a great admirer of Gibbon and believed, like Matthew Arnold, that the future of the nations depended on the intelligence of their middle class [2] .In the novel, the upper middle class lady Margaret Schlegel is the main character to build up the connection among the upper class, upper middle class, and lower middle class.However, she does not complete the task perfectly.More importantly, Forster makes a serious "dislocation" between cultural pursuit and class identity by focusing on Leonard Bast.He wants to verify whether or not Matthew Arnold's cultural view of liberal humanism is achievable.The result turns out to be that it is unprocurable.Through Leonard's struggle and death, Forster satirizes the impracticality of Arnold's idea that culture transcends class and defeats class [3] .
Since the publication of Howards End, it has rapidly received high praise and recognition.In recent years, Howards End has still had an academic influence.The studies on Howards End have multiple perspectives, primarily including connection, modernism, ideological content, environment, social transformation, and "thing theory".Some scholars have also done in-depth research on the character of Leonard Bast.For example, Hao Fuqiang and Liu Yang analyse the dislocation between Bast and the semiotic text "night walking".They regard Bast's "night walking" as an awkward imitation of the British rural and travel writings, which makes it impossible to connect the middle and lower classes with the upper class [4] .Few of these studies, nevertheless, examined Leonard Bast's death in detail.It is significant to note that the reasons and influences of Bast's death can reflect a deeper connection between the three families in Howards End and the condition of England in the Edwardian period.Therefore, it is necessary to probe into Howards End by interpreting the death of Bast.

Direct Reasons for Bast's Death
Leonard Bast is a young man in the lower middle class, a descendant of land-holding peasants, a worker for Porphyrion Fire Insurance Company, a pursuer of high culture, and the husband of Jacky, who used to be a prostitute.At the end of the novel, Bast died of heart disease, which was directly caused by Charles Wilcox.Although Bast died of a heart attack, the root cause of his death was the dislocation between his social identity and cultural attitude.Bast "hoped to come to culture suddenly, much as the Revivalist hopes to come to Jesus" [5] .However, he does not realize that he should improve himself step by step.The main way that he tries to acquire culture is by reading John Ruskin.When Bast was reading Stones of Venice, he tried to imitate Ruskin's style to write to his brother, but he failed in the end.It is not feasible to use elegant literary language to describe Bast's scruffy semi-basement, and it is also undoubtedly unworkable that Bast pursues upper-class thinking with a lower-middle-class identity.
With the acceleration of urbanization, the Basts came to the city in order to get rid of their double poverty in material and spirit, but this evacuation did not bring them double prosperity.In material terms, Leonard Bast works hard but could only live in a semi-basement with his wife.He could not afford newspapers and bus tickets.Ideologically, Leonard Bast wants to be in the upper middle class, but he is not recognized by others.He always struggled on the edge of the abyss."The boy, Leonard Bast, stood at the extreme verge of gentility.He was not in the abyss, but he could see it, and at times people whom he knew had dropped in, and counted no more" [5] .Bast is ashamed of his humble origin.In his conversation with Helen, he regarded the fact that his ancestors were farmers as a secret that needed to be kept.He takes no interest in his work, feeling ashamed to talk about it.When asked by the Schlegel sisters about his company, he has no idea what kind of company he works for, and he hides the truth that all he did was to explain the same regulations to different clients."Leonard had no idea.He understood his own corner of the machine, but nothing beyond it.He desired to confess neither knowledge nor ignorance, and under these circumstances, another motion of the head seemed safest" [5] .Leonard Bast is a lower middle-class man.However, he is not only unwilling to accept his social status but also unwilling to live a down-to-earth life.With no reliable materials that can allow him to confirm his social identity, his identity is maintained by his unrealistic ideals about culture.
