“A Liberal Susceptibility to the Pains of Others”: Zadie Smith’s On Beauty, Haiti and the Limits of a Forsterian Intervention

Abstract

This article explores the literary and ideological connections between Zadie Smith’s On Beauty (2005) and E.M. Forster’s Howards End (1910); it argues that On Beauty’s transformation of Leonard Bast into Carl Thomas, a black American rapper, constitutes Smith’s successful refashioning of Forster’s commentary on cross-class relations, whilst the problematic portrayal of a Haitian community perpetuates the ideological shortcomings of Howards End in its inability to make a convincing case for the societal ‘Other’, hence diminishing the impact of the novel’s postcolonial commentary.