This shows Lilia’s state of mind when she left for Italy and met and married Gino.īecause Lilia was so desperate to break away from this society, she married Gino without really knowing him, which set her up for the unhappy life that she had with him. Lilia was oppressed by her former in-laws – “when I came to your house a poor young bride, how you all looked me over – never a kind word – and discussed me, and thought I might just do and your mother corrected me, and your sister snubbed me, and you said funny things about me to show how clever you were! And when Charles died I was still to run in strings for the honour of your beastly family, and I was to be cooped up at Sawston and learn to keep house, and all my chances spoilt of marrying again” (Forster, 1905, p. Lilia’s foolishness seems to be more a product of a rebellion against the British society then a sense of superiority over the Italian people, although there are some instances where she does show that she feels superior to her husband Gino. Herriton and Harriett, Lilia’s foolishness comes, in part, from an innate prejudice about supposedly “lower” societies, such as the Italian society and lower class people however, it is not immediately obvious that Lilia does not harbor such a prejudice. Moreover, Pope feared that such fools were everywhere, as “No Place so Sacred from such Fops is barr’d.”. Pope describes the “Bookful Blockhead, ignorantly read, with Loads of Learned Lumber in his Head,” who nonetheless are ignorant about the world around them because they are always listening to themselves and not the wise men around them.

In the stanza where the famous quotation may be found, which is “For Fools rush in where Angels fear to tread,” Pope skewered the educated elite who are blind to the aspects of life that really matter. In this way, the novel closely parallels the poem upon which the novel is based, which is An Essay on Criticism by Alexander Pope.

Forster portrayed the British upper-crust society with a great deal of disdain, or as an object of ridicule, especially the matriarch of the Herriton clan, Mrs. Goodlad (2006) states that, in this novel, “morality embedded in affective relations will often be narrow, undemocratic, reactionary, violent, sexist, or simply selfish” (Goodlad, 2006, p.

Em forster where angels fear to tread