According to Forster, Leonard Bast is on the "verge of gentility": his life was so hard, instead of focusing on how to improve his standard of living, he still stuck to acquiring culture.This attitude towards culture is morbid.Bast immigrated from the countryside to London in order to become a cultured man.He prefers to walk home from Queen's Hall in order to save money for the concert.As Forster said, "Leonard stood wondering whether he would take the tram as far as a penny would take him, or whether he would walk.He decided to walk" [5] .He lives in a semi-basement with his wife Jacky; its sitting room is decorated with many Cupids and a piano, though he is not good at playing it.He likes to read books by John Ruskin, a British writer who believes that art cannot be separated from life, criticizes social inequality, and demands universal education.In addition, Bast likes to talk about books with the Schlegel sisters, but he does not understand the books he is reading.Bast's morbid cultural attitude is influenced enormously by popular cultural views by social reformers like Matthew Arnold.They firmly believe it is possible to achieve justice in material and spiritual terms, yet the truth is that culture is controlled by the upper class, and their power is incontrovertible.Bast tries to get closer to the upper middle class through culture, but he fails to know that culture can only be acquired on the basis of wealth.This is reflected in his encounters with the Schlegels.He meets Helen in a music hall, where Helen takes his umbrella by accident.The Schlegels are here to enjoy the concert, but Bast is more like completing a "task" in two minds, a "task" that he thinks would make him a cultured man.While completing this "task", he is still entangled in the real world.After Helen's mistake, Bast begins to be careless about the concert.He is full of his "appalling umbrella".Knowing that Helen has taken Bast's umbrella, Margaret suggests that after the concert, she will take Bast to her house, Wickham Place, to look for his umbrella.However, he speculates on Margaret's kindness, for he is afraid of being deceived.As Forster said, "This young man had been 'had' in the past badly, perhaps overwhelmingly-and now most of his energies went in defending himself against the unknown" [5] .After leaving Wickham Place, he continues to suspect the Schlegels, for he is jealous of their wealth.This encounter reveals Bast's contradiction between reality and culture.On the one hand, he regards the Schlegels as the embodiment of culture.On the other hand, his wretched life takes him back to reality again and again.He is so angry when the Schlegel sisters tell him about the current situation of his company because it makes him feel that his spiritual world is being hit by reality.He does not want the Schlegel sisters to have any relationship with his real life.What he needs is pure talk about literature.
Similarly, his "night walking" sees the split between reality and culture, too.The "night walking" area is located in the suburbs of London, a famous villa area where the rich lived."He had visited the country of Surrey when darkness covered its amenities, and its cosy villas had re-entered ancient night" [5] .It is a striking contrast to Bast's semi-basement in downtown London.Subconsciously, his "night walking" turns into a yearning for the lives of the rich.As Hao and Liu mention, the "electric lights" imply that Bast hopes to connect himself to the owner of the villa through "night walking", the upper-class culture of the bourgeoisie [4] .As for feelings, he says, "The dawn was very grey, it was nothing to mention......and I was too tired to lift up my head to look at it, and so cold too.I'm glad I did it, and yet as the same time it bored me more than I can say" [5] .And during the walk, he has always been obsessed with his hunger.This is undoubtedly not what a cultured man is supposed to feel, for what counts most for a cultured man is to meet the needs of the spiritual world.Bast mentions that his "night walking" is influenced by the British naturalist and writer Richard Jeffries, yet he only sees the actions of the characters in the book and cannot appreciate the thoughts of the book.His "night walking" is just a clumsy imitation of the cultured men.It does not make for a spiritual sublimation but serves as topics for a show-off in conversations.When talking about books with the Schlegels, he is eager to tell them the books he is reading are "elegant".Those rough lists, such as John Ruskin's Stones of Venice and George Meredith's Richard Ford and The Sufferings of Villers, all show his superficial understanding of culture.
