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

Authors

  • Alberto Fernández Carbajal York St John University, York UK

Keywords:

E.M. Forster, Howards End, Zadie Smith, On Beauty, Haiti, postcolonial

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.

Author Biography

Alberto Fernández Carbajal, York St John University, York UK

Alberto Fernández Carbajal holds a Licenciatura from the University of Oviedo (Spain) and an MA and PhD in English Literature from the University of Leeds (UK). He is currently Lecturer in Literature at York St John University (UK), where he teaches on a range of literature, research, and employability modules. His monograph Compromise and Resistance in Postcolonial Writing: E.M. Forster’s Legacy will be published by Palgrave Macmillan in 2014. His research expertise includes colonial and postcolonial literatures from Modernism to the present day; other burgeoning interests are the representations of Muslims in fiction, film, and graphic novels, and comparative Hispano- Anglophone approaches to postcolonial studies.

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Published

2013-03-08

Issue

Section

Articles