Why does Bast have such a morbid cultural attitude?There are two reasons.The primary reason is the external oppression of capitalist society.In this commercial society, people like Leonard Bast are insignificant.As Forster depicts, to Bast and the British public, Porphyrion is a giant who controlled the world.Bast is eager for attention from others, especially the upper class.Meanwhile, capitalists give people the illusion of removing class barriers.In the novel, the Schlegel sisters invite Bast home and treat him as a friend.This undoubtedly ignites Bast's hope-the hope to enter the Schlegels' world through culture.In fact, there is an insurmountable gap between classes.In Bast's era, the education of the bourgeoisie was essentially social stratification, which was closely related to the economic capability of each stratum [4] .In other words, Bast's economic ability determines that his cultural attitude is wrong.Furthermore, Matthew Arnold's universal liberal humanism also gives Bast this "illusion": reading the elegant books could make him a member of the upper middle class."But in his day the angel of Democracy had arisen, enshadowing the classes with leathern wings, and proclaiming, 'All men are equal-all men, that is to say, who possess umbrellas,' and so he was obliged to assert gentility, lest he slip into the abyss where nothing counts, and the statements of Democracy are inaudible" [5] .The second reason is Bast's own wrong choice, which throws him into the morbid cultural vortex.Bast crosses the hierarchy of needs in Abraham Maslow's terms.Maslow believes that human needs are divided into five levels, including the needs of physiology, safety, social contact, respect, and self-actualization.In this hierarchy, at the most basic level are physiological needs.Bast, however, skips the basic needs of human survival and goes directly to "self-actualization needs".He refuses to work hard on a material basis and blindly pursues culture.Even though his basic life cannot be guaranteed, he wants to change his status by studying Ruskin and going to the Queen's Hall to listen to music.Professor Xu Ya contends that what causes Bast's tragedy is not the conflict between his unique temperament and high culture, but the conflict between his representative lower middle identity and high culture [3] .In addition, Bast lacks the spirit of hard work.After losing his job, he has no choice but to let his situation worsen step by step.In the end, he could only turn to Helen for help.It is not until he loses his job that he realizes that his cultural attitude is unrealistic.As a result, his attempt to improve his social position through culture is destined to fail from the start.At the end of the novel, when Bast walks towards Howards End for redemption, he finds that earth is where he belonged because he is a descendant of the owner-peasants.At that moment, Bast realizes that his social status is not "a secret needed to be kept"; he should accept it as an honour, for peasants are "England's hope" [5] .
In a sense, Leonard Bast intrudes into the Wilcoxes' world and the Schlegels' world.He is an unconventional intruder; as his name suggests, he is an illegitimate child, an inferior-quality product.With such an identity, he could not be accepted by society.He knows that the Schlegels would be interested in the behaviour of "night walking", so he brings up this topic on purpose.In Howards End, Forster asks a question: "Was that 'something' walking in the dark among the suburban hills" [5] ?Forster hints at one point here: Bast is not just taking the action of "night walking", but more importantly, he is using the topic of "night walking" as a symbol to approach the upper middle class of the bourgeoisie.What he actually desires is true equality with the upper middle class [4] .This desire is inconsistent with his social identity, and it is the root cause of his death.In Howards End, he died under the high culture he is struggling to pursue, and this ridiculous ending is exactly the denial of his morbid cultural attitude.

Indirect Reasons for Bast's Death
In addition to external social reasons and Bast's own reasons, other characters in the novel also have an indirect impact on Bast's death.Bast's tragedy is the result of the joint actions of the Wilcoxes and the Schlegels, and Jacky is another accomplice.In Howards End, the imperialist Wilcoxes belong to the upper class.Their representative is Henry Wilcox.He is a rich, hardworking, and unemotional businessman, and he does not care about the "inner world" until he falls for Margaret Schlegel.Henry's attitude towards his family implies that he is an autocratic man.He loves his wife, Ruth, because she always obeys him.For example, even though she values Howards End so much, she still allows Henry to remove the paddock in Howards End to make room for the garage.The father-son relationship between Henry and Charles also shows Henry's dominant character.His son, Charles, is always committed to pleasing him.Their relationship is more like that between the boss and the subordinate-that of command and obedience.Henry Wilcox is responsible for Bast's death.Firstly, it is he who promises the Schlegel sisters that Porphyrion Fire Insurance Company is about to close down.At the suggestion of the Schlegel sisters, Bast quits his job and finds another job in a bank."He's going into a bank in Camden Town, he says.The salary's much lower" [5] .It turns out, however, that the Porphyrion Company does not go bankrupt, but the bank reduces their staff after Bast has been there for a month.Bast lost his job, and this humble job is what allowed him to stick to his humble cultural attitude.It is Henry's irresponsible advice that causes Bast to lose his means of subsistence.Bast is in despair, saying, "If rich people fail at one profession, they can try another.Not I" [5] .Jobless Bast is one step closer to death.Secondly, Charles' stabbing Bast to death is partly out of his flattery of Henry.At the end of the novel, when Charles Wilcox learns that Helen is pregnant with Bast's child, he angrily picks up the Schlegels' sword and beats Bast, which causes Bast's heart attack and indirectly leads to Bast's death.Henry, as a symbol of money, controls all aspects of British society and directly controls the destiny of the lower class.
The Schlegel sisters represent the inner world, or culture, in Howards End.Leonard Bast regards the Schlegel sisters as the "Composite Indian god, whose waving arms and contradictory speeches were the product of a single mind" [5] .In other words, the Schlegel sisters are incompatible.Yet they are responsible for Bast's tragic death in three ways.Firstly, Margaret gives Bast hope to pursue culture in their conversation about "night walking".Secondly, the immoral relationship between Helen and Bast makes him a sinner.Lastly, the Schlegel sisters are the ones who deliver Henry's wrong message to Bast.Leonard Bast and the Schlegel sisters meet at a concert in the Queen's Hall.Bast does not trust the Schlegel sisters at first.He quietly keeps Margaret's business card because, in his opinion, it is a symbol of culture.In their second conversation, Bast shares his "night walking" experience with the Schlegels, and Margaret believes that Bast is a true adventurer.This encourages Bast to a certain extent, and it makes him think that he could communicate with the upper-middle-class ladies in an equal position.Moreover, Henry's irresponsible advice is passed on by the Schlegel sisters, and it is the Schlegels' sword that beat Bast.In other words, the Schlegel sisters act as the "accomplices" of the Wilcoxes.After Bast loses his job, Helen wants to help him, but she pushes him into a deeper abyss.Their immoral relationship makes Bast feel regretful, which makes his unhealthy spirit worse.Leonard finally walks on the way to Howards End because he wants to confess his sins to Margaret.However, he steps on a dead end.On the other hand, after learning that she is pregnant, Helen flees directly to Germany to avoid all disadvantages.When she returns to England, her sister Margaret protects her from being harmed.This is the difference between Helen and Bast, and the difference between the poor and the rich.In conclusion, for Bast, the Schlegel sisters are the symbol of culture, while Margaret's encouragement and Helen's sympathy let him fall to a tragic end.
In Howards End, Leonard Bast's wife is Jacky, and she is Henry's mistress in his days as a colonial adventurer.Jacky is hardly a gentlewoman, as Forster portrays her; rather, she is an unthinkable, dissatisfied housewife.Jacky's cheap lace and azure features make her completely different from the western imperial stereotype of the good woman.In Bast's view, Jacky is more like a burden in his life than his wife.Jacky does not understand her husband's cultural attitude, and she does not object either.She cares about whether Bast can support her. Jacky symbolizes reality.As described in the novel, after Bast returns from the Schlegels' house, he hurriedly opens Ruskin's Stones of Venice, trying to grasp the culture.While Jacky comes back, she pulls him back to reality.Bast's conversation with Jacky implies he wants to escape reality.When Jacky asks when Bast will marry her, he is very bored.He thinks their marriage would be a wrong decision for the whole world."In a tone of horror, that was a little luxurious, he repeated: 'My brother'd stop it.I'm going against the whole world, Jacky'" [5] .In fact, he has distinguished himself from Jacky in his heart.He thinks they are not the same kind of people; Jacky is the "unthinkable poor", while he is a cultured man.After Bast loses his job, Henry initially agrees to Margaret's request and is willing to find a job for Bast.Nevertheless, when Henry discovers that his former mistress, Jacky, is Bast's wife, he withdraws his promise.This extinguishes Bast's last hope.In a word, for Bast, Jacky is a burden in his life, and she dashes his last hope and puts him into the abyss.

Influences of Bast's Death and Its Metaphor
Leonard is an outsider who lingers on the outer edges of the class.He is unable to fit in with the upper middle class because of his social status.He is isolated and emotionally frustrated.He feels as though the majority of society has rejected and neglected him, leaving him unable to find his own place.At the end of the novel, Bast is crushed to death under the bookcase full of high-cultural books, which is undoubtedly a kind of irony."A stick, very bright, descended.It hurt him, not where it descended, but in the heart.Books fell over him in a shower.Nothing had sense" [5] .His death serves as a turning point in the novel, making the lives of characters in different classes change and pushing the development of the story to its climax and end.Henry Wilcox himself admits that "I am not a fellow who bothers about my own inside" [5] .Before Bast's death, Henry was a stubborn man.When Margaret finds out about Henry's affair with Jacky, she chooses to forgive.Nevertheless, when Henry finds that Helen is unmarried but pregnant, he chooses to blame her.He even rejects Margaret's request to let her and Helen stay at Howards End for only one night.His son, Charles Wilcox, his loyal follower, is an impetuous and selfish man.When he learns that Margaret and Helen will spend one night in Howards End, he regards it as a signal that the Schlegel sisters want to occupy Howards End.In fact, for the Wilcoxes, Howards End is only an insignificant property in the suburbs; none of them wants to live there.However, they will not send Howards End to Margaret, even though it is Ruth Wilcox's testament.It is Bast's death that brings about a change in their lives.After Bast's death, Charles is convicted of manslaughter, and Henry is overwhelmed by the gloomy fate of his son.His heart is so empty that he needs Margaret to save him.As a result, Henry and Margaret reunite dramatically, and Margaret's mission of "connection" is continued.Additionally, Henry also agrees to let Helen and Bast's illegitimate son inherit Howards End. Henry becomes broad-minded, and Charles receives his punishment in one word.The Wilcoxes are called the "special race" that will rule the British Empire in the future."There's a nightmare of a theory that says a special race is being born which will rule the rest of us in the future just because it lacks the little thing that says 'I'" [5] .It will be a 'nightmare' if they are to rule Britain, for they ignore the mind.And it is Bast's death that promotes the successful connection between culture and material, allowing the upper class to move towards a better world-a world both rich in material and spirit.
The Schlegels pay more attention to the inner world, which lack power in daily life and have less practical use for society compared with the Wilcoxes.In Howards End, Forster uses marriage to build a "connection" between Margaret and Henry, both culture and material, which implies Forster's hope to construct an inclusive world.And it is Bast's death that makes the "connection" achievable.Margaret thinks that their family needs a bit of masculine colour, and she knows it very well: "Money is the warp of the world" [5] .Therefore, she accepts Henry's proposal, hoping to achieve a connection between the inner world and the outer world.She believes that through "connection", the world will be perfect: "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" [5] .Although Margaret's original intention is to combine material and culture, it is not difficult to find that Margaret has gradually lost herself, and the connection between her and Henry is more like a "compromise."After a quarrel over whether or not Margaret and Helen can spend one night in Howards End, Margaret is disappointed with Henry; she plans to give up the "connection" and go to Germany with Helen.While Bast's accidental death makes Margaret stay in England and continue the connection with Henry.After Charles is in prison, he decides to abandon his inheritance of Howards End, and Henry makes a testament to bequeath Howards End to Margaret.It is Howards End that made Henry and Helen a compatible combination.On this account, Bast is a contributor to this harmonious situation."After a dramatic climax in which Charles kills Leonard in a fit of rage and Henry's emotional fortress collapses around him, Margaret is left to pick up the pieces and establish an unlikely household of herself, Henry, and Helen (with baby) at Howards End" [6] .Henry and Helen's reconciliation once again emphasizes that Margaret has completed the connection between spirit and material.Nevertheless, the price of the connection is Margaret's return to a traditional female identity.
At the end of the novel, the author takes Bast and Helen's child as the ultimate heir of Howards End, which fulfils Margaret's unfinished mission: to realize the connection between the upper class and the lower class and consolidate the connection between culture and material.Garant argues, "Bast's child brings together the different classes, man and woman, past, present and future, the prose and the passion" [2] .It means that this child is the carrier of the connection between the upper middle class and the lower middle class.This extremely symbolic "baby" is the crystallization of the understanding and communication of various characters.He is not only the descendant of the Schlegel family and Bast but also the legal heir to the Wilcox family's property.In a word, the "baby" is super-class.The child symbolizes the hope of England and the future of Britain.The growth of this child requires the joint efforts of the upper class, upper middle class, and lower middle class.As Garant said, "In him are the seeds of a new rising class, guided and helped by those who already stand on comfortable islands of money" [2] .Though the future is unknowable, Forster believes that through the connection, the future will be better than the present.This is the reason that he sets the child as an heir of Howards End.Leonard Bast is, essentially, a contributor to his son's identity-a legal heir-for it is his death that contributes to this successful connection between different classes.

Conclusion
Howards End depicts the "condition of Britain" in the Edwardian Period.Forster takes Howards End as a symbol of England, hoping to find out who should inherit the country: the upper class, the upper middle class, or the lower middle class.At the end of the novel, Forster makes Bast and